Arizona – Desdemona Despair

Screenshot of the Maricopa County Heat-Related Deaths Dashboard on 28 July 2024. Heat killed 27 people in the county, which is home to Phoenix, and is suspected as the cause of 396 other deaths in 2024. Graphic: Maricopa County

July 28, 2024

Hundreds of people may have died from heat in one Arizona county in 2024 – Heat-related deaths are underestimated in 297 of the most populous U.S. counties

By Rachel Ramirez 24 July 2024 (CNN) – Hundreds of people may have died from heat in Arizona’s Maricopa County amid another record-breaking summer in the state. Heat has killed 27 people in the county, which is home to Phoenix, and is suspected as the cause of 396 other deaths so far this year, according to […]

NASA’s ECOSTRESS instrument on 19 June 2024 recorded scorching roads and sidewalks across Phoenix, where contact with skin could cause serious burns in minutes to seconds, as indicated in the legend. Graphic: NASA / JPL-Caltech

July 14, 2024

NASA captures 160°F (71°C) roads and sidewalks across Phoenix – “It looks like we’re at a record pace, which is a record we really don’t want to set”

By Jessica Boehm 10 July 2024 (Axios) – Many Phoenix streets and sidewalks can reach 160° during the hottest parts of the day, according to a new NASA analysis. Why it matters: Surfaces that hot can cause contact burns in seconds, and Valley hospitals are seeing an uptick in patients with serious burn injuries. The big picture: Human-caused climate […]

A property is engulfed in flames as the Thompson Fire burns, Tuesday, 2 July 2024, in Oroville, California. Photo: Ethan Swope / AP

July 7, 2024

Persistent heat wave in the U.S. expected to shatter new records as it bakes West and swelters in East – “Unfortunately, there won’t be much relief overnight either”

By Margery A. Beck 7 July 2024 (AP) – A long-running heat wave that has already shattered previous records across the U.S. will persist, baking parts of the West with dangerous temperatures that will soar into the 100s and holding the East in its hot and humid grip throughout the week, forecasters said Sunday. An excessive heat warning […]

Map showing reduction of stored groundwater in the U.S. Southwest, April 2002 - September 2023. Gravity measurements from the GRACE series of satellites show that the decline in water levels in the Great Basin region from April 2002 to September 2023 has most severely affected portions of southern California (indicated in red). Record snowfall in recent years has not been enough to offset long-term drying conditions and increasing groundwater demands in the U.S. Southwest. Graphic: Hall, et al., 2024 / Geophysical Research Letters

July 5, 2024

NASA satellites find record snow didn’t offset Southwest U.S. groundwater loss – “In years like the 2022-23 winter, I expected that the record amount of snowfall would really help to replenish the groundwater supply. But overall, the decline continued.”

By James R. Riordon 17 June 2024 (NASA GSFC) – Record snowfall in recent years has not been enough to offset long-term drying conditions and increasing groundwater demands in the U.S. Southwest, according to a new analysis of NASA satellite data [Snowfall Replenishes Groundwater Loss in the Great Basin of the Western United States, but […]

Map showing hottest 5-day period for maximum daytime temperatures (left) and maximum nighttime temperatures (right) in Mexico for 3 June 2024 - 9 June 2024. The thick black contour shows the study region. Black crosses show the locations where impacts or temperature records have been reported. Data: ERA5. Graphic: World Weather Attribution

July 4, 2024

Climate change made killer heat wave in Mexico, Southwest U.S. even warmer and 35 times more likely – “The changes we have seen in the last 20 years, which feels like just yesterday, are so strong”

By Seth Borenstein 20 June 2024 WASHINGTON (AP) – Human-caused climate change dialed up the thermostat and turbocharged the odds of this month’s killer heat that has been baking the Southwestern United States, Mexico and Central America, a new flash study found. Sizzling daytime temperatures that triggered cases of heat stroke in parts of the United States were […]

Global surface air temperature anomalies compared with 1850-1900 mean, 1940-2024. May 2024 was the 12th consecutive month to set a monthly global average temperature record, and exceed the key Paris Agreement temperature target of 1.5°C. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Tory Lysik / Axios Visuals

June 24, 2024

Global heat record broken for 12th straight month in May 2024

By Andrew Freedman 5 June 2024 (Axios) – May 2024 was the 12th consecutive month to set a monthly global average temperature record, and exceed a key Paris Agreement temperature target. Why it matters: The new data comes amid a slew of findings from climate monitoring groups released Wednesday, timed to coincide with a speech in New York […]

A man sits on a bench during a heatwave in New Orleans on Tuesday, 8 August 2023. Photo: David Grunfeld / The Times-Picayune / NOLA.com

June 23, 2024

“It’s unbearable”: in ever-hotter US cities, air conditioning is no longer enough – “The types of cooling systems that we sold 10 years ago are not able to keep up with the weather we have”

By Delaney Nolan 11 Jun 2024 (The Guardian) – Gloria Gellot, 79, takes a careful seat in a kitchen chair in front of her only air-conditioning unit, massaging her knees. She’s hung a sheet in the doorway to keep the cool air in the kitchen, and drawn shades to keep the sun – already blazing […]

Heat-related deaths in the U.S., 1979-2023. A heat wave in July of 2023 contributed to a higher recorded death toll — about 2,300 people in total — than historic heat waves in 1980 and 1995. Data: National Center for Health Statistics, CDC Wonder. Graphic: M.K. Wildeman / AP

June 1, 2024

2023 set record for U.S. heat deaths, killing in areas that used to handle the heat – “We can be confident saying that 2023 was the worst year we’ve had since we’ve started having reliable reporting on that”

By Seth Borenstein, Mary Katherine Wildeman, and Anita Snow 31 May 2024 (AP) – David Hom suffered from diabetes and felt nauseated before he went out to hang his laundry in 108-degree weather, another day in Arizona’s record-smashing, unrelenting July heat wave. His family found the 73-year-old lying on the ground, his lower body burned. Hom […]

Maps showing daily temperature variation (DTV, a) and population density in the world (b). Graphic: Liu and Smith-Greenaway, 2024 / PNAS Nexus

May 28, 2024

Study finds Black and Hispanic Americans are disproportionately exposed to wider temperature swings

22 May 2024 (PNAS Nexus) – Extreme heat can harm human health, but so can extreme temperature swings. Large daily temperature variation (DTV) has been associated with elevated mortality in studies around the world. Trees and other vegetation can lower DTV, as trees reduce temperature through transpiration during the day and also trap long-wave radiation […]

Maximum July temperatures averaged over the length of the heat events defined for the WWA study published on 25 July 2023 (left-hand side) and the same but expressed in anomalies with respect to 1950-2023 (right-hand side). The first row shows the Western USA and Mexico, the second Southern Europe and the third row China. Graphic: World Weather Attribution

August 5, 2023

Extreme heat in North America, Europe, and China in July 2023 made much more likely by global warming – Without human-induced climate change these heat events would have been extremely rare: China heatwave would have been a 1 in 250-year event, and max heat like in July 2023 would have been virtually impossible in the U.S./Mexico region and Southern Europe

25 July 2023 (World Weather Attribution) – Following a record hot June, large areas of the US and Mexico, Southern Europe and China experienced extreme heat in July 2023, breaking many local high temperature records. July 2023 saw extreme heatwaves in several parts of the Northern Hemisphere, including the Southwest of the US and Mexico, […]