10 maps that reveal a summer dominated by climate change

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As global temperatures rise , humanity is increasingly suffering from the devastating effects that scientists warned us about: stronger heat waves , more intense forest fires , and even more torrential rains . The extremes of recent months are but a preview of the increasing damage we will endure if we do not drastically reduce carbon emissions .

“We certainly have had unusually high extremes in several parts of the world,” says Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the Berkeley Earth research group. “Global temperatures, those of the sea surface , espec Phone Number List ially in the North Atlantic region, left the normal range. Antarctic sea ice has been exceptionally low. “If you had asked me what I expected to see this summer, it wouldn’t have been this coincidence of extremes.”

What has made this summer so bad? For starters, the base layer of global warming makes extreme summer heat more frequent and more severe than usual. Additionally, this summer the Pacific Ocean moved from the colder waters of La Niña to the warmer waters of El Niño , which influences the Earth's climate on a global scale.

Scientists are also investigating how dust from the Sahara has influenced it: it normally blows over the Atlantic Ocean during the summer. But in 2023 there have been fewer, allowing more solar energy to heat the water. New shipping regulations also reduced sulfur emissions, which may have helped clean the air. “Unraveling all the specific factors for the extremes we witnessed this summer will take researchers some time,” Hausfather says.

But the following 10 maps and graphs clearly illustrate the global climate chaos happening right now :



1. Record temperatures around the world
Global map for July 2023 land and ocean temperature percentiles
Global map July 2023: land and ocean temperature percentiles. COURTESY
According to NASA, this month of June was the hottest ever recorded . Then came July, which was not only the hottest July, but the hottest month since records began to be kept in 1880. “What we are seeing is not only that records are being broken this year, but that these events occur more frequently, which is what research has shown we should expect to happen in response to anthropogenic climate change in certain regions,” says Tiffany Shaw, a climate scientist at the University of Chicago.

In the map above, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows the relentless global heat of July. The darker red, around Mexico and Central America, northern Canada and Alaska, and equatorial Africa, reflects areas that recorded record temperatures that month. Lighter red indicates that an area was much warmer than average, while faint red indicates that it was simply warmer than average. According to NOAA, less than 1% of the planet's surface experienced an unprecedentedly cold July.