Extreme Heat Isn't the Only Climate Impact Shocking Scientists

[SamuelTheThird]

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-extreme-heat-climate-change-data/?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MzMzODAzNCwiZXhwIjoxNzgzOTQyODM0LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSFFSR0tLR0NURlQwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIwQzg4NkY0NTI0NzY0RUE0OEY2QTk4RTk1NDc5RTI2NSJ9.1Gszo85wM3Zz-dmJk-aKEmZuJKB7DSkoFcJaGZNofyU&leadSource=uverify%20wall


These heat jumps are part of a larger shift of climate change seeming to accelerate. Ocean temperatures just reached a new high for the early summer. Sea levels are rising faster than before, while new records for daily rainfall are being set at a rapid clip. The pace of global warming itself has quickened in recent years.

While scientists have long braced for climate change, the growing severity of its impacts is shocking them. Today’s climate can “seem like an unexpected step change” from that of a few years ago, said atmospheric scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University.

Some models suggest this El Niño could push warming briefly as high as 2C. And “it is possible for a single month to surpass this threshold,” said Sarah Kapnick, global head of climate advisory at JPMorgan Chase & Co. The world is currently at 1.4C above pre-industrial levels.

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“Far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges,” wrote the late Wallace Broecker in 1995, two decades after he coined the term “global warming.”