The eastern half of the United States is sweltering in record heat, and it will linger through the weekend. As I type this, the heat index in parts of northern Georgia are ranging from 100 to 108 degrees Fahrenheit. In many cases, values are 10 or more degrees above average temperatures at the beginning of July. Over the next couple of days, the heat index, which factors in humidity, could exceed 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. With experts warning of heat-related risks, many people are brushing it off as hype because, “It’s just summer, it’s supposed to be hot.” Interestingly, extreme cold warnings do not elicit such complacency or skepticism. What’s going on? This question has haunted me for many years, but I think the answers have been staring me in the face.
False Perception That All Heat Is The Same
Over the course of this week, I have seen people asking why meteorologists are “hyping” the hot weather. “It’s always hot in the summer” has been a common retort. Right now the Northern Hemisphere is tilting towards the Sun. That’s why we have summer. However, the temperatures in June, July, and August are not always the same. Let’s use Atlanta as an example. The normal temperature range on June 1st is 65 to 85 degrees Fahrenheit. That range shifts to 71 to 89 degrees Fahrenheit on July 1st. By August 1st, it shifts to 72 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. What did we learn from this? Each month is progressively hotter. However, we also learned that current temperatures in the upper nineties or exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit is abnormally hot for any of those summer months. Yes, each month is hot, but there is an expected range.
Our current heatwave is related to a large area of high pressure situated over the Southeast. Though not a new term in the meteorology community, the media has fallen in love with the term “heat dome.” It’s the new buzzword like “Polar Vortex” was a few years ago. According to NOAA, a heat dome is, “An exceptionally hot air mass that develops when high pressure aloft prevents warm air below from rising, thus trapping the warm air as if it were in a dome.” The big red blog in the graphic below is the heat dome causing our current heat wave. By the way, a different heat dome brought record temperatures to Europe last week.
“The 10 warmest years since 1850 have all occurred since 2013,” according to a NOAA website. “Heat waves turning into heat domes have become an annual occurrence over the past decade, with the frequency of high heat days and the peak temperature on those days both increasing year over year across the United States,” the website went on to say. Yes, it’s hot, but it’s not the heat of your youth.
Math And Statistics
That statement about “heat of our youth” brings me to the next reason. Let’s talk about weather versus climate. The current heat dome is an example of weather. However, the previous discussion about trends in temperature over time is an example of climate. The atmosphere is changing on a day-to-day basis and that is what we experience as weather. However, the statistical aspects of the atmosphere such as averages, maxima, minimum, frequency, ranges, and so forth are climate.
Yes, there have been hot years in the past. The 1930’s is a great example that people always bring up in these types of discussions. “The “Dust Bowl” years between 1930-36 contributed some of the hottest summers on record in the United States for places like the Great Plains, Upper Midwest and Great Lakes. Yet, that example doesn’t wipe out trends happening now. “The best way to place current warming and past heat records in context is to think about a young basketball player with outstanding jumping ability,” I wrote a few years ago. “The 1930s can symbolize his natural ability to jump. As time goes on, climate change added a few layers of wood to the basketball court such that the player, even with his natural ability, has an easier time dunking the basketball,” I continued in a previous Forbes piece.
Here’s the breaking news. Two things can be true at the same time. We have a naturally-varying climate system, and it is changing in response to an atmosphere pumped with excessive greenhouse gases. We also know that during El Niño years, temperature warming gets a boost. Guess what? We are in an El Niño right now, and it could end up being a “Super El Niño.” For this reason, I expect 2026 to feature several warm episodes. Weather is your mood, and climate is your personality? Try not to judge a person’s personality based on their bad mood today. Likewise, try not to judge climate based on an isolated hot or cold day.
Math and statistics are our friends in these moments of understanding. We all remember hot days as kids. Were they this hot or long-lasting, on average? Analysis of the numbers reveals warming trends annually and seasonally. Unfortunately, I have seen social media posts this week using the standard cherry-picking approach to identify isolated years that were hot without placing it in a climatological context.
The Looming Climate Change Narrative
This gets me back to the original point of my article. Polar vortex is often cited when massive cold outbreaks happen in the U.S. The extreme cold event that affected Texas in 2021 is a great example. Generally, you do not hear people questoning warnings or skeptical of the meteorologists when it comes to extreme cold events, the Polar Vortex, or a blizzard. There are no posts proclaiming, “It’s winter, it’s supposed to be cold.”
Record highs are outpacing record lows in many places around the U.S. “In a stable climate, extreme highs and lows would each account for about half of all records,” wrote the Climate Central website. “But since the late 1970s, daily heat records have become increasingly more common than daily cold records across the U.S. — a trend that is projected to increase with additional warming,” it continued. Increasingly, I wonder if the abundance of “It’s supposed to be hot in summer” and lack of “It’s supposed to be cold in winter” narratives, respectively, are rooted in lingering skepticism, denial or fatigue related to a clearly shifting climate system, irrespective of what you believe is causing it.
Life Goes On
A 2024 study dug deeper than political motives and knowledge deficits shaping climate perceptions. There are factors related to romanticizing past life, familiarity, and ways of life. People just want life to go on as they have known it even if that scenario no longer exists. Framing 100 degree temperatures on July 1st as “just summer” may actually be a coping mechanism. In reality, it is something else too. It is evidence of a dangerous new “normal.”
