Word in Black is a collaboration of 10 of the nation’s leading Black publishers that frames the narrative and fosters solutions for racial inequities in America.
June 2024 was the hottest June on record, a milestone that can easily get lost in the seemingly endless stream of hottest months ever. But the month was also a little bit different: it beat the record set in June 2023, the month that began, what came to be, the hottest full year ever recorded.
Now, with scorching temperatures throughout the United States and across other parts of the northern hemisphere, there’s a distinct possibility that June 2024 could be the beginning of an even hotter hottest year ever.
News that we’ve tipped past one calendar year of record heat, which comes from the Copernicus Climate Change Service, follows news that June was also the 12th straight month when global temperatures were above the 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold that the world agreed we needed to stay below in order to avoid the worst catastrophes of climate change.
In the Western U.S. alone — where the current heat wave sent temperatures in California’s Death Valley soaring toward 130 degrees— it’s estimated that at least 30 people died from heat-related issues during the first weeks of July. The “at least” is a very big caveat: it’s widely understood that such deaths are almost always undercounted due to the varied and oftentimes complex ways that heat can cause deadly health problems.
The deadliest form of extreme weather, heat can be dangerous for anyone, but it is often unevenly felt. Formerly redlined communities of color are significantly hotter than whiter, more well-off parts of the same cities, which tend to have less heat-absorbing blacktop asphalt and more trees. One study found that the temperature in a redlined neighborhood can be anywhere from 5 to 20 degrees hotter, which truly can be a difference of life or death.
All of which does not encourage any comforting thoughts about the future of, well, anything. But while there is a chance that 2024 could out-bake 2023, it’s important to remember that what we’re experiencing right now — the heatwaves, the heat-related deaths they cause, the wetter winters and the floods that come with them — are in a way a preview of what’s to come.
While human-caused climate change is a factor in the extreme weather that the world has experienced since last June, the effects of a historically strong El Nino weather system also plays a role.
The weather phenomenon causes hotter and drier weather for most of the United States (except for California and other parts of the southwest, which get far more rain during El Nino years).
If we don’t want to have this, and much worse, we need to do so much more to halt any continued emissions from burning fossil fuels.
This story was originally published online with Word In Black, a collaboration of the nation’s leading Black news publishers (of which The Informer is a member).