Summer only just started, but much of the world is already experiencing brutal heat. In the last two weeks, extreme heat waves have struck many parts of the US, Europe and China, threatening lives, increasing the risk of wildfires, and testing the limits of electric grids.
In Minnesota, temperatures soaring above 100 degrees Fahrenheit buckled streets and shattered car windows earlier this week. Thousands of cattle perished in Kansas. Temperatures in France, meanwhile, reached nearly 110°F and set or tied more than 200 monthly heat records across the country.
And that was all before summer technically began — Tuesday was the summer solstice — raising concern among climate scientists that heat waves are arriving earlier as the planet warms. “It’s especially impressive (and unsettling) to see all-time heat records being set in Europe before we even get to the summer solstice,” meteorologist Bob Henson wrote on Twitter over the weekend.
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