Don’t forget to put on
your sunscreen lotion!

MSNBC has an article asking if the current heat wave across much of the USA is a result of global warming. The correct scientific answer is “Who knows?” – it’s really impossible to pin down any one specific meteorological event to long-term climatic trends, whether it’s a hurricane or a heat wave. Nevertheless, it is consistent with global warming predictions, and there are some unique aspects to this particular onset of record-breaking temperatures:

So, is our current heat wave a symptom of global warming?

“This heat wave and other extreme events we’ve seen in recent years are completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming, even though we can’t be definitive on any single event,? says Jay Gulledge with Pew Climate Change.

But experts say our current heat wave is unique.

“So far, we’ve had about 80 daily high temperature records broken and in the month of July there were about 50 all-time records for the month of July broken — that’s phenomenal for any air mass, any heat wave that’s going on right now,” says Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.