Wired: “…As global temperatures rapidly climb, humanity is seeing more and more of the disastrous effects scientists warned us about: fiercer heat waves, more intense wildfires, and heavier rain. The extremes of the past few months are but a preview of the ever-worsening pain we’ll endure if we don’t dramatically reduce carbon emissions. “We have certainly had unusually large extremes in a number of parts of the world,” says climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the research group Berkeley Earth. “Global temperatures, sea surface temperatures—particularly the North Atlantic region—was sort of off the charts. Antarctic sea ice has been exceptionally low. If you had asked me what I expected to see this summer, it would not have been quite this coincidence of extremes.” What’s made this summer so bad? For one thing, the base layer of global warming makes extreme summer heat both more common and more severe than it normally would be. Plus, this summer the Pacific Ocean transitioned from the cooler waters of La Niña into the warmer waters of El Niño, which goes on to influence Earth’s climate globally. Scientists are also investigating how Saharan dust has played a role: Normally, it blows over the Atlantic Ocean during the summer. But there’s been less of it in 2023, allowing more of the sun’s energy to heat the water. New shipping regulations have also cut down on sulfur emissions, and that may have similarly cleared the air. “Disentangling all the specific drivers of the extremes we are seeing this summer is going to take researchers some time,” says Hausfather. But the 10 maps and graphs below vividly illustrate the global climatic chaos that’s unfolding now…”