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Transcript

Summer 2026 · The Climate Translation

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If you were to walk out on my back porch, right here in Georgia, you probably wouldn't
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think the planet has a heat problem.
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It's the first of July, the summer of 2026, and it's been actually fairly normal where
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I live.
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We've had plenty of rain, in fact the past month has set records for rain in many places.
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The grass is a deep green, and the heat hasn't been as relentless as it can be this time
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of year.
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But if you look west, you'll find a different story.
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Parts of the western United States are dealing with drought and extreme heat.
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And across parts of Europe, dangerous heat waves are putting millions of people under advisories
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and straining infrastructure that was never designed for temperatures like these.
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As a meteorologist, I look at this summer and see a lesson we've talked about before
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on this podcast.
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Weather is local and short term.
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Climate is a long term pattern.
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Large-scale patterns, including El Nino and other shifts in the atmosphere, can explain
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why different parts of the world are having different summers this year.
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But those heat waves in Europe raise a larger question.
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If heat waves are a normal part of weather, is climate change beginning to alter the
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way we experience them?
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Welcome back to the podcast.
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I'm Dr. Mac, and this is the Climate Translation.
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When I teach introductory meteorology courses, one thing I tell my students is that we often
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focus on the wrong thing.
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We ask, did climate change cause this heat wave?
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That is not the question you should be asking.
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Instead, a better question would be, what kind of world does this heat wave happen in?
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Weather events don't occur in isolation.
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They happen inside an atmosphere that has a certain temperature, a certain amount of
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moisture, and a certain amount of available energy.
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Let's head out to the gym.
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You drop a basketball on the ground, and watch as it comes back.
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Someone is watching you, and notices that the ball seems to rise to about their eye level.
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Now let's assume you could raise the floor you're standing on, but your observer stays
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at the same level.
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If you drop the ball again, to the observer, the ball looks to be higher off the ground.
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The ball is reacting to the same conditions.
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You are dropping it at the same distance and imparting the same force, the difference is
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the floor level that the ball is bouncing on has changed.
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The ball is behaving exactly the same way it did before.
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What changed was the environment.
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The Earth's climate works in the same way, and it's one of the reasons climate scientists
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spend so much time talking about baselines.
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I've talked about them several times on this podcast.
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A baseline is the normal starting point.
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Think about setting the thermostat in your home.
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If you normally keep your house at 70 degrees Fahrenheit, and someone quietly changes it
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to 75, you're going to notice, maybe your air conditioner has to work harder to cool
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the room, maybe you notice higher humidity levels in your house.
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This is because the entire room started from a warmer place.
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It's what climate scientists mean by changing the baseline.
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A small shift in a baseline can completely change the outcome, even when the weather
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pattern itself looks regular and familiar.
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That's why scientists are paying so much attention to Europe right now.
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The heat dome it is experiencing is not new.
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Air commonly flows out of North Africa, and there are blocking patterns in the atmosphere
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that tend to trap and allow heat to build for many days.
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Europe has experienced this many times in the past.
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And honestly, I can understand why reading this in the news can feel confusing.
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My home state of Georgia has always had heatwaves.
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The American South has always been known as a hot and humid place.
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It's been written about and portrayed about in media for centuries.
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When you see a news article that says climate change is causing heatwaves, it can sound
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like they're saying that heat never existed before.
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But that's not what scientists are saying at all.
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Scientists are saying the same weather patterns are increasingly operating in an atmosphere
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that contains more heat than it used to.
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The atmosphere and oceans are warmer than they were several decades ago, and warmer conditions
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at the beginning of an event make it easier for temperatures to reach levels that would
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have been harder to achieve in the past.
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This is what scientists mean when they say climate change loads the atmosphere with more
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heat.
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And raises the floor, it changes the baseline.
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Now you might ask me, I understand that, Dr. Mac.
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But why would only a few degrees really matter?
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I think we sometimes hear the number like three or four degrees Fahrenheit, and our brains
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immediately dismiss it.
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Three degrees?
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It doesn't sound like much.
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If I told you it was 78 degrees outside instead of 75 degrees Fahrenheit, you may not even
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put on different clothes, but systems often respond dramatically to small changes.
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Water freezes at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, but it melts at 33.
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A person with a temperature of 98 degrees is healthy.
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At 104, you have a medical emergency.
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Small shifts push systems across important thresholds.
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A few degrees can be the difference between a hot day and a dangerous one.
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It's the difference between people opening their windows at night and needing cooling
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centers.
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It's the difference between roads buckling and roads holding together.
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It's the difference between breaking long-standing temperature records and simply having a warm
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summer afternoon.
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If you look at weather reports from London, you might see a number that puzzles you.
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Temperatures in southern England reached 36 degrees Celsius, and American numbers that's 97 degrees
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Fahrenheit.
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Now, if you live in Alabama, Texas, or Florida, 97 degrees is hot, but it's a typical
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July afternoon.
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We may not like it.
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We may complain about it.
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We sweat a lot, but for the most part, life keeps moving.
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Our air conditioning keeps coming on.
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People go to work, restaurants stay open.
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Kids go to camp.
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The power grid, for the most part, expects heavy air conditioning use because that's simply
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what summer looks like for us.
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But in the United Kingdom, that same temperature created a very different experience.
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Schools closed.
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Hospitals saw a surge of heat-related illnesses.
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The lines slowed because the heat caused the metal to expand and tracks to deform.
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Why does the exact same temperature hit so differently across the ocean?
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I think it comes down to an infrastructure blind spot.
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In the last segment, we talked about how climate change is moving the floor.
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The atmosphere's baseline has shifted.
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But our infrastructure is standing on an old one.
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We forget sometimes that cities have memories.
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Every house, every bridge, every railway, every electrical system was designed using assumptions
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about what the local climate looked like at that time.
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Engineers asked questions, how cold does it get, or how much snow falls, how hot does it
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get, how many times do we get extreme temperatures, and they built their homes and infrastructure
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around those answers.
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In many ways, our infrastructure is locked in, built of concrete, steel, and brick.
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For many centuries, countries in northern Europe had one major goal when building homes.
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Keep the cold out.
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Keep the heat in.
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Homes were often constructed with heavy materials that hold heat well.
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Many were designed with insulation intended to retain warmth during their long cold winters.
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Air conditioning was not even installed because historically, there wasn't much need for
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it, apart from maybe a day or two.
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Those choices made perfect sense.
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They were smart decisions for the climate people expected at that time.
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But when a modern heat dome settles over a region like that, those same historical design
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choices create problems.
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The buildings absorb heat during the day.
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The walls slowly release the heat after sunset.
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And without widespread built-in air conditioning, many homes struggle to cool down.
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At this point you say, well, why don't you just install air conditioning?
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And the answer is, in many places, they're starting to do so, but adaptation takes time.
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You can buy a fan tomorrow.
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You can change your thermostat tonight.
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You can't rebuild an entire nation's housing stock in a single summer.
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And it's expensive.
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You can't redesign entire cities at a reasonable cost before the next heat wave arrives.
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Infrastructure takes time to change, but the atmosphere is not waiting.
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And honestly, this is not just a European story.
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It's a lesson for everybody.
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Every society is built around assumptions.
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Along the Gulf Coast, we assume summer heat and humidity.
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In the Midwestern United States, communities are prepared for brutal winners of snow and
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ice.
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In the San Francisco Bay area, people are used to cool summers and mild winters because
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of the cold Pacific Ocean.
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Every place has designed itself around the climate it is expected.
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The question climate change is beginning to ask is a difficult one.
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What happens when those expectations know longer match reality?
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Because we didn't build our homes and cities for a particular climate.
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We built them for a stable climate.
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And now in many places of the world, that stability is beginning to change.
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When most people think about a heat wave, they picture a blazing afternoon sun beating
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down on a city street.
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They think about the hottest part of the day.
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It makes sense.
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That's when the temperatures are the highest.
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When the pavement feels like it's radiating heat into the air, and everyone starts to
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look for shade.
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But as a meteorologist, I can tell you that the most dangerous part of a climate-altered
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heat wave is after the sun goes down.
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We've talked about this before.
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I'm sure many of you have experienced a miserable summer night at some point in your life.
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You throw the covers off, you flip your pillow over, looking for a cool side.
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You turn on a fan.
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You wake up at two in the morning and realize you're still sweating.
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You never sleep.
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You never cool off.
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Now imagine not just one night like that, but several, several weeks.
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That's where it becomes dangerous.
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Your body, it's like a car engine.
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It can run hot for a while.
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It's normal.
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Our bodies are good at handling short periods of stress, but they can't run hot forever.
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Think about driving your car on a long trip in the middle of the summer.
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The engine's going to get hot, that's expected.
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But when you finally park it in your garage at night, hopefully the engine starts to cool
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down.
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Now imagine that after you shut your car off, it doesn't.
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The engine stays hot all night long.
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The next morning you start your trip with an engine that never recovered.
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And then you do it again.
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And again, eventually the stress builds up and the engine seizes.
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The human body works in a similar way.
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The human body can only tolerate stress if it has a chance to recover.
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At night, your body normally begins cooling itself.
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Your heart doesn't have to work as hard.
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Your body temperature drops.
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You sleep and recover.
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In many ways, nighttime is your body's maintenance period.
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Climate change is beginning to interfere with that recovery.
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In many parts of the world, nighttime temperatures are increasing faster than the daytime temperatures.
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Meteorologists have a term for nights that never cool down.
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We call them tropical nights.
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It means that temperatures never drop below 20 degrees Celsius or 68 degrees Fahrenheit.
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And in parts of France and Italy last month, temperatures remained as high as 30 degrees
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Celsius.
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That's 86 degrees Fahrenheit in the middle of the night.
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Think about that for a moment.
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In many places, people will consider 86 degrees a hot afternoon.
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Now imagine trying to sleep in it and imagine doing so in a home without air conditioning.
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When nights stay warm, the body never has a chance to reset.
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The heart works harder, trying to move heat towards the skin, and sweat is struggling
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to cool the body.
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Sleep becomes impossible.
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And over several days, that stress accumulates, especially for older adults, young children,
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and people with underlying health conditions.
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It's the reason emergency medical systems in parts of Europe have been overwhelmed during
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these recent heat waves.
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People are not getting relief.
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And in a way, this is an example of the floor moving.
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That baseline isn't just higher in the afternoon.
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It's staying higher after sunset, too.
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It's important because heat isn't always dangerous because of how high temperatures climb.
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It's dangerous when they don't come back down.
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When the body can't tolerate the stress, when it struggles without relief.
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In many parts of the world, one of the clearest fingerprints of a warming climate is that
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the cooling relief people once expected after sunset is becoming harder and harder to find.
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This brings us right back to our own front yards, and the big question that many people
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are asking this summer.
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If everyone is saying global warming is making heat waves more dangerous, why is my summer
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here in Georgia so green, rainy, and honestly pleasant compared to some of the summers I've
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experienced?
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Why aren't we baking in triple digits like Europe?
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The answer lies in understanding how our planet moves heat around.
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I sometimes tell my students to think of the Earth as a giant heat distribution system.
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The tropics receive enormous amounts of energy from the sun.
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The polar regions receive less, and the atmosphere and the oceans continually try to move that
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energy around, transporting the heat from places that have a lot of it to places that
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have less.
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That's why weather patterns shift, storm tracks move, and jet streams bend, why some places
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end up warmer or cooler than average in any given year.
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This year, in 2026, one of the major influences on that heat distribution system is a strong
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El Niño.
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We've discussed this in the podcast before.
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El Niño is a natural warming of parts of the tropical Pacific Ocean, and because the
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Pacific Ocean covers so much of our planet, changes there, influence weather patterns, thousands
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of miles away.
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I often think about it like dropping a large boulder into a river.
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The water is still flowing downstream, but it now has to flow around an obstacle.
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Current speed up, other slow down, new patterns emerge.
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The atmosphere is also a fluid, and behaves in a similar way.
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A strong El Niño can influence where the jet stream tends to bend and where areas of
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high and low pressure are more likely to develop.
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This summer, those large-scale patterns have favored a more average and wetter condition
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across much of the American South, as the summer began.
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At the same time, other regions have found themselves under very different patterns.
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Parts of the Western United States have dealt with drought, other parts extreme heat,
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and across Europe, atmosphere conditions have favored the persistent heat domes that
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has allowed dangerous heat to build.
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At this point, I'm sure somebody's probably asking, does this normal summer mean climate
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change has taken a year off here?
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No.
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It simply means your local weather has placed you in one part of a much larger and more complicated
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global pattern.
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That's the core difference between weather and climate.
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If you only look out your own window, you're only seeing one leaf on a very large tree.
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Climate change doesn't mean every city on earth is going to get hot at the exact same
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moment.
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Natural variability matters.
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We're still going to have El Niño's, jet streams, and heat domes.
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We're still going to have rainy summers and dry summers, mild winters and cold winters.
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The atmosphere is still moving heat around the globe in ways that can make one region
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comfortable while another struggles.
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What changed is the starting point.
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The floor, the baseline, is higher.
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So while my area of the south has experienced a rather normal but rainy start to the summer,
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the heat domes that developed elsewhere are operating in an atmosphere that contains
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more heat and more energy than it did decades ago.
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Natural patterns like El Niño can influence where those domes form and how long they persist.
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But the baseline those weather patterns are operating within has changed.
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That's the biggest lesson from this summer of 2026.
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A pleasant July in one place is not going to cancel out a dangerous heat somewhere else.
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It reminds us that weather is local and climate is global.
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Understanding that difference between those two ideas may be one of the most important
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tools we have for making sense of the world we're living in today.
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It's completely natural to look out at a rainy summer morning here in the south and think
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everything's fine because the weather is personal.
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We see it outside our windows and when we walk outside.
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But the summer of 2026 is also reminding us of something larger.
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Climate change isn't removing natural weather patterns from the planet.
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We're still going to have heat domes and El Niño.
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We're still going to have mild summers and places and dangerous heat and others.
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What is changing is the background, those events occur within.
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That floor is moving and as the floor rises, familiar weather patterns can produce unfamiliar
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consequences.
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Homes built for one climate, struggle in another.
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Infrastructure design around one extreme is pushed in new ways.
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And nights that once offered relief are becoming harder to find in parts of the world.
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We can't change the atmosphere overnight.
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But understanding what is changing and why is the first step towards making informed
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decisions about how we prepare for the future.
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In the end, climate change is not a story about hotter temperatures, it's about changing
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assumptions.
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And sometimes, understanding the difference between weather and climate is the key to
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making sense of both.
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I'm Dr. Mac and this has been the Climate Translation.
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If you have a question about the climate you've been too afraid to ask or if you have
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a differing opinion, I want to hear from you.
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I can use your viewpoints in future episodes.
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You can reach me at theclimatetranslation at gmail.com.
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I'll see you next time.