A Third of Americans Are Facing Global Scorching Already

At least 499 US counties have already reached +2.7 degree (Fahrenheit) warming. That is global scorching.

By Oliver Milman, The Guardian

More than a third of the American population is currently experiencing rapid, above-average rates of temperature increase, with 499 counties already breaching 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of heating, a Guardian review of climate data shows.

The United States as a whole has heated up over the past century due to the release of planet-warming gasses from burning fossil fuels, and swaths of the U.S. West, Northeast, and upper Midwest – representing more than 124.6 million people – have recorded soaring increases since federal government temperature records began in 1895.

Though the climate crisis is convulsing the U.S., it is doing so unevenly. Hotspots of extreme warming have emerged in many of America’s largest cities, and places as diverse as California’s balmy coast to the previously frigid northern reaches of Minnesota, while other places, particularly in the South, have barely seen their temperatures budge.

“The warming isn’t distributed evenly,” said Brian Brettschneider, an Alaska-based climate scientist who collated the county temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). “Many places have seen dramatic changes, but there are always some places below the average who will think, ‘It didn’t seem that warm to me.’ The impacts differ depending where you are.”