Boiling the ocean
Between record-setting heat and warming ocean water, this summer feels like the start of an unsettling new era. Did you think it would all happen this fast? The heat domes, the thousand-year floods, the apocalyptic wildfires, that horrific orange sky? This summers convergence of extreme events makes it feel like were living in a CGI-laden disaster movie. But those epic blockbusters all offer the same material comfort: an ending. What were experiencing is different. First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic : Heat Is Here Im a sucker for summer. All year long I look forward to that plume of hot-dog smoke emanating from a Weber grill, that satisfying clunk the moment you close the lid of an icy cooler. Im even strangely okay with that shirt-soaking humidity. And yet, the first half of summer 2023 has tainted my nostalgia. Last months Blade Runner sky wasnt merely eerie; it was downright depressing. All across the country, so many summer rites of passage seem to be vanishing, whether were ready to admit it or not. In Austin, Texas, this week, a fire battalion chief measured a local playground slide at 130 degrees , practically hot enough to cause a second-degree burn within seconds. Last night in one part of the Florida Keys, the sea-surface temperature came close to 97 degrees. On Saturday, the Northwest Territories of Canadaup near the Arctic Ocean hit 100 degrees . Last week was officially the hottest week ever recorded on Earth. All these numbers and stats easily start to blur. When everythings a disaster, many of us become numb to climate-change news. But consider the following: 54 million Americans could experience triple-digit weather this week . Phoenix, Arizona, may break its all-time record for consecutive days above 110 degrees. Death Valley could hit a whopping 130 on Sunday . None of this is a mere inconvenience. It can be lethal. The climate journalist Jeff Goodell, author of the new book The Heat Will Kill You First , described the experience of walking 10 blocks in Phoenix on a 115-degree day in a recent essay: After walking three blocks, I felt dizzy. After seven blocks, my heart was pounding. After 10 blocks, I thought I was a goner. Even our memories of cooler places may be out of sync with our present reality. Last Friday, on a family vacation at the Jersey shore, I swam in the disconcertingly warm Atlantic Ocean. I came back to work yesterday still sort of dumbfounded, so I emailed the climatologist Michael Mann looking for clarity. Even if you dont know Mann, you might know his work. Manns hockey stick graph , which illustrates the massive, sudden jump in temperatures during the 20th century, has become one of the defining figures in climate science. Mann told me he had been vacationing on the eastern shore of Virginia last weekend and noticed that the water there was likewise unseasonably warm. But in his view, hotter ocean water is less about the sun or external temperature than we might assume. This probably has more to do with variability in the ocean currents, he said in an email. Several weeks ago, the waters off the East Coast of the U.S. were cold and the waters in the eastern Atlantic were very warm. Now we have a bit of the reverse, with the East Coast waters having warmed up quite a bit. I suspect it has to do with the direction the Gulf stream is taking, he wrote. Some observers have speculated that rising sea-surface temperatures contributed to other recent extreme weather events around the country, namely heavy rain in the Northeast. Thats the other thing to consider: Its not just heat. Streets in Montpelier, Vermont, were heavily flooded with muddy water after more than five inches of rain fell yesterday. On Sunday, in New Yorks Hudson Valley, bridges collapsed and roads were washed out . (The U.S. Military Academy in West Point clocked around eight inches of rain.) Mann pointed out that climate change is leading to anomalous warmth around the planet in general, and warmer ocean waters mean more moisture in the atmosphere that is available to produce flooding rains. He noted that the stalled jet stream is also a factor in what were seeing. You may recall the term jet stream from news reports about the Canadian wildfire smoke that parked itself over the Northeast and Midwest in recent weeks. As jet-stream behavior changes , other things start to changeso far, it seems, for the worse. A few weeks ago, the spare N-95 mask I had kept in my backpack for visits to the doctors office became an essential (if imperfect) layer against breathing wildfire particulate matter. But the truth is that once the smoke moved on, I threw it out. Im embarrassingly among the millions who momentarily pause to glimpse at climate news immediately after these weather events, then its back to more near-term concerns. I asked Mann how climatologists like himself deal with the frustration of this reality. It is a frustration for sure, he wrote. The modern 24-hour news cycle is unkind to challengeslike the climate crisiswhich require diligence and concerted action, day after day, week after week, year after year. From a practical standpoint, how should an average person conceive of all these extremes? What are non-climatologists supposed to do? Should we mentally brace for hotter summers and skin-burning playground slides for the rest of our lives? We should understand that the choice is ours, Mann wrote. We can make it much worse by continuing our reliance on fossil fuels. Or we can rapidly decarbonize our economy, prevent a worsening of many if not all of these impacts, and remain within our collective adaptive capacity as a civilization. The challenge of adapting is not unlike the challenge of fighting the human urge to succumb to nostalgia. Its easier, and far more comfortable, to pine for the way things used to be. Its undoubtedly wiser to accept that we no longer live in the world we grew up in. Related : Todays News Evening Read Beware the Luxury Beach Resort By Lauren Groff I hate the beach. My skin burns and blisters as soon as the sun touches it, I dislike sweating without exercising, and sand makes no sense at all to meits just hot and gritty dirt that other people apparently enjoy rolling around in. I was raised by parents whose idea of leisure is cutting miles of trails in the woods and painting an entire house by hand, so the prospect of enforced idleness makes me panicky. Plus, the ocean itself, while aesthetically pleasing, is terrifyingly untrustworthy, with its riptides and hurricanes and tsunamis and sharks and microplastics and slithering monsters of the deep. It has just too many sneaky ways to kill you. When I have gone on beach vacations, its been under duress. I married into a family of generous people who are also horrifying extroverts, and whose notion of a good time is a nice, boozy, mostly reclined stay on some tropical island together. But for catastrophists like me, the luxury beach resort raises a whole new set of psychological torments on top of those provided by more ordinary beaches. Read the full article. More From The Atlantic Culture Break Watch. The League , a new documentary that examines how the Negro leagues shaped modern baseball (in theaters now, and available to stream on Apple TV+ and Prime Video on July 14). Listen. To Taylors Version of Better Than Revenge , by Taylor Swift, which features new lyrics . Play our daily crossword. P.S. After all that climate-change gloom, Id encourage you to give the new album from the instrumental guitarist Hayden Pedigo a spin. Cheekily titled The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored , Pedigos latest record makes for a great summer-night soundtrack. Even if you dont fancy yourself a fan of instrumental music, this one may work for you. Its not background music; its contemplative but somehow never snobby, and eminently accessible. Rather than try to impress you with his shredding skills, Pedigo constructs delicate songshes a storyteller without words. And as the music video linked above will show you, hes also a pretty big goof. John Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.