An October Heat Wave Bakes the Southeast and Mid-Atlantic. Is This Our Future?

A vital takeaway from this autumn heat wave is that, for hundreds of cities and towns, this kind of heat is projected to become standard throughout the warm season and into the fall as a result of climate change, assuming we remain on our current path. In our Killer Heat study that we released in July, we looked at projections of the heat index (the combination of temperature and humidity also known as the “feels like” temperature) for the lower 48 and found that all cities see increases in 90 degree days, and that a great many are projected to become unrecognizably hot if we do not take action to reduce our global warming emissions now.