As climate change warms the world, summers are lengthening, temperatures are climbing and the season’s markers — blooming wildflowers, migrating butterflies and songbirds — are undergoing a visible shift.
Whether they’re aware of it or not, most people in the United States just experienced a summer with all the fingerprints of global warming. Above-average heat withered crops, put millions of people under advisories to stay indoors and led state authorities to ask residents to conserve power. A series of extraordinary floods damaged cities and towns, exposing the fragility of aging sewer and drinking water systems.
This summer was the second-warmest in the past 50 years, trailing only 2021, a Washington Post analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found. On average, Americans experienced a summer 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average over the past 50 years.
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About 130 million people, roughly 39 percent of the population, sweated through temperatures at least 2 degrees above normal. Less than 1 percent of Americans, mainly living in counties in the Upper Midwest, had a cooler-than-normal summer.
“When we see anomalous heat covering broad areas, that’s consistent with the temperature change that we anticipate happening more and more frequently,” said David Gutzler, a climate scientist and emeritus professor at the University of New Mexico. “These days, warmer than normal is the average season temperature prediction in most places.”
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The extra heat was not distributed equally. Texans endured weeks of above-average triple-digit temperatures, including a record-breaking July. The Post found that from June to August the state’s average temperature was 3.2 degrees Fahrenheit higher than the 50-year average.
Experts at NOAA reported that Texas had its second-hottest summer on record, as did Massachusetts and Rhode Island, where scorching heat and air conditioning are less common. In 17 other states across the West, South and Northeast, this summer was among the top 10 warmest summers on record.
[More dangerous heat waves are on the way. See the impact where you live.]
In the last 50 years, the warmest summer in Washington, D.C., was in , with NaN°F above the average.
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Annual summer temperature change in Washington, D.C.
– 10-year rolling avg.
avg.John Nielsen-Gammon, the state climatologist for Texas and a professor at Texas A&M University, said the extreme summer weather was the result of an unusually dry spring coupled with the hottest April and May on record — similar conditions to those that led to the state’s hottest summer in 2011.
Extreme summertime heat is going to become “more and more likely,” Nielsen-Gammon said. “In three decades, what we saw this summer ought to be pretty close to normal.”
Nationwide, more than 7,000 daily temperature records were broken this summer, a Post analysis revealed, along with 400 monthly records and 27 all-time records.
This summer, Washington, D.C., saw an average daytime high of 87.0°F.
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Daily high temperatures in Washington, D.C.
The hottest day averaged at the county level was on , at .
2022 2012-2021
The Pacific Northwest experienced another spike in abnormally high summer temperatures, though not as severe as 2021′s deadly heat wave. The Post found that Oregon was 2.9 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the 50-year average and Washington was 2.5 degrees hotter. In both states, temperatures in August were the hottest on record.
In the Northeast, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New Jersey also boiled this August, breaking records.
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The hotter it gets, the greater the danger. This is especially true for older people, infants and people with chronic conditions such as diabetes and hypertension, who are at increased risk of illness and death from heat exposure. The urban heat island effect and unequal access to air conditioning mean that poorer Americans and people of color bear the brunt of intensifying heat.
The Post’s analysis reflects averaged temperature data across each county. It does not include humidity, which is a complicating factor. Throughout the Southeast, high heat combined with humidity has made rising temperatures more painful for residents. The higher the humidity, the more difficult it becomes for sweat on the skin to evaporate, blocking the body’s ability to cool down.
Nights are warming at a slightly higher rate than days in most parts of the United States, according to the most recent National Climate Assessment, and this makes it harder for people to recover after hot days.
This summer, nights in Washington, D.C., saw an average high temperature of 67.0°F.
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Daily overnight high temperatures in Washington, D.C.
The hottest night averaged at the county level was on , at .
20222012-2021
This summer also delivered powerful storms. Over a period of five weeks, there were five “1,000 year” events, meaning there is only a 0.1 percent chance that one like it will occur in any given year.
From the end of July into August, Kentucky; St. Louis; eastern Illinois; Death Valley, Calif.; and the Dallas-Fort Worth area experienced rain that flooded neighborhoods, collapsed homes and turned highways into rivers. In hard-hit areas, some residents were killed by the storms and others had to flee their homes.
Though many factors can lead to flooding, experts say that human-caused climate change is supercharging what would otherwise be typical summer rainstorms.
Across the United States, this summer delivered more rainfall than normal along the West Coast and through much of the Southwest, Midwest, lower Mississippi Valley and northern New England, according to NOAA. Yet there were also pockets of below-average precipitation in southern New England and across the Great Plains and, on the whole, the summer was slightly drier than normal.
This summer, Washington, D.C., had more rainfall than the average of the past 50 years, with 41 days of rain and 13 inches of total rainfall.
Summer 2022 total precipitation
Percent change from 50-year avg.
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Note: Data for Hawaii is not available
Experts said that this summer’s rainfall helped alleviate drought conditions in some parts of the country, reducing demand for water to sustain farmland and golf courses. In the Southwest, the early arrival of monsoon rains and thunderstorms caused flooding and debris flows, but they also benefited the region by bringing about the end of a devastating wildfire season.
All that rain brought temporary relief. But it didn’t change the long-term outlook in the parched region, which is experiencing the worst multi-decade drought in at least 1,200 years. That’s because most major rivers in the West are fed by the winter snowpack, which has been diminished by worsening heat and dryness.
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The intensity of summer monsoons temporarily raises the level of reservoirs and rivers, but much of that rainfall is eventually lost through evaporation. And soil that has been baked by extreme heat is also less able to absorb heavy rains, increasing runoff.
“A wet summer helps a lot. It greens up shrubs and grasses and wets the soils, which is a good thing. It prevents trees that were horribly stressed from dying. All that is good,” Gutzler said. “But we’re not out of the woods.”
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