One recent study found that a heat wave like the one that cooked the Pacific Northwest is 150 times more likely today than it was before we began loading the atmosphere with CO2 at the beginning of the industrial age. The ocean, which hundreds of millions of people depend on for their food supply and which has a big influence on weather, was the hottest ever recorded in 2023. Even Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, is not immune. In March of 2022, a heat wave invaded the ice-bound continent, pushing temperatures seventy degrees—seventy degrees!—above normal.
