For the past couple of years it’s been a lot of news of “Hottest Day Ever” to which my favorite response has always been a slightly cheeky “So far!”, but I’ve realized with the recent coverage of large swaths of the US reaching deadly wet bulb temps that that’s going to change. The headlines won’t be for the hottest day, they’ll be for the highest death count, and nobody will say the second part but we’ll all be thinking it.
I’m a little skeptical of these numbers. It’s the hottest day based on average temperatures across the globe, but surely the various readings they take for this have changed significantly over time. Like, the records can’t have gone back very far, as back then you’d be looking at a different measurement excluding some key areas.
I don’t doubt it’s getting hotter, but this feels like a somewhat sensationalist headline.
If anything, we have more temperature days in colder, more remote areas like Antarctica and the middle of the ocean. And those areas are also at record levels.
