It is not you, it’s hotter than ever. And the problem is that summers are not going to improve over time

A good part of the planet is clear about one thing: it’s hota lot. So much that life during the day It makes complicated. Last June it became the New Julywhat leaves us a disturbing question now that we started new month: what will happen in July? Many wonder if what happens is “normal”, and the truth is that scientists have an answer: it is not only suffocating.

Anticipated and prolonged. As we said, summer did not wait for July. With anticipated heat waves that have fried To Canada, the northeast of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, and a good part of northern Europe, the 2025 summer season is being configured as another forceful evidence of the rapid advance of climate change. The pools in Toronto They remain open Until midnight, concerts are being canceled in Amsterdam and fans They have reappeared In French homes earlier than usual.

The alarming is not just the heat intensitybut its chronology: the thermal threshold that previously marked the beginning of the warmest period of the northern hemisphere was reached around July 10. In 2024, the hottest year Never registered, it was exceeded from June 13 to September 5. This year, without being as extreme as the previous one, this weeks advanced regarding the historical average. The phenomenon reflects A clear pattern: summers are lengthening at both ends, starting before and ending later, which increases exposure to heat waves and elevates substantially The health risksagricultural and environmental.

Heat out of time. I remembered The Washington Post That heat waves are no longer limited seasonal phenomena, but an increasingly continuous threat. According to data From the United States Environmental Protection Agency, its duration, frequency and intensity have increased significantly in the last seven decades, extending the “extreme heat season” of less than 50 days in the 90s to about 70 Since 2020.

This phenomenon has altered the climate calendar in a drastic way: between January and mid -June of this year, 163 of 171 days registered temperatures greater than 32.2 ° C in extensive regions of the northern hemisphere, a figure unprecedented since 1980.

Examples The consequences are manifested Multiple: anticipated forest fires, Early melting of glaciers in the Swiss Alps or the increase of deaths due to heat stroke, which in Europe have risen 30% In the last 20 years. The danger increases Especially in early heat waves, when the population has not yet adapted physiologically nor has preventive protocols activated, more seriously affecting older or vulnerable people.

Heating accelerates. He underlined The New York Times That the evidence shows that the planet is heating, and is doing it faster than the models predicted just a few decades ago. The summer of 2025 had barely begun when the United States was already caught under that suffocating “heat dome” of The one we talk about who beat records, while Alaska registered his First official alert by high temperatures.

As we said, these anomalies arrive after 2024 that was the warmer year Never registered, and reinforce what climate science has been anticipating: global warming caused by human activity not only continues its course, but also that It is accelerating.

More science. A Recent study estimates that the average global temperature is increasing at the rate of 0.27 ° C per decadea significantly higher rate to the rhythm of 0.2 ° C that was observed in the 70s. But beyond the figures, the most disturbing is how these changes have begun to demonstrate directly And visible in everyday life: devastating floods, extreme droughts, increasingly voracious fires and heat waves that challenge the limits of the human body and modern infrastructure.

The ends grow faster. In this way, each additional tenth not only adds heat to the planet, but also increased the violence of Meteorological phenomena extremes. According to the climatologist Daniel Swainevents such as torrential rains or forest fires do not grow in a straight line with the temperature: they do it with An exponential pattern. For each Celsius heating grade, extreme rainfall increases by 7%, but the so -called “record events” are doubling that rate.

This intensification was not only predictable, but the scientists had already modeled it, although now it begins to feel tangible and disconcerting. Kate Marvel, another recognized climatologist, summarized it like this In the Times: “There is no climate out of climate change.” Phenomena like him Hurricane Helene or historical floods of Vermont They are not anomalies, but direct expressions of an altered atmosphere. Although a total understanding of the most extreme events is still lacking (in part because its rarity makes it difficult to Adjust your models urgently.

Accelerated thaws. The impact of heating feels with special severity in vulnerable regions such as The Arctic and Antarctica. The thaw of his ice masses, which for decades seemed a distant phenomenon, is now contributing to a faster sea level rise than expected. A NASA analysis Posted in March revealed that the level of the oceans increased by 2024 to A higher rhythm to the estimated, due to the thermal expansion of the waters (heated in depth) and to the accelerated thaw of glaciers.

The sea and the planet. In addition, the data from another study of the National Center for Earth Observation show that the marine surface temperature It is increasing above the previous forecasts, which has direct implications for The global climateprecipitation patterns and cyclones intensity.

Cecilia Bitz, an expert in climatic modeling, acknowledges that simulating the complexity of the Earth is a challenge, but insists that the great physical principles of the climate system They are still valid: They are not being denied, but complying with disturbing accuracy.

The energy imbalance. The physical root of global warming is in the Energy imbalance From the planet: the difference between the solar energy that the Earth receives and the one that returns to space. According to Another study Recent based on NASA satellite data, that imbalance It has doubled In the last two decades and is now almost double what was thought. This finding, which has even surprised scientists, could be due to several factors.

One of them is The reduction in the emission of aerosols (polluting particles that reflect sunlight and temporarily mitigate the effect of greenhouse gases) due to stricter environmental regulations. Air cleaning, paradoxically, is revealing more crudely the true impact of CO₂.

And the clouds. But the most worrying, He pointed out The researcher Zeke Hausfather, is that it could also be due to changes in the cloud dynamics: An alteration in its capacity To reflect solar radiation that would trigger a positive feedback loop, one of the most uncertain and dangerous factors in the climatic projections future.

The threshold of human impact. All this leads us to the same point. Beyond models, data and projections, climate change is becoming the closest to A personal experience. As the planet crosses the limits for which our cities, infrastructures and agricultural systems were designed, millions of people begin to live in their own flesh what was once a technical warning.

The difference between understanding climate change in a data curve and experiencing it as a tangible loss (a razed house, a ruined harvest, a life less for a heat stroke) marks the new face of the crisis. As Marvel concluded In the Times“It is always worse than expected when it happens to you.”

And the problem is that it is already happening … and faster.

Image | Darren St0ne, Rosh Pr

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