to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.
July's blistering heat was experienced by more than 6.5 billion people, or 81% of the Earth's population, and was made worse by global warming, according to a new analysis by nonprofit research group Climate Central. "This is not the new normal. There's nothing about this that is normal," Andrew Pershing, Climate Central's director of attribution science and climate fingerprinting, told reporters in a preview of the data Tuesday afternoon.The numbers came in a Climate Centralreleased Wednesday morning that looked at data from more than 4,700 cities in 200 countries. "We really are experiencing climate change just about everywhere," Pershing said.
The study relied on Climate Central's Climate Shift Index, which measures the influence of human-caused climate change on daily temperatures.ranges from a low of CSI level 0 to a high of CSI level 5, corresponding to the likelihood that climate change played a role. CSI level 5 means the heat was made at least five times more likely.That includes the Southwest and Southeast, in particular South Florida and the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, according to the report.
Every single day in July, at least 2 billion people worldwide felt heat made at least three times more likely by climate change