Alaska has been seeing a heat wave this spring and summer. Temperatures have been up in place like Utqiaġvik (formerly known as Barrow), 18.6 degrees Fahrenheit above normal. This Fourth of July was no exception to the record-breaking heat, as CNN reports that 90 degree temperatures in The Last Frontier were recorded July Fourth. The record-setting heat number was taken at Anchorage’s airport and broke the previous record set in 1969.
June’s record-heat wave has hit across the globe, with France hitting well into the triple digits last week, and Greenland saw “widespread melting across the surface of the ice sheet.” California’s coast has seen its own rising temperatures, and thousands—possibly hundreds of thousands—of mussels have ended up cooked in their shells, due to the unseasonably warm weather. And the heat wave isn’t going away because it’s not a normal heatwave, as Brian Brettschneider, a climate researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, tells NBC News, “It’s entirely possible that the warmest temperature ever recorded in Anchorage could be exceeded three to five days in a row. That’s the definition of unusual.”
Climate scientists explain that climate change does not cause these events, they contribute to and exacerbate them. And what is being seen in Alaska and around the world is the result of these changes brought about by our Earth’s increasing temperatures. Climatologist Rick Thoman explains, “When other pieces line up like high pressure over the state and very warm sea surface temperatures, all the pieces fit together and make these extreme, or even unprecedented, events that much more likely.”
Remember when the talking point by conservatives was that this was a hoax created by foreign powers?