  Mon, 2011-07-25 08:42Chris Mooney Chris Mooney's picture
Nationally, 1,966 daily high maximum temperature records have
been broken or tied so far this month (through July 23). Sixty-
six of those records were all-time maximum temperature
records.More impressive, however, are the figures for highest
minimum temperature records. Because of the extremely high
humidity levels during this heat wave, a whopping 4,376 record
highest minimum temperature records were broken or tied through
July 23. Of those minimum temperature records, 158 were all-time
records.  While the tornado-global warming linkage is among the
hardest of cases to make, the heat wave linkage is among the
easiest. It is just fricken obvious that on a warming planet,
the chance of greater heat extremes goes up, because the dice
are loaded in their favor. NOAA itself reports that overall, the
U.S. was .5 degrees Celsius hotter from 1981-2010 than it was
from 1971-2000, leading the agency to talk about a “new normal”
for U.S. temperature.  Simi