The National Weather Service announced several temperature records were broken yesterday in Yuma (120 degrees), Phoenix (118) and Tucson (115).
Temperatures reached around 110 in various parts of the Southern California area, which is pretty incredible for the first day of summer.
Why does it matter?
Because we’ve been feeling the effects of the drought for five consecutive years now, yet haven’t made much progress regarding how we use our resources.
Barring serious changes to international energy policy, we can expect this heat to become the new normal in less than 50 years, Mann warned.
“If we continue with business-as-usual burning of fossil fuels,” he said, “by mid-century what we think of as extreme summer heat today will become a typical summer day.”