AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Tens of millions of people in the U.S. are still sweating under a dangerous heat dome. Very hot, humid weather is lingering across much of the eastern half of the country, and climate change, of course, plays a big role in all of this. Rebecca Hersher from NPR's climate desk is here with more. Hi, Becky.
REBECCA HERSHER, BYLINE: Hi.
CHANG: Hi. OK, so let's start with what's been happening this week. Like, how unusual is this weather now, even these days?
HERSHER: It's unusual. You know, this heat wave is more intense and just bigger than what we would usually see this time of year. A huge swath of the country is trapped under this heat dome. It's from New England, all the way over to, like, Missouri, down to the Carolinas, up to Pennsylvania. And the temperatures are really, really high. More than 30 million people live in areas that saw triple-digit heat on Tuesday, 100 degrees or higher. And that's just really weird for June.
CHANG: For June. OK, so how much hotter is it, exactly?
HERSHER: A lot. A bunch of records fell on Tuesday. So it was the hottest June day ever recorded in Boston, that city all the way up there hit 102 degrees. Philadelphia had its second hottest June day ever recorded, 101 degrees. And Newark, New Jersey, hit 103 degrees, which is actually tied for its previous record for June. So it's abnormally hot in a lot of places, and it's not a mystery why this is happening. You know, climate change is causing intense heat waves like this.
CHANG: Yeah, I feel like we keep having the same conversation because some amount of hot weather is, of course, normal in the summer, even extremely hot weather. So how do we know that climate change affects this?
HERSHER: Well, yeah, you're right. Really hot weather has always happened. But this kind of intense heat wave used to be really rare, as recently as the 1950s, before the climate changed dramatically. Now it's pretty common. That's why, every summer, it feels like a broken record. You'll hear me on the radio, like this...
CHANG: (Laughter).
HERSHER: ...Reporting on record-breaking heat events all over the country and all over the world. Here's one way to think about what's happening, though. Scientists have crunched the numbers and found that heat waves in the U.S. are 3 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit hotter now than they would have been without climate change. And just those few degrees make a really big difference when you're talking about, like, 92- versus 97-degree weather.
CHANG: Yeah.
HERSHER: You know, that extra heat from climate change, it can create a really oppressive and dangerous situation. And in fact - and this is wild to me - the most intense heat waves that are happening now would actually be virtually impossible without climate change, according to scientists.
CHANG: Is that true of this heat dome in particular? Like, is it only possible because of climate change?
HERSHER: We don't know yet. Scientists can only assess that after the heat breaks, and then they can kind of measure how much climate change affected this heat wave. What we do know is that weather like this is getting more common every year because the Earth is still heating up. Humans are still releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, trapping more and more heat. So unless humans reverse that trend, the weather will keep getting hotter and heat waves will just get more and more extreme.
CHANG: So how can people better protect themselves from extreme heat like this?
HERSHER: It's pretty simple, honestly. Drink a lot of water. Stay inside in air-conditioned spaces during the hottest part of the day. If you're going to exercise, do it early in the morning before it heats up too much. Check on people who are vulnerable - that's older folks, people who live alone. People who work outside absolutely need water breaks and shade. On the hottest days, it might not be safe to work outside, period. And, you know, heat, it's one of the deadliest types of weather, but heat deaths are actually entirely preventable.
CHANG: That is NPR's Rebecca Hersher. Thank you, Becky.
HERSHER: Thanks. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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