Early Southwest heat is latest in parade of weather extremes as Earth warms

Baseball fans watch the Los Angeles Dodgers play the San Francisco Giants during the fifth inning of a spring training baseball game with the heat forcing the game to end early, Wednesday, March 18, 2026, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin) 2026-03-20T07:07:44Z WASHINGTON (AP) — The dangerous heat wave shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It’s the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth’s warming builds. Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 110-degree Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) reading in the Arizona desert on Thursday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S. On Thursday, sites in Arizona and southern California had preliminary readings of 109 F (about 43 C), which would be the hottest March day on record for the United States. “This is what climate change looks like in real time: extremes pushing beyond the bounds we once thought possible,” said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. “What used to be unprecedented events are now recurring features of a warming world.” March’s heat would have been virtually impossible without human-caused climate change, according to a report Friday by World Weather Attribution , an international group of scientists who study the causes of extreme weather events. More than a dozen scientists, meteorologists and disaster experts queried by The Associated Press put the March heat wave in a kind of ultra-extreme classification with such events as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2022 Pakistan floods and killer hurricanes Helene, Harvey and Sandy. The area of the U.S. being hit by extreme weather in the past five years has doubled from 20 years ago, according t

原文链接: AP News