Why no one can predict how hot it might get

🥵 Las Vegas broke its 1937 heat record on Sunday, when temps rose to a 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Palm Springs got even hotter: 122, hot enough to melt a pack of crayons.
Issue #117: the unpredictability of heat, protecting your peace, and going where you look
By Harris Sockel

I’m writing to you from NYC, where it’s 89 and I’m huddled by my air conditioner with a giant bottle of ice water. We’re in the middle of a “heat dome,” a pocket of air trapped under the atmosphere for too long, which creates what’s essentially a city-sized convection oven. Fun.

Average July temps in NYC hover around 79, up from ~70 in the late 19th century.

Studies show that it will keep getting hotter (and my A/C will keep having to work harder!), but the odd thing is we still aren’t great at predicting when temperatures will rise, or by how much. Tim Andersen, Ph.D., a research scientist at Georgia Tech, explains how studies of Earth’s climate millions of years ago reveal mysteries that scientists are still puzzled by — and why, as he says, “there is too much about the climate, past, present, and future, we still don’t know.” For example: In the Oligocene period after the dinosaurs, the Earth kept getting warmer even though the ice caps were forming, and no one knows why. Climate models for 2023 actually failed to predict temperatures that year (it was hotter by about 0.36 degrees F).

Predictions aside, this story from Lisa Cunningham DeLauney felt unique to me — it’s about how our response to heat is shaped by our culture, and how culture influences what we think of as “comfort.” U.S. cities are pretty A/C-dependent (we have more air conditioners per capita than most countries) which means we cope by straining the power grid. Reflecting on a visit to Cambodia, where many people wear gloves and face masks in the heat, Cunningham-Delauney writes: “It’s counterintuitive, but when it’s really hot, covering up with thin fabrics is the best bet.”

What else we’re reading

• Halleemah Nash, talent specialist and CEO, whose viral X post about a racial slur sparked a conversation about trauma, power, and representation, shares words of wisdom I want to print and keep next to my laptop this week: “Operating in service of your own peace is a real power play.”
• One of the lessons you learn by 40, via former VP of Design at Facebook Julie Zhuo: “Satisfaction does not come from money, rewards, status or praise; it comes from impressing yourself. Mistaking the former for the latter is a source of enormous misery.”

Your daily dose of practical wisdom: about direction

There’s a truism about driving a car that applies to life, too: “You go where you look.”

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Edited and produced by Scott Lamb & Carly Rose Gillis

Questions, feedback, or story suggestions? Email us: tips@medium.com