Newsletter: Essential California: The hottest year on Earth?

Good morning, and welcome to the Essential California newsletter . It’s Thursday, Oct. 15 , and I’m writing from Los Angeles. You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Californians sweated through large swaths of September. The broiling heat waves included a Sunday early in the month that the National Weather Service categorized as “one of the hottest days since official weather records began across much of Southwestern California.”

New data released Wednesday by NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information shows that September 2020 officially ranks as California’s hottest September since record-keeping began in 1880. And California was far from alone in breaking heat records last month. September 2020 was also the hottest September on record for the planet, according to NOAA. The scientific agency said the record was driven by unprecedented heat around the globe, which “contributed to 2020’s trend as a remarkably hot year.”

But the realities of climate change have made the breaking of temperature records a now-routine event. In fact, the seven warmest Septembers on record all occurred during the last seven years. (Prior to September […]

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