Climate

We visited researchers seeking ways to make homes safer. They set a lot of fires.

“Every New Yorker should take precautions,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. Gov. Kathy Hochul also issued a statewide air quality advisory.

In recent weeks, millions of people across the United States have faced the harsh extremes of Danger Season. A prolonged heat wave pushed ‘feels-like’ temperatures well over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in parts of the Midwest, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast, while roughly half of the country was under heat alerts or warnings. Grid operators took emergency steps to maintain reliability as electricity demand surged and severe holiday-weekend storms left hundreds of thousands of households without power.  

Together, these events served as a reminder that during Danger Season—the period between May and October when North America is hit hardest by extreme weather, like heat, drought, wildfire, and hurricanes—electricity is about much more than keeping the lights on. Electricity is powering our air conditioners, fans, refrigerators for medication, and other essential services, all of which keep people safe during extreme heat. For older adults, young children, people with chronic illnesses, and many medically vulnerable individuals, access to cooling can mean the difference between remaining safe at home and experiencing serious heat-related illness.  

These events also illustrate a broader challenge. As the climate warms, households are increasingly relying on cooling to stay safe while electricity costs continue to rise. In other words, the need for cooling and the cost of cooling are increasing together.   

For many families, particularly those already facing high energy burdens, this creates a growing affordability challenge. Paying for electricity is no longer simply a question of comfort: it is increasingly a prerequisite for health and safety.  

Because no single dataset captures every dimension of affordability, the five figures below draw on multiple national datasets covering different time periods. Together, they illustrate long-term temperature trends, recent changes in household electricity costs, and the latest available evidence on energy burden and energy insecurity. They show how electricity spending during Danger Season has changed over time, how seasonal cooling needs have increased, how energy burdens remain concentrated among lower-income households, and how affordability is already affecting people’s ability to keep their homes at safe temperatures. 

Taken together, these figures suggest that affordability is becoming an increasingly important dimension of climate resilience. As extreme heat becomes more common, the challenge is not only whether households have access to cooling—but critically, whether they can afford to use it.  

The cost of cooling a home is increasing  Values represent estimated average household electricity expenditures for the May–October period each year and are calculated using EIA data on residential electricity sales, residential electricity prices, and household counts. 2026 values is a projection based on EIA estimates. Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) Short-Term Energy Outlook. May-October household electricity expenditures, 2020-2026 (2026 reflects projected spending). Data accessed June 2026. 

As summers become hotter across much of the country, electricity has become one of the most important tools for protecting health during periods of extreme heat. But staying cool comes at a cost. Since 2020, the average household’s electricity spending during Danger Season will have increased by more than 30 percent, projections suggest. This increase reflects more than inflation alone. According to research from the National Energy Assistance Directors Association (NEADA) and the Center for Energy Poverty and Climate (CEPC), higher household cooling costs are being driven by a combination of rising electricity demand, increasing retail electricity prices, continued investments in grid infrastructure, fuel costs, and broader changes in energy markets. What may once have appeared to be a temporary increase is increasingly becoming the new normal.  

The need for cooling is growing 

Rising electricity bills are only one part of the story. Households also need more cooling than they once did. One helpful data set for understanding this long-term change is the Cooling Degree Days (CDD) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA)—a standard measure used by climatologists and utilities to estimate how much cooling buildings require. Unlike measures that simply count extreme heat days, CDD captures the cumulative need for cooling over an entire season. Because climate trends are generally evaluated over periods of 30 years or more, this 50-year record provides a robust picture of long-term change. And despite the year-to-year variability, the overall trend is clear: people in the United States generally need more cooling today than they did five decades ago.  

Cooling Degree Days (CDD) measure cumulative seasonal cooling demand by comparing each day’s average temperature with a baseline of 65 degrees Fahrenheit.  Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA, NCEI), Cooling Degree Day, 1976-2025. Data accessed July 2026. 

Rising cooling demand does not necessarily translate into hardship for every household. But for families already facing high energy burdens, the need for more air conditioning can mean substantially higher summer electricity bills.  

Lower-income households were already struggling with costs

Higher electricity bills and greater cooling needs do not affect every household equally. Lower-income households were already spending a disproportionate share of their income on energy before this summer. That’s where an examination of energy burdens becomes important. Energy burden refers to the share of a household’s income spent on energy bills, and it is highest among lower-income households. In this analysis, lower-income households are defined as those earning 80% or less of their Area Median Income (AMI). AMI is the median income for a given metropolitan area or county. Because incomes and costs of living vary across the country, AMI provides a locally adjusted benchmark for comparing household incomes. 

Figure 3 presents the most recent national estimates available from DOE’s LEAD Tool and illustrates the substantial differences in energy burden across income groups rather than changes over time.  Source: U.S. Department of Energy, Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool. Household energy burden by Area Median Income (AMI), based on 2022 American Community Survey housing and income data and residential cost estimates Data accessed June 2026.  

The graph above, with data from the most recent annual estimates available from the US Department of Energy’s Low-Income Energy Affordability Data (LEAD) Tool, shows that energy burden is dramatically higher among lower-income households. Families with lower incomes have less flexibility to absorb rising utility bills because energy already consumes a much larger share of their budgets. For these households, even modest increases in cooling costs can force difficult tradeoffs between paying utility bills and meeting other essential needs.  

Affordability is forcing difficult, unsafe choices

Energy burden isn’t just reflected in household budgets—it shapes everyday decisions. Responses collected by the Census Bureau in late summer 2024 about experiences during the previous 12 months show that lower-income households are substantially more likely to reduce spending on essentials, such as food or medicine, in order to pay their energy bills. They are also much more likely to report keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. Households earning less than $25,000 annually, more than one-quarter reported keeping their homes at temperatures that felt unsafe or unhealthy. As household income increases, both of these hardships become steadily less common, suggesting that affordability increasingly shapes who can safely cool their homes during periods of extreme heat. 

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Household Pulse Survey (2024) Phase 4,2, Cycle 09 (August 20—September 16, 2024 survey. Estimates are based on respondents’ reported experiences during the previous 12 months)  Affordability is driving increasing rates of energy insecurity 

These affordability challenges are becoming more widespread. Energy insecurity refers to the inability to adequately meet a household’s basic energy needs. It can include difficulty paying utility bills, keeping a home at safe indoor temperatures, or maintaining reliable electricity service.  

Source: National Consumer Law Center (NCLC) 2026, using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), 2020 and 2024.  

New data suggest that these challenges are affecting a growing share of households. Comparing the 2020 and 2024 Residential Energy Consumption Surveys from the US Energy Information Administration shows increases  across every major indicator measured, includingutility disconnection notices, reductions in spending on food or medicine, and an inability to adequately heat of cool the home. . Together, these findings suggest that energy affordability is becoming an increasingly important public health and climate resilience challenge. 

Addressing the climate and energy affordability challenge 

Fortunately, there are solutions. Reducing heat-trapping emissions remains essential to limiting how severe, and how costly, future summers become. Investments in weatherization and energy efficiency can reduce household energy needs before temperatures rise. Utility bill assistance and stronger protections against utility disconnections can help families stay safe during periods of extreme heat. Community solar, resilience hubs, and distributed energy resources can also help communities prepare for, withstand, and recover from increasingly dangerous summers.  

Just as important, policymakers and regulators can and should evaluate energy decisions through an affordability lens. As electricity demand grows and investments are made to modernize and strengthen the electric grid, ensuring that electricity remains affordable, particularly for households already facing high energy burdens, will be critical. Affordability is becoming an increasingly important component of climate resilience, alongside investments in grid reliability, energy efficiency, weatherization, and consumer protections.  

The figures in this analysis point us toward important questions. Which lower-income communities face the greatest combined risks from rising cooling needs, high electricity costs, and limited household resources? Where are households already struggling to stay safe during periods of extreme heat? And which policies can ensure affordability keeps pace with a warming climate? As the climate changes, our understanding—and our solutions—must continue evolving too. 

Because when temperatures become dangerous, access to cooling is no longer simply a matter of whether air conditioning exists. It is increasingly a matter of whether people can afford to use it. 

As wildfires intensify, threatening more people, a nonprofit is studying how to rethink homes and neighborhoods to prevent catastrophe.

R-Urban Poplar in London is a ‘living lab’ where locals can experiment with ways of taking charge of their food supply

On a stiflingly hot and dusty morning at the height of the summer’s third heatwave, traffic thunders down the A12 arterial route through east London. A high, red-brick wall rises by the road. What few passersby will realise is that this ivy-topped wall shelters an urban oasis, within which sits an unprecedented sustainable project.

The world’s first “community powered” sauna – heated by food waste from residents of the neighbouring housing estate – is set to open here.

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Wildfires are intensifying. Our climate reporter Mira Rojanasakul goes inside an unusual lab working to protect homes from the flames.

Smoke from more than 100 active wildfires in northern Ontario have made Toronto’s air quality the current worst in the world and caused yellow, smoky air in cities across the north-east US. 'You could definitely smell the smoke in the air and it's very hazy out. So absolutely it's noticeable,' says Toronto resident Paula Oreskovich

• Wildfires in Ontario make Toronto air quality worst in world

• Extreme temperature warnings in place as ‘heat dome’ bakes US

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Video footage of a train near the community of Armstrong, Ontario, highlights the speed and ferocity of one of more than 100 wildfires currently burning in Canada. 'This could potentially overtake us here … This has gotten a little scary,' says a crew member as a wall of flames whips across the windows. 'We’re encased in flames now.' The railway company Canadian National confirmed the crew has been 'safely evacuated' from the area

• Wildfires in Ontario make Toronto air quality worst in world

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Adaptation to frightening new normal and reducing emissions further and faster is critical, scientists warn

Dozens of people drowned, hundreds had to be rescued and thousands were displaced when floods struck the coasts of west Africa last month.

Now scientists have concluded that the rains that caused the floods were supercharged by climate breakdown. Global heating, they say, turned what should have been a routine weather event into a climate catastrophe.

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Days that are both extremely hot and polluted come with higher risks of respiratory ailments and other health hazards.

In April, I blogged about the possibility of a super El Niño developing towards the end of this year. Well, not only has the El Niño already developed, but according to recent numbers from nearly all seasonal forecast models, there is now a roughly 90% chance of this El Niño becoming the strongest in recorded history. You read that right: nearly every seasonal forecasting model available to climate scientists and meteorologists is predicting an unprecedented El Niño event.

Earth is going to shatter global temperature records

A record-breaking super El Niño has a lot of implications for the world’s weather and climate system, and for the human systems that depend on them, like agriculture and food security. In a typical El Niño, the overall global average temperature is warmer than usual due mainly to warm ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Tropical Pacific. When ocean temperatures are warmer, they release a lot more heat into the atmosphere, warming up global air temperatures.

As I mentioned in my last blog, El Niño and fossil fuel-driven climate change together make a terrible team. While El Niño is a natural cycle in Earth’s climate system, fossil fuel-driven climate change is not. When you combine an El Niño event with the overall warming of Earth due to emissions from heat trapping fossil fuels, you get an exceptionally warm planet.

A super El Niño, which is a very strong El Niño event, would almost certainly push global temperatures into record territory. Check out the latest model forecast simulations from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME; below). The observed global surface temperature anomaly (compared with the 1850-1900 average) is on the left side of the graph. You can see that, so far this year, we’ve been above 1.0°C (1.8°F) warmer every single month compared with the same temperature values in the late 1800s.

Global surface temperatures from July 2025 to March 2027, showing observed temperatures up to July 2026 and projected temperatures after that. On the right, the thin orange lines show individual model projects, and the red line shows their average.  NOAA/University of Miami.

The right panel of the graph shows the forecast through March 2027: with a super El Niño, global average temperatures will skyrocket. Monthly temperature anomalies are expected to approach 2.0°C for January, February, and March 2027, with nearly half of the models forecasting well over 2.0°C values. A couple models are literally off the chart, over 2.5°C! That means there’s a possibility of reaching a monthly global average temperature anomaly of 2.5°C. This would be a shocking escalation of global warming, as we only just crossed the 1.5°C threshold (temporarily, in terms of yearly average) in 2024.

As a reminder, 1.5°C and 2°C are the internationally agreed targets, encoded in the Paris Climate Agreement, as the safer temperature limits that we should strive to remain below. Fossil fuel-driven climate change plus this Super El Niño are, at least temporarily, blasting well past these temperatures.

Climate change and El Niño

So what’s up with this record-breaking super El Niño? Is it related to fossil fuel-caused climate change? I have two responses for you:

1) In today’s world, every part of our climate system (ocean, atmosphere, land, cryosphere) is fundamentally different due to climate change in some way. This isn’t the same climate system as the 1950s. Therefore, every meteorological or climatological phenomenon that occurs, even if it’s a natural cycle like El Niño, is being affected by our changing system.

2) There is evidence that fossil fuel-driven climate change is directly influencing El Niño. As I mentioned in my last blog, one study found in recent observations that El Niño and La Niña events are becoming more extreme. Another study found that the impact of El Niño events on our weather patterns is getting worse with climate change.

The oceans are blazing hot

One would think we wouldn’t reach record-breaking ocean surface temperatures in the eastern Tropical Pacific until the super El Niño is in full swing, but that’s not the case. Ocean surface temperatures in the main development region for El Niño events are already at record levels for the date (below). And not just barely breaking the record, we are nearly 0.5°C (0.9°F) warmer than the previous record for mid-July, and over 2.0°C (3.6°F) warmer than the 1991-2020 average.

Daily sea surface temperature in the Niño 3.4 region, which is an area in the eastern Tropical Pacific where El Niño typically develops. The red line is 2026 values, the orange line is 2025. The dashed lines are 1991-2020 (thicker dashed) and 1982-2010 (lighter dashed) averages. ClimateReanalyzer.

Globally, ocean surface temperatures are also in record territory for this time of year, driven not just by the El Niño region but by marine heat waves currently affecting nearly 40% of the ocean. According to the marine heatwave tracker from NOAA, abnormally hot ocean temperatures are being observed in every ocean basin around the world (below). There’s a huge bullseye in the Pacific Ocean where the super El Niño is developing, but look at the Indian Ocean, Atlantic Ocean north of the Caribbean, and the Mediterranean. That patch of heat in the Mediterranean actually helped produce the heat dome leading to the record high temperatures Europe experienced last month, leading to over 20,000 excess deaths.

NOAA coral reef watch daily map for tracking marine heatwaves. The areas in yellow, orange, and red denote oceans currently experiencing a marine heatwave. NOAA.

It’s no surprise that the oceans are blazingly hot. They have absorbed over 90% of the heat added to the climate system from the additional heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels—a truly mind-boggling amount of excess heat. These marine heatwaves that we’re seeing covering 40% of the world’s oceans are yet another indicator of accelerating fossil fuel-driven climate change.

Climate change, El Niño and the heat dome in western US

What goes on in the ocean doesn’t stay in the ocean. If record ocean surface temperatures are occurring, whether it’s from El Niño or a marine heatwave, we’re going to feel those effects on land. Now, a heat dome has started in the western US which could last through the end of July for the west coast. And we’re seeing some unprecedented temperatures: both Salt Lake City, Utah and Helena, Montana have broken their all-time record high temperatures.

The fingerprints of fossil fuel-driven climate change are all over this heat dome. According to Climate Central’s Climate Shift Index, a broad swath of temperatures in the Mountain West (the day of the Salt Lake City and Helena record highs) were made 5x more likely due to climate change on Sunday, July 12.

The Climate Shift Index for Sunday, July 12, 2026. Places in dark red show areas that experienced temperatures made 5x more likely due to climate change. Climate Central.

You also might be thinking, “wait, are the developing super El Niño or the marine heatwaves related to this heat dome?” That is an excellent question, and most likely, yes. The weather of the western US is often directly influenced by ocean surface temperatures in the Pacific, as my own research showed in 2024. Another study released in 2024 found that anomalous storms/rainfall south of Hawaii, which develops from warmer ocean surface temperatures, influenced the Pacific Northwest heatwave in 2021. Record warm ocean surface temperatures as a result of climate change and the developing super El Niño are likely influencing the strength and duration of the current heat dome in the western US.

Earth’s climate has changed

We are now living in a dangerous new world thanks to the emissions of heat-trapping gases from the burning of fossil fuels. The climate of yesterday is no longer present. El Niños will look different, marine heatwaves will become more frequent and longer lasting, and heat domes that produce unprecedented heatwaves are here to stay. But there’s still hope. We know what to do to tackle the climate crisis we’ve brought onto ourselves. It’s time to take action.

Here are two things you can tell your Congressional representatives today.

• No immunity for big oil
• Protect FEMA and NOAA from budget cuts

Stay safe and fight on.

Environment Canada has issued health warnings after sky over city turns yellow

Smoke from more than 100 active wildfires in northern Ontario have made Toronto’s air quality the current worst in the world and caused yellow, smoky air in cities across the north-east US.

Environment Canada issued health warnings on Wednesday after the sky over country’s largest city turned a sickly yellow and was ranked the worst in the world according to IQAir, the Swiss technology company that racks global air quality.

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David Wallace-Wells and Robinson Meyer discuss whether the gathering coalition of Americans against data centers could be the next Occupy Wall Street movement or Tea Party.

The next great climate divide will be between countries that have the resources to adapt and those that don’t

This summer, much of the media’s attention has focused on record temperatures across Europe and the United States. Television coverage has been filled with familiar images: heat maps shaded deep red, schools closing, rail lines slowing, wildfires spreading and emergency rooms treating growing numbers of people with heat-related illnesses.

Public officials have responded with equally familiar advice: stay indoors, drink plenty of water and, if possible, turn on the air conditioning.

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Peat bogs are essential to the environment, holding twice as much carbon as all the world’s forests. But in the UK, 80% are damaged, most of what is extracted is used in horticulture – and some campaigners fear the problem is getting worse

‘I don’t see how I can possibly do my job and eat mushrooms,” says Sally Nex, a campaign advocate for the Peat-Free Partnership. “An awful lot of the food you buy in the supermarket is grown in peat: field mushrooms and little button mushrooms, salads and many brassicas, herbs in pots … all of those have started in peat.”

I’m taken aback. I’ve bought peat-free compost for years, but I’d never considered “hidden” peat. “I would imagine that most people are buying peat-free compost at the moment – certainly, you only have to go into a garden centre to see the amount of peat-free options you now have,” says Nex. “But you may not realise that an awful lot – probably most – of the plants that are on sale in that garden centre are also grown in peat.”

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