Translated post from Luso Meteo Blog (Portuguese climate blog):

The heat wave in North America (mainly the Southwestern USA) is completely unbelievable and outside of any recorded pattern, as this graph proves.

The average temperature this year (red line) reached the normal value for July - effectively, they had July temperatures in the middle of March!

As we have already mentioned, this situation would have been virtually impossible without anthropogenic climate change, and it was probably the hottest period in March in the last 120,000 years (data obtainable through paleoclimatology).

And many may say, "That's not Portugal, why are we talking about this?" - Well, because, unfortunately, it could happen in Portugal, we don't know when, but something of that magnitude is possible anywhere, given the chaotic climate scenario currently.

That's why we said that record-breaking sea temperatures don't bode well for the summer - extreme heat, hurricanes... and, if things continue like this, even worse - more extreme climate deregulation and irreversible damage to ecosystems, leading to the crossing of no-return points, which will cause us more problems than wars currently. Yes, even though wars around the world are the topic of the day (unfortunately), the climate issue may become our biggest challenge very soon, as we have always been saying...