The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😉
Main Topic: New Record Ratio Statistics for California
Dear Diary. All summer long I have been working on producing record ratio statistics for the state of California using the following NCEI website:
As many of my readers know, I have continued to delve into record warm vs. cold temperature ratios stemming from the following study, which I initiated during the decade of the 2000s. This summer I decided to look at a western state that has been affected by anomalously hot temperatures the last several years, leading to such phenomenon such as the devastating Creek Fire this month.
I looked at all-time records and compared ratios to that of the U.S. as a whole:


Here we see quite a contrast on the above two charts. The 2020s have seen a lot of all-time maxes in California while the U.S. has had enough cold intrusions from Canada to see a decrease in ratios since 2010. Record warmth has adversely affected California very much this decade accompanied by a historic drought that ended due to the last La Niña weather pattern in 2023/24. This year we have seen a couple of historic heatwaves enveloping the state and producing dozens of all-time record reports. Also, we can confirm that California had a relative cool period during as opposed to the rest of the U.S. during the Dust Bowl decade of the 1930s.
Here are my tallies. Keep in mind that one tally could be a tied record or one that set a record by several degrees:


What about monthly records? Those are shown here:




And lastly, daily records:




Unfortunately, these ratios will go up as we get deeper into the 21st century because of carbon pollution warming the atmosphere.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Tuesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)