July 2023 was Earth’s hottest month ever recorded. Across the U.S. South, millions baked in triple-degree temperatures every day for more than two weeks. The heat wave stems from a combination of a natural El Niño weather phenomenon with the effects of a climate crisis caused by fossil fuel burning.
In the D.C. region, we haven’t been hit quite so hard. Last week was an exception—the heat index, which factors in both temperature and humidity, got up to 110 degrees Thursday and Friday. But in general, this summer has remained relatively mild, as far as summers go in our swampy city.
That doesn’t mean the impacts of climate change aren’t visible here this summer. Take last week’s destructive storm, which knocked down tons of trees and cut off power for around 200,000 households. That weather had a lot to do with the heat and high humidity already in the air when a cold front pulled up in the atmosphere.
Climate change causation is tricky: it’s not like D.C. would never have bad storms if there were no fossil fuel emissions trapping excess heat in the atmosphere. But extreme temperatures make extreme weather worse. And as heat wave events become more frequent and severe, the mid-Atlantic region isn’t always going to be spared.
Already, the District experiences, on average, 10 more 90+ degree days each year than we did in 1970. There’s really no such thing as a “climate sanctuary.”
But that doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do. The city has already committed to slashing emissions and developed a strategy to adapt to extreme heat. It includes actions like planting and maintaining trees in neighborhoods that don’t have enough and shifting building codes so that new construction doesn’t add to the problem.
But plans with catchy names like “Sustainable DC” and “Keep Cool DC” are still just plans, and without accountability there’s little guarantee they’ll be followed through. If we want to see more bearable summers in our lifetimes, District residents need to, at the very least, be paying attention.
