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As my colleague Matteo Wong noted earlier this month, a hotter-than-usual summer may await many Americans. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s temperature and precipitation outlook for June through August shows a significant chance of above-normal temperatures across much of the country. I spoke with NOAA experts about how these predictions are made, what to expect in the weeks and months to come, and how to stay safe in extreme heat.

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What kind of summer do we potentially have in store in the United States? How should Americans interpret these weather predictions?

Johnna M. Infanti, a scientist at NOAA who was the forecaster for the June-July-August Climate Prediction Center outlook released this past month, told me that “generally, what we’re seeing is a pattern that favors above-normal temperatures for much of the country. But our outlooks really speak to the probability that the average temperature will be above normal. It doesn’t really indicate whether or not these temperatures will be extreme or set any records.”

“We take the average of temperatures for the June-July-August period from 1991 to 2020, and our models give us an indication of whether we should expect the upcoming summer to be warmer or cooler or dryer or wetter than the average,” she explained.

Morgan Zabow, the community heat and health information coordinator at NOAA, added that the likelihood of above-normal temperatures is expressed in percentages, which doesn’t tell us exactly what temperatures to expect but gives us an idea of what could be coming in different geographical areas.

“A temperature outlook like this really helps your decision makers—your city planners, your public-health officials, emergency responders—be a little bit more aware of what this could mean,” Zabow told me. “An increased risk of heat-related illnesses and deaths that disproportionately affect children under 5 and older adults, people experiencing homelessness, athletes, and so many other populations.”

So how do these predictions get made?

Infanti told me that her team uses dynamical climate models—“basically, computer models of what we might expect in the upcoming season based on the current state of the atmosphere, land, and ocean. They then show predictions for the temperature and precipitation for the next season.”

“We also look at things like long-term decadal trends,” she said. “For example, if a region has seen increasing temperatures over the last 10 years, that’s something we would take into consideration. We’d also look at sea-surface temperatures, both along the coast and globally if there’s something like an El Niño happening.”

How much of a role will El Niño play in shaping the climate of the coming months?

First, an explanation of how the phenomenon works: “El Niño and La Niña are opposite phases of a natural climate pattern across the tropical Pacific Ocean,” Infanti said. “And that natural climate pattern swings back and forth every three to seven years on average. We just ended a period of La Niña in the tropical Pacific, which means cooler-than-average temperatures across the tropical Pacific.”

Next, Infanti and her colleagues predict that we will enter an El Niño phase, “which means that the conditions in the tropical Pacific are favorable for the development of El Niño conditions within the next few months, bringing warmer-than-average tropical Pacific sea-surface temperatures that can cause local changes in convection patterns over that region. And that sets off a kind of a chain reaction—we call them teleconnections—across most of the globe. But we wouldn’t see related weather effects in the U.S. until the wintertime.”

Back to those above-normal temperatures: How does climate change factor into volatile weather patterns?

“With climate change, we’re seeing heat waves that are occurring more frequently. They’re more intense, and they’re also lasting longer, plus the heat-wave season is increasing,” Zabow said. “A heat-wave season could have typically been just during the summer months, but now we’re starting to see it before the typical summer months and after what people would consider summer months too.”

What can people do to keep cool and safe?

“Extreme heat events can be very deadly, especially at the beginning of the heat season, because people aren’t acclimated to the heat yet,” Zabow told me. “It’s important to note, though, that heat-related illnesses and deaths are largely preventable. It’s about taking simple measures, such as wearing a hat when you’re outside or wearing light-colored clothing to reflect some of the heat, making sure that you are staying inside in a space that has access to air-conditioning.”

If you don’t have access to air-conditioning at home, Zabow recommends finding a cooling center—you might try a local mall or library, or a special designated cooling center in your area. She encourages Americans to check out heat.gov for more guidance on what to do before, during, and after heat waves.

Related:

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Evening Read Kevin Mazur / TAS23 / Getty

Fans’ Expectations of Taylor Swift Are Chafing Against Reality

By Spencer Kornhaber

Three songs have been playing every night before Taylor Swift has taken the stage on her current tour, and each one seems to convey a different message. One track is Lesley Gore’s “You Don’t Own Me,” a classic assertion of female independence. Another is Lady Gaga’s “Applause,” a pump-up jam in which a celebrity confesses her hunger for approval. Then there’s Ice Spice’s “In Ha Mood,” a recent hip-hop song whose presence shows, among other things, that Swift is paying attention to what’s hot in pop culture—an important fact to keep in mind when evaluating the controversy now brewing around her.

Ice Spice is a 23-year-old Bronx emcee whose whispery voice and puff of red hair have become internationally famous in a very short span of time, following the TikTok success of her August 2022 single “Munch (Feelin’ U).” She features on the new remix of Swift’s track “Karma,” released last week, and this past weekend she joined Swift to perform the song at the singer’s three concerts in New Jersey. From a distance, the story feels familiar: Established star allies with rising star for mutual benefit. But the remix has unleashed a wave of indignation online, making Swift, not for the first time, a focal point for conflicting attitudes about what entertainers owe their audience.

Read the full article.

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P.S.

When we discussed the long-term temperature impact of climate change, Zabow, the NOAA heat and health information coordinator, pointed me to Climate Explorer, a web tool hosted by the National Environmental Modeling and Analysis Center. “You’re able to type in any county in the United States and see what the historical average temperatures were in the area, and then what the projections are,” she told me. “You could see how hot your neighborhood might be by 2050, or by 2090, depending on whether or not we implement emissions-reducing measures.” It’s a sobering yet useful climate-reality check.

— Kelli

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.