The summer of 2026 will most likely be the hottest summer on record since 1936. Part of that is hot days, but more significantly it’s cooling down less at night, which raises the overall average. For the Washington Post, Ben Noll reports.
In the U.S., one of this summer’s most consequential trends unfolded while most people slept. Nighttime temperatures smashed records, reaching their highest levels — 2.37 degrees above average — across the U.S. as a whole, on track to beat the previous record set in 2021 by almost half a degree.
That’s important because warmer nighttime temperatures not only make it more challenging to sleep, but also to recover from the heat of the day.
The values in the charts above are compared to average temperature between 1991 to 2020. That seems kind of arbitrary? But the trend for low temperatures is clear.
Tags: global warming, temperature, Washington Post