NOAA reports warmest summer on record for the contiguous United States
Science & ClimateWell-covered
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The Facts
- NOAA reported the contiguous United States had its warmest summer on record in 2026.
- The June-to-August average temperature was 74.4°F, or 23.6°C.
- The summer average exceeded the previous 1936 and 2021 record by 0.4°F.
- NOAA’s contiguous-U.S. measurements exclude Alaska and Hawaii.
- August 2026 was the warmest August on record for the contiguous United States.
- Four of the five warmest U.S. summers on record occurred within the past five years.
- Scientists attribute the warming trend largely to human-caused climate change linked to fossil-fuel burning.
Context
What period counts as meteorological summer?
Meteorological summer runs from June through August. Aol Al Jazeera Online
Which parts of the United States do these data cover?
The NOAA figure covers the contiguous United States, also called the Lower 48, and excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Washington Post Yahoo!
Where Left and Right agree, and where they split
- Where Left and Right agree
- Four of the last five summers rank among the hottest on record, a trend both frame as driven by human-caused fossil-fuel warming rather than a statistical blip.
- Where Left and Right split
- Fossil-fuel expansion needing to justify itself against a known cause, or whether the power grid can meet the cooling demand this new baseline requires.
- Why they won’t converge
- This is a values divide: the left treats a known human cause as an obligation to redirect spending toward emissions and vulnerable people, while the right treats the record as a planning baseline that obligates spending on grid and cooling capacity instead.
How left and right read it
A record that stood since the Dust Bowl should not be broken casually, yet four of the five hottest American summers now sit inside the last five years, and scientists tie that trend to burning fossil fuels. That concentration is the whole argument. Because the cause is known, the burden falls on continued fossil-fuel expansion to justify itself — so the question is why public money is not moving faster toward clean energy and protecting the people who cannot escape this heat.
“The Dust Bowl summer of 1936 has been long been regarded as the benchmark of hottest summers in the US, but has now been equaled or eclipsed twice in the past five years thanks to the influence of human-caused climate change.” — CNN International
Whether a record summer hurts people depends on whether the grid holds when air conditioning runs hardest. That is the test. August 2026 was the warmest August on record, and the 74.4°F average beat 1936 and 2021 by four-tenths of a degree. Because four of the five warmest summers fall in the past five years, this is the baseline to plan on, so fund reliable power and cooling first.
The receipts — all 56 sources
Wire services (1)
Independent coverage (50)
Facts first. Then every angle.
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