A few weeks ago, my daughter and I went to Paris to visit family and celebrate her high school graduation.
As a marine scientist working on the front lines of climate and oceans, I was hoping for a break from the doom and gloom. Instead, I found myself inside the biggest climate story of the year.
We knew it would be hot, over 90 degrees. When I checked the forecast before we left, I told my daughter to pack shorts and tank tops. But we were not prepared for what followed — a 10-day inferno.
On June 24, the day after we arrived for a 16-day visit, France hit its hottest national average on record.
This was heat unlike any I’d ever experienced — hotter than the Sinai in Egypt, where I took a diving trip with my father after high school; hotter than Miami, where I did my graduate studies in marine policy; hotter than New York City in the summer, where I grew up.
The heat did not even let up at night. It was still in the 90s well after 9 p.m., and buildings built to hold in the warmth in winter quickly turned into ovens.
That week, France recorded its hottest day ever, then broke that record again the next day. The Louvre and the Eiffel Tower restricted visiting hours.
We heard about young men drowning in the Canal Saint-Martin, steps from my aunt’s apartment, where we had watched crowds gathered on the banks for days, as the death rate in the city rose 62% over a six-day period, mostly among older people.
Across the channel, London was having its own reckoning with the European heat dome.
A London Climate Action Week panel on adapting to extreme heat was canceled — the venue, like most buildings in the city, had no air conditioning, and organizers couldn’t risk going forward with the event, an irony that was profoundly disturbing.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent, and France’s June temperatures blew past what even the most radical climate models had recently projected.
Meanwhile, the ocean off my home coast in California had been quietly running its own fever.
Scientists in La Jolla had already logged 36 days of record-breaking water temperatures this year, a marine heatwave building since the summer before, with no El Niño effect to blame.
Scientists are now watching a potential Super El Niño forming in the Pacific, which could drive even more heat into the ocean system.
A few days after I returned home, I surfed my favorite local spot. The cold, foggy morning — complete with what we call “fog rain” — was a blessed relief after two weeks of sweating in France. But the water felt unsettlingly warm.
Normally the cold seeps through your wetsuit the moment you paddle out, and numbs your hands. This time, it felt almost tropical.
