The past 12 months ranging from November 2022 to October this year were the hottest months on record, according to data crunched by analysts at the nonprofit Climate Central.
Approximately 25% of people globally faced extreme heat waves driven by pollution, the nonprofit states, and five cities in the United States were among those with the most extreme heat days.
Nick Bond, the Washington state climatologist based at the University of Washington, said the report does not come as a surprise.
"No matter how you cut it, the last 12 months have been extraordinarily warm [globally]," Bond said. "Apologies for belaboring the obvious, perhaps, but as greenhouse gas concentrations continue to rise, those effects will continue to be felt."
The report looked at temperatures worldwide. In Washington, he said, the picture for that time span was a bit different.
"It's been a little bit of a rollercoaster," Bond said. "Our winter, last winter, was colder than normal. We came out of winter with a pretty decent snowpack, a little on the dry side. And then May came, and that was a very warm month, we had an unusual heat wave in the middle of the month. For the summer as a whole, we were definitely on the warm side; We didn't have any extreme heat waves, but it was still pretty warm."
The Climate Central report looked at how climate change "influenced exposure to extreme heat that persisted for at least five days," and found that in the time-span studied, 25% of people globally dealt with an extreme heat streak lasting five days or more. It also reported that the heat was significantly caused by carbon pollution.
According to the report, Houston, San Antonio, New Orleans, Miami and Austin were in the top 10 cities globally experiencing the most days with extreme heat.
Bond says it's important to recognize that climate change isn't the only factor impacting weather. He says unusual periods of weather don't mean climate change isn't real, and at the same time, not everything can be attributed to climate change.
He said he remains hopeful about the future — and does not believe it's time to give up.
"We can both mitigate the climate change that is happening, we can do something about fossil fuel combustion and greenhouse gas emission, have to do that as a world as a whole," Bond said. "But we can also adapt to the things we're seeing now."