Why Americans Might Never Notice Climate Change’s Hotter Weather
A person fretting about a “scorching” day might find the same temperature unremarkable within five years, a new study finds.
In the past 50 years, climate change has altered the weather of the United States, leading to milder winters, warmer nights, and sweltering summer heat waves. These changes will intensify in the decades to come; by the end of the century, for instance, Philadelphia could feel a lot like Memphis.
But a new study suggests that most Americans have not noticed these changes—and they never will.
For the past decade or so, different teams of social scientists have tried to answer the same question: Where does our sense of “normal” weather come from? Why do some hot, and some only normally hot? Were I to compare thee to a summer’s day, would I be thinking of , , or just some pictures of summer that I saw once in a book?
