It's been relatively mild where I live, but unfortunately for people in places like Turkbat, Pakistan, the last two weeks have been a time to break their thermometers, or at least fry eggs on their sidewalks.

The last week of May 2017 and first week of June brought one the most extraordinary heatwaves in world history to Asia, the Middle East and Europe. The mercury shot up to an astonishing 53.5°C (128.3°F) at Turbat, Pakistan on May 28, making it Earth’s hottest temperature ever recorded in the month of May—and one of Earth’s top-five hottest reliably-measured temperatures on record, for any month. Both Pakistan and Oman tied their all-time national heat records for any month during the heat wave, and all-time national heat records for the month of May were set in Iran, Norway and Austria. [...] A dome of high pressure from Morocco extended over Western Europe beginning on May 24, then moved north and then east. As a result, monthly records of highest temperatures were widespread in Spain, France, Belgium, Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Germany and Austria. [...] An intense heat wave caused by downslope winds from the Laotian mountains towards the Vietnamese coast affected the area around Vietnam’s capital of Hanoi in early June, particularly between June 2 - 4. The central observatory of Lang on June 4 recorded 41.5°C (106.7°F), destroying its previous all-time record of 40.4°C, set in 1971. On June 4, the district of Ha Dong (which hosts an international weather station representative of Hanoi) recorded 42.5°C (108.5°F), by far the highest temperature ever recorded in the Hanoi area.

And predictions for June in the southern regions of Europe are on the toasty side:

A corridor stretching from eastern Spain into eastern Europe is forecast to be hit by a heat wave in June, according to six meteorologists surveyed by Bloomberg. While the U.K. will mostly be dreary, it may see a burst of warmer-than-normal temperatures at the end of this month, which kicks off the meteorological summer. [...] “We predict a Europe split in two halves, with higher chance of above-average temperatures over the southern countries,” Giacomo Masato, a London-based meteorologist at Marex Spectron Group Ltd., said in an email.

Meanwhile, back in TrumpLand (f/k/a the United States of America), its denizens merely have to worry about historic floods this spring. Again.

National Weather Service Meteorologists say rivers will reach record high crest levels as snowpack melts this week. [...] The Big Wind River near Riverton is at 10 ½ feet, while flood stages begin at 9 feet. By this Friday (June 9th), water is expected to rise to 12 feet, which will be a new record for Crest Height, previously set in 2011.

Some people are even changing their minds about this whole climate change nonsense. I can't imagine why.

Add climate change to the common bouts of inundation, and towns along the Mississippi are confronting a new reality, Walker said, one that compounds the misery of previous floods. The 180-year-old town has had five flood events in the past four years , he said, and four of those have been in the top 10 flooding disasters in Alton's history.



"We're now living in a world of extremes on the Mississippi River," [the Mayor of Alton IL] said. "We just don't get normal spring rains anymore. We get huge downpours." [...] "I hope people are just realizing that climate change is playing a role in all these tragedies our region is facing these past several years," said David Stokes, a Republican who serves as executive director of the St. Louis-based Great Rivers Habitat Alliance, an organization that addresses issues affecting wetlands and floodplain use in the confluence region of the Mississippi, Missouri and Illinois rivers.

That flooding was caused by a once every 1,000 year precipitation event.

The massive amount of rain that caused the devastating flooding in the past few weeks in Missouri was a rare 1-in-1,000-year event, meteorologists said Friday. Most of the “once-in-a-millennium” rainfall from late April to early May occurred in Texas and Howell counties in southern Missouri, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. Some areas picked up over a foot of rain within a few hours April 29.

In my own patch, we've been dealing flooding caused by with the highest water levels in Lake Ontario since record keeping began:

GREECE, N.Y. — Homeowners dealing with the highest water levels on Lake Ontario in 100 years of record keeping will receive $7 million in help from the state and boulders from the federal government, according to New York's governor. Waves already have destroyed public and private breakwalls along the shores of both Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River, countless structures have been flooded and roads have been closed at times. Lake Ontario is at the end of the five Great Lakes, and a dam near Massena, N.Y., regulates its flow into the St. Lawrence. Officials can't open its gates all the way because extremely strong currents affect shipping, could damage turbines in two hydroelectric plants along the river and create flooding in the Montreal area.

Naturally, all of this "unusual weather" that is no longer so unusual, weather resulting from human caused global warming, was predicted by climate scientists as early as 1981.

But hey, we live in a new era where the science doesn't matter, and indeed, has been rejected by the political appointees of the Trump administration. Scientists at NASA, NOAA and the EPA all face severe budget cuts. Government scientists literally fear using the term "climate change" in official communications.

“If it was a project associated with climate change, people at headquarters would pick up the phone rather than email,” she said. “Staff were paranoid that their programs were going to get cut if they mentioned climate change. One day it was fine and then it was like you were being slapped in the face every day.” [...] An EPA air quality scientist, who did not want to be named, said the leadership of the agency “seems to have disdain for our work” and claimed that climate change tasks were being wound down. “All action at the agency on climate has effectively stopped; the only thing that hasn’t is the collection of emissions data,” the scientist told the Guardian. “Climate work has been de-emphasized and halted. There was a climate conference in Atlanta last month and EPA employees were told not to go, so even simple interactions are coming to an end.”

The announcement that the US was withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord was merely symbolic, as that agreement only required "voluntary" action by signatories. What's happening at the federal agencies tasked with research and mitigation of climate change is much, much worse. This is what Americans should be protesting and haranguing their Congressional Representatives about, not withdrawal from the so-called historic Paris Accord, which was more a publicity stunt than a substantive treaty.