False, Washington Post, Heat Isn’t Making “June . . . the new July”
By
Anthony Watts
July 1, 2025
In their recent article, “June is the new July: Why intense summer heat is arriving earlier,” The Washington Post (WaPo) claims that “the heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the U.S., and northern Europe are part of a dangerous new climate pattern.” This narrative is wrong, or misleading at best. Data does not show a meaningful trend toward earlier or more intense heat waves on a global scale. Evidence suggests that much of the perceived increase in early-season heat can be attributed to the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect and misinterpretations of regional variability, not to any alarming global shift.
“The heat waves moving in recent days across Canada, the northeastern United States and northern Europe have one thing in common: They are occurring quite early in the season,” writes WaPo, continuing, “That timing speaks to a broader trend, connected to human-caused climate change, . . the hottest 10 years on record have all come during the past decade.”
One of the most critical oversights in WaPo’s article is that it ignores the role the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect has on recorded temperatures and trends. The UHI is well-documented phenomenon where cities record significantly higher temperatures than their rural surroundings due to concentrated infrastructure, asphalt, and human activity, biasing reported surface station temperature records and averages. As cities expand, the local thermometers used to measure temperature increasingly reflect urban heating, not global trends.
https://climaterealism.com/2025/07/false-washington-post-heat-isnt-making-june-the-new-july/
