WASHINGTON (AP) 鈥� The shattering March records all over the U.S. Southwest is more than just another extreme weather blip. It鈥檚 the latest next-level weather wildness that is occurring ever more frequently as Earth鈥檚 warming builds.
Experts said unprecedented and deadly weather extremes that sometimes strike at abnormal times and in unusual places are putting more people in danger. For example, the Southwest is used to coping with deadly heat, but not months ahead of schedule, including a 112 degrees Fahrenheit (44.4 degrees Celsius) reading in two Arizona communities on Friday that smashed the highest March temperature recorded in the U.S. Two places in Southern California also hit that same temperature. All four spots are clustered within about 50 miles (80.5 kilometers) of each other.
鈥淭his is what climate change looks like in real time: extremes pushing beyond the bounds we once thought possible,鈥� said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver. 鈥淲hat used to be unprecedented events are now recurring features of a warming world.鈥�
March’s heat would have been virtually impossible without human-caused , according to a report Friday by , an international group of scientists who study the causes of extreme weather events.
More than a dozen scientists, meteorologists and disaster experts queried by The Associated Press put the March heat wave in a kind of ultra-extreme classification with such events as the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, the 2022 Pakistan floods and killer hurricanes Helene, Harvey and Sandy.
The area of the U.S. being hit by extreme weather in the past five years has doubled from 20 years ago, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s , which includes various types of wild weather, such as heat and cold waves, downpours and drought.
The United States is breaking 77% more hot weather records now than in the 1970s and 19% more than the 2010s, according to an AP analysis of NOAA records. In the United States, the number and average cost of inflation-adjusted in the last couple years is twice as high as just 10 years ago and nearly four times higher than 30 years ago, according to records kept by NOAA and Climate Central, a nonprofit group of scientists and communicators who research and report on climate change.
Trying to keep up with extremes and failing
鈥淚t鈥檚 really hard to even keep up with how extreme our extremes are becoming,鈥� said Climate Central Chief Meteorologist Bernadette Woods Placky. 鈥淚t鈥檚 changing our risk, it鈥檚 change our relationship with weather, it鈥檚 putting more people in risky situations and at times we鈥檙e not used to. So yes, we are pushing extremes to new levels across all different types of weather.鈥�
For government officials who have to deal with disaster it’s been a huge problem.
Craig Fugate, who directed the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2017, said he saw extremes increasing.
鈥淲e were operating outside the historical playbook more and more. Flood maps, surge models, heat records 鈥� events kept showing up outside the envelope we built systems around. That鈥檚 just what we saw,鈥� Fugate said via email.
He added: 鈥淲e built communities on about 100 years of past weather and assumed that was a good guide going forward. That assumption is starting to break. And the clearest signal isn鈥檛 the science debate. It鈥檚 insurers walking away.鈥�
鈥榁irtually impossible鈥� without climate change
Climate scientists at World Weather Attribution did a flash analysis 鈥� which is not peer-reviewed yet 鈥� of whether climate change was a factor in this Southwest heat wave. They compared this week’s expected temperatures to what’s been observed in the area in March since 1900 and computer models of a world with climate change. They found that 鈥渆vents as warm as in March 2026 would have been virtually impossible without human-induced climate change.鈥�
That warming, from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas, added between 4.7 degrees to 7.2 degrees F (2.6 to 4 degrees C) to the temperatures being felt, the report found.
鈥淲hat we can very confidently say is that human-caused warming has increased the temperatures that we鈥檙e seeing as a result of this heat dome, and it鈥檚 going to be pushing those temperatures from what would have been very uncomfortable into potentially dangerous,鈥� said report co-author Clair Barnes, an Imperial College of London attribution scientist.
Examples abound of high heat and extreme weather
The Southwest heat wave is solidly in the category of 鈥済iant events,鈥� with temperatures up to 30 degrees Fahrenheit (16.7 degrees Celsius) above normal, said Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field.
He listed five others in the last six years: a 2020 Siberia heat wave, that had British Columbia warmer than Death Valley, the summer of 2022 in North America, China and Europe, a 2023 western Mediterranean heat wave and a 2023 South Asian heat wave with high humidity.
And that doesn’t include the when temperatures were 81 degrees (45 degrees Celsius) warmer than normal. That’s the biggest anomaly recorded, said weather historian Chris Burt, author of the book 鈥淓xtreme Weather.鈥�
Worsening wild weather influenced by climate change isn’t just superhot days, but includes deadly hurricanes, droughts and downpours, scientists told AP.
Devastating floods hit and . Iran is in the midst of a . And the deadly hitting the Philippines in 2013 shocked the world.
, which in 2012 flooded New York City and neighbors, had tropical storm-force winds that covered an area nearly one-fifth the area of the contiguous United States. It spawned 12-foot seas over 1.4 million square miles, about half the size of the U.S., with energy equivalent to five Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs, said Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters.
And don’t forget wildfires that are worsened by heat and drought, so recent extremes should include 2025’s Palisades and Eaton wildfires, which were the costliest weather disaster in the United States last year, said Climate Central meteorologist and economist Adam Smith.
鈥淭his is due to climate change, that we see more extreme events, and more intense ones and have so many records being broken,鈥� said Friederike Otto, an Imperial College of London climate scientist who coordinates World Weather Attribution.
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Associated Press reporter Hallie Golden contributed from Seattle.
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