Hot town, summer in the city

The Lovin’ Spoonful song, which appropriately hit No 1 on Billboard in August 1966, irresistibly comes to mind while perusing the “Summer in the City: Hot and getting hotter” report from Climate Central. “Summers in the U.S. have been warming since 1970. But on average across the country cities are even hotter, and have been getting hotter faster than adjacent rural areas,” says the report. It says 57 of the 60 largest U.S. cities had measurable “heat island” effects over the past decade. In some cities, the peak temperature on a hot day was as much as 27 degrees higher than the surrounding rural areas. Cities also have an average of eight more days above 90 degrees than adjacent rural areas. Temperatures in rural areas were an average 2.4 degrees lower than the city.

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