This article linked at the bottom of this addresses climate and misleading data (whether intentional or not). The motivation for this article is a tweet/graph put out by Chris Martz, who I consider to be very smart but also outspoken/arrogant and who I’ve found to be 100% wrong at times as I’ve pointed out.
Chris’ graph tries to downplay GW by saying that the frequency of US 95F+ highs has decreased 1961-2020 vs 1901-1960. He tweeted on 7/18/26:
“Thankfully I have numbers rather than opinions. The average number of days per year in the U.S. reaching 95°F was ~18% lower during the 60-year period 1961 to 2020 compared to 1901 to 1960.The number of days reaching 100°F and 105°F have also declined since 1895.”
https://x.com/ChrisMartzWX/status/2078566117711196362
The following article is a response to this tweet.
JUL 22, 2026
“First, the Dust Bowl was real, and it remains the benchmark for multi-year extreme daytime heat in the central US, in adjusted and unadjusted data alike.”
“Second, it was a regional phenomenon”
“Third, raw daily data is the wrong tool for this question. Time of observation changes and the 1980s switch to MMTS sensors both suppress modern hot day counts relative to the past, and the raw and homogenized series diverge almost exactly when the instrument transition happened. In homogenized data, recent decades rival the 1930s even averaged nationally.”
“Fourth, hot days above a fixed threshold are a narrow and noisy way to look at the data. The overall US warming trend (around 0.5F per decade since 1970 in max, min, and mean temperatures) is robust in every dataset, raw or adjusted, satellite or surface. And globally, days above 95F have been climbing steadily for a century, with no Dust Bowl bump at all: the central US is one of the few spots on the planet where the mid-20th century still holds the record for extreme daytime heat.”
“The viral chart is built from real measurements, and the heat it shows was real too. But it takes a regional catastrophe, fails to account for changes in instruments and observation times, and presents the result as a national climate verdict. Accounting for the thermometers and the geography, and the US looks a lot like the rest of the planet: the hottest days on record are increasingly the ones we are living through now.”
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/hot-days-cold-thermometers
Climate Research Lead, Stripe; Breakthrough Senior Fellow
Zeke Hausfather is a climate scientist and energy systems analyst whose research focuses on observational temperature records, climate models, and mitigation technologies. He spent 10 years working as a data scientist and entrepreneur in the cleantech sector, where he was the lead data scientist at Essess, the chief scientist at C3.ai, and the cofounder and chief scientist of Efficiency 2.0. He also worked as a research scientist with Berkeley Earth, was the senior climate analyst at Project Drawdown, and the US analyst for Carbon Brief. He has masters degrees in environmental science from Yale University and Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a PhD in climate science from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Zeke is a smart guy with lots of degrees but the article that you copied shows he needs to go back to school to learn more in order to better understand agronomy, soil moisture and the physics of greenhouse gas warming using quantum mechanics and thermodynamics IN THE REAL WORLD!!!
1. The 1930s daytime heat was every bit as intense as measured. It was not partly an artifact of flawed instrumentation.
Figure 3. U.S. Annual HeatWaveIndex, 1895–2021
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/North-Americas-Most-Intense-Heat-Wave-July-and-August-1936
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Why was the heat so much hotter that particular year??
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While this period above was the HOTTEST and DRIEST of the 1930's, the same exact principle/physical law applied for the rest of that decade. The drier the soil is, the more of the sun's UV radiation will go directly into heating the air above the ground and the less radiation will go towards evaporating moisture.
The drier the soils, the hotter the Summer DAYTIME readings will be and this turns into a positive reinforcement as that intense heat dries out the soils even more and causes the air masses to lack moisture when fronts come thru. Drought begets drought.
Zeke doesn't understand what photosynthesis does to REDUCE daytime heating!!!
Air above bare, dry soils heat the greatest. Vegetation reduces DAYTIME heating from several factors.
1. Evapotranspiration!
2. Shading of soils
3. Less absorption of the heat. In fact, photosynthesis converts the heat/kinetic energy from UV radiation into stored/potential/chemical energy. This can be used for food or for burning fuel, when the heat energy comes back out.
Farmers have become extremely good at planting corn in much more tightly packed rows during the past 6 decades across a massive area covering the Midwest. This has created a micro climate that's PROTECTING us from severe droughts and causing a crystal clear drop in 95+ high temperatures.
We've only had 1 widespread, severe long lasting drought in the Cornbelt since 1988, in 2012. This is mind boggling.
We can see this pattern here
Climate change in the United States, with 100% certainty is helping to protect us from widespread severe droughts.
Summer Climate Change in the Midwest and Great Plains due to Agricultural Development during the Twentieth Century
https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/32/17/jcli-d-19-0096.1.xml
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https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/04/03/us-heatwaves-much-worse-in-past/
Ironically, humans burning fossil fuels, warming the entire planet are also helping to protect us from the widespread Dust bowls that happened because of cooler global temperatures and lower CO2 levels in the 1800's.
Global cooling and LOW CO2 levels are what cause MORE widespread, extremely long lasting droughts with catastrophic global and huge regional famines!
Causes and consequences of nineteenth century droughts in North America
https://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/drought/nineteenth.shtml
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You want a REAL climate CRISIS?
This is what it looks like:
Can you imagine if this below happened today? It's less likely because climate change and the current climate OPTIMUM is helping to PROTECT US!
The planet had a REAL climate crisis between 1876 and 1878.
50 million people died. 3% of the global population died from that real climate crisis!
https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2017/12/15/causes-great-famine-drought/
The Great Famine killed an estimated 12 to 29 million people in India. Image
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2017AGUFMGC51F..04S/abstract
The 1876-1878 Great Famine impacted multiple regions across the globe including parts of Asia, Nordeste Brazil, and northern and southern Africa, with total human fatalities exceeding 50 million people, arguably the worst environmental disaster to befall humanity.
NASA EXPLAINS THE DUST BOWL DROUGHT
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2004/0319dustbowl.html
Additionally, I've mentioned this one numerous times this year during recent heat waves.
CO2 is mainly impacting dry places the most. COLD=DRY. DESERTS=DRY.
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The reason for this is the physics of how greenhouse gas warming takes places via the absorption of the heat at various radiation bands.
Re: Re: 6-25-26 MAJOR heat(humidity) wave coming next week
By metmike
Much appreciated, Larry!
Here's another reason why most of the temperature forecasts in the humid areas with wet soils are busting from being too high and one of the things that guys like Jeff, apparently don't understand about the physics of the atmosphere in the very humid areas compared to dry areas.
We discussed this at length about why the West and deserts are warming faster than other regions at the same latitude. The highest/coldest/driest areas of the Northern Hemisphere are warming the fastest. H2O swamps CO2 at several radiation absorption bands that they have in common when its warm and humid. Low H2O means that radiation absorption band has room for CO2 to absorb additional heat radiation.
High H2O means LESS room for heat absorption at numerous radiation bands. So very warm, humid air masses WARM THE LEAST from CO2 greenhouse gas warming. Cold/dry the most.
This is why the warming has mostly been in the higher latitudes(and DESERTS).
Not that much heating from CO2 during heat waves that feature extremely high humidity, like this one.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Longwave_Absorption_Coefficients_of_H2O_and_CO2.svg
So this current heat wave is almost entirely from natural variation. No contribution from the developing El Nino and very little impact in the humid areas from climate change.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture and that is a positive feedback for additional green house gas warming from the extra H2O.
However, higher moisture also reduces the warming from CO2 at some radiation bands.
it sounds confusing and there’s uncertainty As well as how will imoact global warming.
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So another point here is that in the 1930's, the bone dry soils in the Plains, Midwest and Ohio Valley made them similar to the DESERTS of the Southwest. As we all know, those deserts can hit 110 degrees from weather systems in the Midwest or south only feature a high temperature of 95!!
Also, those same areas today have the BIGGEST increase in moisture/H2O and this is almost saturating the CO2 radiation absorption bands.
The added moisture is also greatly contributing to much lower lifting condensation levels and MORE CUMULUS CLOUDS that at form in the afternoons.
Also, the population of the United States has tripled since the 1930's. I know that homogenization of the temperatures is supposed to factor that in but there is a much more pronounced heat island impact to the much larger urban areas compared to 90 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_United_States
Also, it's true that the Plains and Midwest may only represent 2% of the area of the planet, but it's the highest food producing with the most fertile soils and best weather on the entire planet!!!!
Mike said: “The 1930s daytime heat was every bit as intense as measured. It was not partly an artifact of flawed instrumentation.”
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Thanks, Mike!
From his article, Zeke agrees. But the rest of this paragraph states the problems with the way Martz used the raw data. He isn’t at all downplaying the DB’s extreme intensity. But he’s essentially saying that the way Martz presented the data is deceptive for the reasons Zeke stated:
“The 1930s Dust Bowl really was an extraordinary period of extreme heat in the US, and no amount of correction for changes in measurement techniques over time makes it go away. But the graph is also a case study in why you cannot naively count threshold exceedances in raw daily station data and call it a climate record. Its results rest on two well-documented thermometer problems that artificially depress modern hot day counts, plus a station network that happens to be oversampled where the Dust Bowl happened.”
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Wxfollower: Why early 20th century data vs late 20th/early 21st isn’t an apples to apples conparison:
1. The first is time of observation bias. Volunteer observers read and reset their max/min thermometers once a day. In the early 20th century most did so in the late afternoon, near the hottest part of the day. An afternoon reset means a very hot afternoon can get counted twice
2. The second is the thermometer switch. In the mid-1980s NOAA replaced liquid-in-glass thermometers in wooden Cotton Region Shelters with electronic maximum-minimum temperature sensors (MMTS) at most cooperative stations. Quayle et al (1991) showed the new sensors read maximum temperatures around 0.4C (0.7F) cooler than the old shelters.
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Zeke: regarding the above 2 issues
“The two datasets agree that the 1930s were exceptional. Where they disagree is the modern era: in the homogenized data, recent decades rival the Dust Bowl years CONUS-wide, with 2011 (16.1 days) actually edging out 1936 (14.0 days) as the biggest year in the Berkeley Earth series.”
Thanks, Larry. Yes I read that.
Here's more:
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/pub/data/ushcn/papers/quayle-etal1991.pdf
The biggest factor for the extreme highs in the 1930's by a wide margin was NOT that(maybe responsible for as much as 1 deg. F and the other XX degrees in the hottest days during that period was from what I explained.
The Plains and Midwest had bare, bone dry soils. Exactly like the soils in the Desert Southwest.
As a meteorologist that had to forecast the real world with wet Summer soils and dry Summer soils, for decades, I can tell you that almost everybody UNDER estimates this impact.
Models underestimate it. Meteorologists underestimate it when it's their backyard but extraordinarily dry or wet compared to what they are used to.
Every forecast in the Midwest in almost every location was too hot for the entire heat wave here because of our wet soils.
During the 2012 widespread drought, highs exceeded the forecast almost every day because of the dry soils.
The opposite impact has been happening in recent decades. Extreme heat in the Summer is LESS in the Midwest because of vegetation and evapotranspiration as farmers have created a beneficial micro climate.
The drought was pretty widespread at times, NOT just regional.
Note on the graph above that the extreme spikes higher have been greatly reduced since climate change kicked in the last several decades.
The higher soil moisture(vegetation) is keeping a lid on the extreme 95+ and 100+ temperatures that were so common in the past.
I can agree with him on this below but the dynamic is DIFFERENT in the Plains/Midwest.
One of the biggest reasons for that area to be so productive year after year, with massive crop yields is the unique location with access to the Gulf of Mexico, loaded with H2O.
Not just higher humidity(crowding out/overlapping CO2 radiation absorption bands but keeping soils moist).
Most inland locations around the planet are not so fortunate. They are drier and not covered in crops so the increase in CO2 adds more daytime heat(even though it's temperatures at night that have warmed the most on the planet).
And the difference between the cooling highs in the Midwest and the MUCH HOTTER highs in the (DRY) West couldn't be more pronounced.
But we are focusing on the Midwest/Plains in this discussion.
Please note the all time state record high temperatures below.
Despite the thermometer change in 1980, the MAJORITY of states in the Rockies/West have set new all time state record high temperatures.
East of that, almost none of them have. And keep in mind, the majority of records were in the 1930's using the same "hotter" thermometers they had been using for 40 years before that and 40 years after that.
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=1286600839489433&set=a.232272598255601
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_and_territory_temperature_extremes
The changing thermometers in 1980 couldn't have also REDUCED THE WIDESPREAD DROUGHTS in the cornbelt.
As mentioned, since 1988 we've only had 1 severe Midwest drought(2012) which was also by no coincidence the hottest Summer since the 1930's, BECAUSE OF THE VERY SEVERE DROUGHT, no matter what type of thermometer they were using or how much CO2 was in the air.
If you reduce droughts, you reduce extreme Summer heat. The 1930's was the decade with the most drought by an extremely wide margin.
Since 1988, the Plains and Midwest have had the LEAST amount of drought in our recorded history, by a wide margin. This, by an extremely wide margin is why extreme high temps have dropped off.
Thanks, Mike! I appreciate your getting us more knowledgeable about the importance of soil moisture in determining how high max temps get. The Midwest’s higher crop coverage/soil moisture has been a huge factor in keeping maxes down in recent decades! There’s no debate regarding that.
Be that as it may, do you agree with Zeke’s point that Chris Martz’s graph is misleading (whether or not intentionally so) for the reasons he stated? Do you disagree? Are you unsure?
YW, Larry!
Dry soils and dry AIR too. compared to moist soils and humid air.
I‘ll comment more tomorrow about everybody that posts stuff on this topic which has turned science into a battle between 2 sides that seem most focused on proving themselves right to audiences and convincing those audiences that we have a climate crisis and are killing the planet from the beneficial gas, CO2 which will continue to go up for the next 100 years(even though fossil fuels will start running out in less than 50 years). And we must act aggressively now or it will be too late to save the planet.
We have the other side that has a range of beliefs about how much warming has occurred and what the causes are. And what we should do or should not do. Unfortunately, that side includes a lot of true "deniers" that include those that don't think humans are contributing and absurdly, don't even believe in the physics of greenhouse gas warming from CO2.
I‘ll look at Chris’s stuff and comment more On Thursday.
