As the Pope Visits America, the Climate Sends its Own Clear Message

During his American introduction last week in Washington, D.C., Pope Francis addressed not only religion, but also a variety of pressing societal concerns. In particular, he spent more time encouraging action on climate change than he did on any other topic.

The pontiff’s global warming message couldn’t have been timelier, eloquently wrapping up a summer of astonishingly extreme weather. While global temperatures have been steadily rising over the past few decades, 2015 brought about a whole new set of spectacular, and ominous, global warming record breakers. Let’s review:

• Globally, 2015 will be the hottest year on record ‘by a mile’, according to climate experts.
• This is surpassing 2014 for record heat, which beat out 2010. This means the three warmest years on Earth in the last 135 years have happened in the past five years.
• August 2015 was Earth’s hottest August on record, beating August 2014, which previously held the title.
• July was also the hottest July recorded, and was in fact the hottest of the 1627 months that had happened since January 1880 (until August 2015, which then beat July).
• June, July and August combined to make the hottest global summer on record.
• Of the first eight months in 2015, six broke monthly temperature records: February, March, May, June, July and August were all the hottest of their months on record.

Nearly any way you slice it, temperatures in 2015 have been unprecedented. And these global temperature increases have meant devastating impacts locally and regionally.

• Glaciers worldwide, which supply drinking water for more than a billion people, have melted to the lowest ice mass in recorded history.
• Wildfires raging across at least eight states this summer have burned more 9 million acres, making this wildfire season the worst to-date.
• A study by scientists at Woods Hole found the drought in California is the most severe in more than a millennium, and scientists are confident the drought has been exacerbated by climate change.

The list keeps going.

Global climate talks in Paris are just two months away. In an unprecedented way, the head of the Catholic Church, Islamic leaders, CEOs of major food companies, and the world’s leading scientists are urging international action.