A heat wave that has broken records across the western United States is expected to worsen over the next few days. Temperatures have broken records across much of the western half of the country, with a high of 115 in Las Vegas and 119 in Phoenix on Saturday. San Antonio, Texas reached 108, a record for that city. Death Valley temperatures hovered around 124. The highest temperature ever recorded on Earth was 134, recorded in July of 1913 in Death Valley.
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Despite the fact that the brutal summer of 2003 brought withit the highest weather-related death toll in Europeanhistory, the catastrophe was largely ignored by the USmedia. Estimates of the dead range from 22,000 to 35,000,and now a scientific group is warning that such summerscould become the norm, and not just in Europe.

Until now, it has been impossible to tell the degree towhich heat generated by human activity has been responsible,as opposed to natural weather processes. However, PeterStott, of the UK Meterological Office’s Hadley Centre, andDaithi Stone and Myles Allen, of Oxford University have beenable, using extremely detailed data from thousands ofdifferent temperature sensors located across Europe, todetermine this, and their findings are sobering.
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