It’s the summer of changed climate. Get used to it

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Here’s a hot take on the summer of 2023: The climate you grew up in is gone, replaced by something new and changing, but also inalterably different – where the Atlantic Ocean can reach hot-tub temperature, heat is a recurring public health concern and people will have to adapt their way of living.

In this year of epic heat, it’s time to start thinking about how the climate changed rather than the fact of its changing.

From a historical standpoint, we are in uncharted territory. This is not just the hottest month in human history. It may be the hottest month in 120,000 years, according to scientists in Europe.

Nearly half the US is under a heat advisory this week, and the country’s largest power grid was on alert.

The warnings that more fires, floods and storms would occur as the atmosphere heated up are here.

A large portion of the country has seen smoke come and go from those Canadian wildfires. Tourists in Greece were forced to flee in the country’s largest-ever evacuation.

Towns unused to flooding were under water this year in Vermont. Torrential rain flooded Boston’s Fenway park.

The West Coast of the US, for instance, has gotten a respite so far from wildfires thanks to epic rainfall earlier in the year.

But we can expect more heat more often. Asked by CNN’s Zain Asher about a heat index in Iran that approached 150 degrees Fahrenheit, Marina Romanello, executive director of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change, said to prepare for more.

“What we know is the heat will become much more intense, much more frequent, and that if we don’t act urgently to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, then the outlook will be very serious with, as you said,…