Why Looking at Average Temperatures Is a Bad Way to Think About Climate Change: Part 2

What averages hide: Where, when, with what consequences?

9 min readJun 28, 2023

A conceptual depiction of the distribution of warming levels across the planet, represented by a bell-shaped curve. Some locations will be must hotter than average (the right hand tail) and some will be much cooler. (the left-hand tail). The image also shows that climate migration is likely to be a significant flow from warming to cooler locations. — *Image laboriously hand-crafted by the author in Powerpoint (public domain clipart from* *Clipart Library* *and* *Clipground*).

In Part 1 of this post, I discussed why extreme temperatures distributed unevenly across the planet are more important than global average temperatures for understanding the effects of climate change on human civilization…

Why Looking at Average Temperatures Is a Bad Way to Think About Climate Change: Part 2

What averages hide: Where, when, with what consequences?

Written by Steve Genco