The New York Times – The burning of fossil fuels is raising temperatures worldwide, but local factors, on land and at sea, determine which regions warm most rapidly: “Western Europe’s second record-shattering heat wave in a month aligns with a grim trend: For the past three decades, Europe has been warming faster than any other continent. Average temperatures there have climbed by roughly 1 degree Fahrenheit, or 0.56 degrees Celsius, per decade since the mid-1990s, more than double the pace of warming worldwide, according to Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. Emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases from human activity are driving the planet’s long-term increase in temperatures, which is helping hot spells reach ever-greater extremes of severity and duration. But local factors determine how all that excess heat is distributed around the world, and why temperatures are rising faster in some places than others. In Europe’s far-northern reaches, for instance, the warmer atmosphere is melting the sea ice that once covered huge swaths of the Arctic. That leaves more of the ocean’s bare, dark surface to absorb the sun’s energy, exacerbating warming in and around the top of the globe. Pollution controls are another factor behind how quickly Europe has heated up. Curbs on industrial emissions have been good for Europeans’ lungs but have also left fewer particles in the air called aerosols that can bounce solar radiation back into space. There’s also less snow on the ground to deflect the sun’s energy. Last year, the amount of ground covered by snow in Europe was, at its annual peak, about a third below average, according to Copernicus. The result is more exposed soil that can take up heat, especially in Scandinavia and the European part of Russia…”