US heatwave threatens 250th anniversary events and World Cup

The brief

The scorching heat blanketing much of the US this week would have been “virtually impossible” if not for the climate crisis, researchers have found, warning that the high temperatures could threaten Independence Day celebrations and World Cup matches this weekend. “The climate the country has today is fundamentally different to the one it had when the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence,” said Theodore Keeping, extreme weather and wildfire researcher at Imperial College London, in a press release. The analysis from World Weather Attribution, an international consortium of climate researchers, comes as a high-pressure system, or heat dome, brings hot and humid conditions to a large swath of the…