Over the last few years, we have seen hundreds of warm temperature records in South Florida.
A new tool called the Climate Shift Index tries to figure out how climate change influences extremely hot days in any location.
The main ingredient of the CSI is carbon dioxide, which has exploded to numbers never before seen in human history over the last year.
As CO2 levels rise, the Earth’s temperature also rises because CO2 and other greenhouse gases trap heat on the Earth’s surface instead of letting it escape back into the atmosphere.
Stay informed about local news and weather during the hurricane season. Get the NBC 6 South Florida app for iOS or Android and pick your alerts.
The Climate Shift Index takes this into account by looking at a temperature before climate change and then how it increases after climate change.
For example, if the normal high is 90 degrees Fahrenheit and the forecast high is 94 degrees Fahrenheit, like what happened on September 7 in Miami, the CSI calculated that those very warm temperatures were three times as likely because of climate change.
That would be a CSI of +3.
