“This is what we expect on a warming planet,” says Andrew Pershing, a climate scientist at the nonprofit Climate Central. Europe, meanwhile, is facing its fifth major heat wave of the year this week, as climate change drives long-term increases in temperatures worldwide. Scientists have shown that human-caused climate change can make heat waves more likely to happen, as well as more intense — including this summer. Last month also saw notably high average daytime temperatures, which reached 89.5F. “The combination of massive heat domes, El Niño and climate change is a triple whammy,” Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, wrote in an email.