evidence: Records are crucial for people designing infrastructure and working in agriculture because they need to plan for the worst scenarios, said Russell Vose, climate analysis group director for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He also chairs a committee on national records. In the past 30 days, nearly 5,000 heat and rainfall records have been broken or tied in the U.S. and more than 10,000 records set globally, according to NOAA. Texas cities and towns alone have set 369 daily high temperature records since June 1. Since 2000, the U.S. has set about twice as many records for heat as those for cold. "Records go back to the late 19th century and we can see that there has been a decade-on-decade increase in temperatures," said Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, keeper of the agency’s climate records. "What’s happening now is certainly increasing the chances that 2023 will be the warmest year on record. My calculations suggest that there’s, right now, a 50-50 chance." The larger the geographic area and the longer stretch of time during which records are set, the more likely the conditions represent climate change rather than daily weather.