September 11, 2001. The 2008 housing market crash. The COVID-19 pandemic. All of these events appeared almost out of nowhere and caused catastrophe and chaos in our country. These are all examples of black swan events—occurrences that are beyond prediction and cause extreme consequences, and that people attempt to rationalize after the fact. But are they truly impossible to predict?
Data is the necessary ingredient when making predictions, but data from the past isn’t applicable because the circumstances of our climate are changing so rapidly. What we need is data from the future, which does not yet exist. Without the benefit of a time machine, our next best method of gathering theoretical future data is tapping into the wisdom of subject matter experts. In the case of predicting record temperatures, that means climate scientists, policymakers and researchers.
If we had asked 1,000 scientists to predict the highest possible temperatures for the next three years, we likely would have gotten 1,000 different answers. These would be educated guesses, but it’s the “educated” part that outweighs the “guesses” portion of the phrase. These predictions would be based on the culmination of years of study, training and science.