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☆ Drought That Snarled Panama Canal Was Linked to El Niño, Study Finds
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-01 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The recent drought in the Panama Canal was driven not by global warming but by below-normal rainfall linked to the natural climate cycle El Niño, an international team of scientists has concluded. Low reservoir levels have slowed cargo traffic in the canal for most of the past year. Without enough water to raise and lower ships, officials last summer had to slash the number of vessels they allowed through, creating expensive headaches for shipping companies worldwide. The area’s water worries could still deepen in the coming decades, the researchers said in their analysis of the drought. That means future El Niño years could bring even wider disruptions, not just to global shipping, but also to water supplies for local residents.

Persons: El Locations: Panama

☆ Dubai’s Extraordinary Flooding: Here’s What to Know
▼ + stars: | 2024-04-18 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Scenes of flood-ravaged neighborhoods in one of the planet’s driest regions have stunned the world this week. Heavy rains in the United Arab Emirates and Oman submerged cars, clogged highways and killed at least 21 people. Flights out of Dubai’s airport, a major global hub, were severely disrupted. The downpours weren’t a freak event — forecasters anticipated the storms several days out and issued warnings. officials said the 24-hour rain total on Tuesday was the country’s largest since records there began in 1949.

Organizations: United Arab Locations: United Arab Emirates, Oman, Dubai’s

☆ Are We in the ‘Anthropocene,’ the Human Age? Nope, Scientists Say.
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-05 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

The Triassic was the dawn of the dinosaurs. Is it time to mark humankind’s transformation of the planet with its own chapter in Earth history, the “Anthropocene,” or the human age? Not yet, scientists have decided, after a debate that has spanned nearly 15 years. Or the blink of an eye, depending on how you look at it. A committee of roughly two dozen scholars has, by a large majority, voted down a proposal to declare the start of the Anthropocene, a newly created epoch of geologic time, according to an internal announcement of the voting results seen by The New York Times.

Organizations: The New York Times

☆ Locust Swarms Could Expand Their Range in a Hotter, Stormier World
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-14 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Rising temperatures could expand the area of the globe under threat from crop-devouring locusts by up to 25 percent in the coming decades, a new study found, as more places experience the cycles of drought and torrential rain that give rise to biblical swarms of the insects. Desert locusts for millenniums have been the scourge of farmers across northern Africa, the Middle East and South Asia. They love hot, dry conditions, but they need the occasional downpour to moisten the soil in which they incubate their eggs. Human-caused warming is heating up the locusts’ home turf and intensifying sporadic rains there. That is exposing new parts of the region to potential infestations, according to the study, which was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

Persons: ” Organizations: National University of Singapore Locations: Africa, East, South Asia

☆ Have We Crossed a Dangerous Warming Threshold? Here’s What to Know.
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-08 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

That number carries special significance in the international effort to stop dangerous climate change. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, nations agreed to try to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared with preindustrial times, or at least to keep it comfortably below 2 degrees Celsius. The latest temperature data doesn’t mean we’ve already passed that lower limit. It might be helpful to start with what they aren’t, which is thresholds encoded somewhere in the laws of nature. Instead, they represent warming levels that would bring consequences that are unacceptably difficult for societies to manage, as decided and agreed upon by the nearly 200 nations that signed the Paris accord.

Locations: European, Paris

☆ 2024 Begins With More Record Heat Worldwide
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-07 | by ( Raymond Zhong | Elena Shao | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

It was the hottest January on record for the oceans, too, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. Sea surface temperatures were just slightly lower than in August 2023, the oceans’ warmest month on the books. And sea temperatures kept on climbing in the first few days of February, surpassing the daily records set last August. The oceans absorb the great majority of the extra heat that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere trap near Earth’s surface, making them a reliable gauge of how much and how quickly we are warming the planet. Warmer oceans provide more fuel for hurricanes and atmospheric river storms and can disrupt marine life.

☆ Six Spongy Sea Creatures Suggest Warming Might Be Worse Than Thought
▼ + stars: | 2024-02-05 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Networks of satellites and sensors have measured the rising temperatures of recent decades with great precision. But to assess the full arc of global warming, scientists typically combine this data with 19th-century thermometer readings that were often spotty and inexact. By examining the chemical composition of their skeletons, which the creatures built up steadily over centuries, the researchers have pieced together a new history of those earliest decades of warming. And it points to a startling conclusion: Humans have raised global temperatures by a total of about 1.7 degrees Celsius, or 3.1 Fahrenheit, not 1.2 degrees Celsius, the most commonly used value. “It’s a bit of a wake-up call,” said Malcolm T. McCulloch, a geochemist at the University of Western Australia and one of the scientists who worked on the new research.

Persons: ”, Malcolm T, McCulloch Organizations: . Networks, University of Western Locations: Caribbean, University of Western Australia

☆ Climate Change’s Effects Are Worsening Across U.S., but Solutions Are in Reach
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-14 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The report issued Tuesday, the National Climate Assessment, is the government’s premier compilation of scientific knowledge on what this means for the country and how Americans are responding. The new assessment, the fifth of its kind, shows “how climate change is affecting us here, in the places where we live, both now and in the future,” she said. Human-driven warming is intensifying wildfires in the West, droughts in the Great Plains and heat waves coast to coast. It is causing hurricanes to strengthen more quickly in the Atlantic and loading storms of all kinds with more rain. So far this year, the nation has experienced a record 25 billion-dollar weather disasters, many of them exacerbated by the hotter climate.

Persons: ”, Katharine Hayhoe Organizations: Texas Tech University Locations: United States, West, Great

☆ Window for Meeting Key Climate Goal Is Even Narrower Than Thought
▼ + stars: | 2023-10-30 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Already, human activity has raised average global temperatures by about 1.2 degrees Celsius relative to preindustrial conditions. The most promising paths for avoiding 1.5 degrees are clearly gone, Joeri Rogelj, a climate scientist at Imperial College London who worked on the new projections, said at a news briefing. “And they have been gone for a while, to be honest,” he added. Even so, having an up-to-date picture of emissions and warming can still help governments figure out how to meet less ambitious climate goals, including the Paris pact’s second-best limit of 2 degrees Celsius. Every extra increment of warming increases the risk of dangerous heat waves, floods, crop failures, species extinctions and wildfires.

Persons: Joeri Organizations: Imperial College London, Paris Locations: Paris

For the better part of an hour, he might be the only person. Mr. Haugen has worked for more than half of his 52 years as a fire lookout, scanning the larch and pine wilderness from a one-room mountaintop cabin. More and more, he stands at another divide, too: between human jobs and automation. The chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Randy Moore, told lawmakers in March that the agency was moving away from humans in watchtowers. “We need to lean much further into the technology arena,” he said.

Persons: Leif Haugen, Haugen, mutt, Ollie, Randy Moore, ” Organizations: U.S . Forest Service Locations: Montana, West

Higher winds. In a 2018 paper, Dr. Kossin wrote that hurricanes over the United States had slowed 17 percent since 1947. Dr. Kossin likened the problem to walking around your back yard while using a hose to spray water on the ground. Because warmer water helps fuel hurricanes, climate change is enlarging the zone where hurricanes can form. There is a “migration of tropical cyclones out of the tropics and toward subtropics and middle latitudes,” Dr. Kossin said.

Persons: ”, James P, Kerry Emanuel, “, Kossin, “ you’ll, Emanuel, Dr Organizations: National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, Hurricanes, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, National Hurricane Center, Researchers Locations: United States, subtropics, Japan

☆ Hot Ocean Temperatures Could Give Hurricane Idalia a Boost
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-29 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

As Hurricane Idalia charges toward Florida, one factor that could amplify its effects on coastal communities is the unusually warm water in the Gulf of Mexico, which is partly the result of the sultry weather that has been smothering the South all summer. “Holy cow has it been hot down here,” said Brian Dzwonkowski, a marine scientist at the University of South Alabama and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab. Really hot water. And that’s not a good combination for hurricane season.”Earth’s oceans have been hotter in recent months, by a considerable margin, than at any other time in modern history. In July, a buoy off the Florida coast reported a hot-tub-like reading of 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit, or more than 38 Celsius, a possible world record for sea surface temperatures.

Persons: ”, Brian Dzwonkowski Organizations: University of South Locations: Florida, Gulf of Mexico, University of South Alabama, Dauphin

☆ Warming Set the Stage for Canada’s Record Fires, Study Finds
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-22 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

So far this year, fires have ravaged 37 million acres across nearly every Canadian province and territory. That’s more than twice as large as the amount of Canadian land that burned in any other year on record. Tens of thousands of people — including most of Yellowknife, the capital of the Northwest Territories — have fled their homes. The way fires spread and grow is shaped by the structure and composition of the forests and landscape. This likelihood is at least double what it would be in a hypothetical world without human-caused climate change, they said.

Organizations: Northwest, Northwest Territories — Locations: Canada, Canadian, Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Atlanta

☆ A Tropical Storm in August? California’s Year of Extremes Grinds On
▼ + stars: | 2023-08-19 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For California, where punishing droughts over the past two decades have shriveled crops and caused wells to run dry, it has been another year of extremes. It started with winter storms that drenched cities and towns, buried the Sierra Nevada in snow and caused an enormous long-vanished lake to reappear in the Central Valley. All of this is quite a turnaround from the past three years, the state’s driest on record, when officials were imposing strict controls to save water. Hilary, which forecasters say could weaken to a tropical storm by the time it makes landfall in California, has no direct meteorological connection with the storms from early this year. But, taken together, they reinforce a key maxim about the weather in California: There’s no such thing as an average year — only very wet, or very dry.

Persons: Hilary Locations: California, Sierra Nevada, Central, Southern California

☆ This Looks Like Earth’s Warmest Month. Hotter Ones Appear to Be in Store.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-27 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

Weeks of scorching summer heat in North America, Europe, Asia and elsewhere are putting July on track to be Earth’s warmest month on record, the European Union climate monitor said on Thursday, the latest milestone in what is emerging as an extraordinary year for global temperatures. Last month, the planet experienced its hottest June since records began in 1850. July 6 was its hottest day. And the odds are rising that 2023 will end up displacing 2016 as the hottest year. At the moment, the eight warmest years on the books are the past eight.

Persons: ” Petteri Taalas, El Niño Organizations: World Meteorological Organization Locations: North America, Europe, Asia, European

☆ Warming Could Push the Atlantic Past a ‘Tipping Point’ This Century
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-25 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The last time there was a major slowdown in the mighty network of ocean currents that shapes the climate around the North Atlantic, it seems to have plunged Europe into a deep cold for over a millennium. That was roughly 12,800 years ago, when not many people were around to experience it. A pair of researchers in Denmark this week put forth a bold answer: A sharp weakening of the currents, or even a shutdown, could be upon us by century’s end. It was a surprise even to the researchers that their analysis showed a potential collapse coming so soon, one of them, Susanne Ditlevsen, a professor of statistics at the University of Copenhagen, said in an interview. Climate scientists generally agree that the Atlantic circulation will decline this century, but there’s no consensus on whether it will stall out before 2100.

Persons: Susanne Ditlevsen Organizations: University of Copenhagen Locations: Europe, Denmark

☆ The Human Age Has a New Symbol. It’s a Record of Bomb Tests and Fossil Fuels.
▼ + stars: | 2023-07-11 | by ( Raymond Zhong | More About Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

For almost 15 years, a panel of scholars has been chewing over a big question: Has our species transformed the planet so much that we have plunged it into a new interval of geologic time? On Tuesday, the panel announced a key part of its case for declaring that we had. The group said it had chosen a secluded lake in Ontario to represent the start of Anthropocene epoch, a potential new chapter in Earth’s 4.6-billion-year history that could soon sit alongside the Cambrian, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous in marking periods of momentous planetary change. The scientists picked Crawford Lake over 11 other candidate sites because it contained the clearest and most pronounced evidence of humankind’s influence on the global geologic record, representatives for the group said at a news briefing in Lille, France. This evidence includes sharp changes in plutonium and radiocarbon from nuclear detonations, and in fly ash from accelerated burning of fossil fuels.

Persons: Crawford Organizations: Crawford Lake Locations: Ontario, Earth’s, Lille, France

Since the mid-20th century, the ground between the city surface and the bedrock has warmed by 5.6 degrees Fahrenheit on average, according to a new study out of Northwestern University. “All around you, you have heat sources,” said the study’s author, Alessandro F. Rotta Loria, walking with a backpack through Millennium Station, a commuter rail terminal underneath the city’s Loop district. “These are things that people don’t see, so it’s like they don’t exist.”It isn’t just Chicago. In big cities worldwide, humans’ burning of fossil fuels is raising the mercury at the surface. But heat is also pouring out of basements, parking garages, train tunnels, pipes, sewers and electrical cables and into the surrounding earth, a phenomenon that scientists have taken to calling “underground climate change.”

Persons: ”, Alessandro F, Rotta Organizations: Northwestern University . Locations: “, Chicago

☆ The Crises of Heat and Smoke Share a Common Thread: Climate Change
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( Raymond Zhong | Delger Erdenesanaa | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Between the dangerous heat baking Texas and the Southeast, and the wildfire smoke filling the skies throughout the Upper Midwest and into the Mid-Atlantic, people across a huge part of the United States have been seeking relief from the outside world in recent days. The two threats this week aren’t connected directly. But a common factor is adding to their capacity to cause misery. Human-caused climate change is turning high temperatures that would once have been considered improbable into more commonplace occurrences. And it is intensifying the heat and dryness that fuel catastrophic wildfires, allowing them to burn longer and more ferociously, and to churn out more smoke.

Locations: Texas, Midwest, United States

☆ Something Was Messing With Earth’s Axis. The Answer Has to Do With Us.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-28 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: 1 min

Around the turn of the millennium, Earth’s spin started going off-kilter, and nobody could quite say why. For decades, scientists had been watching the average position of our planet’s rotational axis, the imaginary rod around which it turns, gently wander south, away from the geographic North Pole and toward Canada. Suddenly, though, it made a sharp turn and started heading east. Accelerated melting of the polar ice sheets and mountain glaciers had changed the way mass was distributed around the planet enough to influence its spin. Now, some of the same scientists have identified another factor that’s had the same kind of effect: colossal quantities of water pumped out of the ground for crops and households.

Persons: that’s Locations: Canada

☆ Intensifying Rains Pose Hidden Flood Risks Across the U.S.
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-26 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

As climate change intensifies severe rainstorms, the infrastructure protecting millions of Americans from flooding faces growing risk of failures, according to new calculations of expected precipitation in every county and locality across the contiguous United States. The calculations suggest that one in nine residents of the lower 48 states, largely in populous regions including the Mid-Atlantic and the Texas Gulf Coast, is at significant risk of downpours that deliver at least 50 percent more rain per hour than local pipes, channels and culverts might be designed to drain. “The data is startling, and it should be a wake-up call,” said Chad Berginnis, the executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers, a nonprofit organization focused on flood risk. The new rain estimates, issued on Monday by the First Street Foundation, a nonprofit research group in New York, carry worrying implications for homeowners, too: They indicate that 12.6 million properties nationwide face significant flood risks despite not being required by the federal government to buy flood insurance.

Persons: ”, Chad Berginnis Organizations: Texas Gulf, Association of, First Street Foundation Locations: United States, New York

☆ Here’s How Much Hotter Than Normal This June Has Been
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-13 | by ( Elena Shao | Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

64° F June 11, 2023 62° 2022 60° 1979-2021 58° Global Daily Average Air Temperatures 56° 54° 52° 50° Jan. 1 Mar. “We’re putting heat into the system — through climate change, through the greenhouse effect — and that heat is going to manifest. NOAA last month said there was a 40 percent chance that this year’s hurricane season would be near normal. But it also assigned 30 percent probabilities to the season’s being above or below normal. There’s another factor that could also have made the world hotter recently, though it’s not clear how much.

Persons: ” Rick Spinrad, “, Spinrad, El Niño, it’s, Daniel L, Swain, Dr, ” Organizations: University of Maine, National Centers for, National Oceanic, Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, University of California Locations: Canada, United States, Siberia, Antarctica, El, Pacific, Tonga, Los Angeles

☆ It’s Called the Grand Canyon, Not the Eternal Canyon
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

When I was there with the scientists, we talked about this human dent, but we also talked a lot about geology. About how mundane, ever-churning forces like plate tectonics, weather and gravity, when applied over long enough time scales, can cause colossal changes to landscapes and rocks. At any point in time, the world we see is somewhere in between being created and being destroyed. The Grand Canyon as we know it is pretty young by geologic standards, only about six million years old. You can read my full article from the canyon here.

Persons: you’re, they’re Locations: Colorado

☆ The Grand Canyon, a Cathedral to Time, Is Losing Its River
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Raymond Zhong | Elena Shao | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +19 min

And yet, the Grand Canyon remains yoked to the present in one key respect. The Colorado River, whose wild energy incised the canyon over millions of years, is in crisis. Down beneath the tourist lodges and shops selling keychains and incense, past windswept arroyos and brown valleys speckled with agave, juniper and sagebrush, the rocks of the Grand Canyon seem untethered from time. The Grand Canyon is a planetary spectacle like none other — one that also happens to host a river that 40 million people rely on for water and power. At Mile 0 of the Grand Canyon, the river is running at around 7,000 cubic feet per second, rising toward 9,000 — not the lowest flows on record, but far from the highest.

Persons: windswept, Davis, John Weisheit, ”, “, Mead Hoover, Powell, Daniel Ostrowski, Victor R, Baker, . Baker, Lake Powell, Dr, Ed Keable, wouldn’t, Jack Schmidt, Schmidt, ’, Alma Wilcox, “ There’s, we’ve, Nicholas Pinter Organizations: Rockies, York Times, University of California, Utah Glen, Lake, Mead, Recreation, Hualapai, CALIF, ARIZ . Utah Glen, Lake Mead, Area, Forest Utah, Engineers, University of Arizona, of Reclamation, National Park Service, Center, Colorado River Studies, Utah State University Locations: Colorado, The Colorado, North America, Utah, Powell, Lake Mead, Arizona, . UTAH COLO, N.M, ARIZ . Utah, Mead, NEV . UTAH COLO, Glen, ARIZ, Hopi, Nevada, Lake Powell, Arizona , California , Nevada, Mexico, Davis, Little Colorado, tamarisk, gesturing

☆ Arctic Summer Could Be Practically Sea-Ice-Free by the 2030s
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-06 | by ( Raymond Zhong | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +1 min

The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, according to a new scientific study — about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted. The peer-reviewed findings, published Tuesday, also show that this milestone of climate change could materialize even if nations manage to curb greenhouse gas emissions more decisively than they are currently doing. Earlier projections had found that stronger action to slow global warming might be enough to preserve the summer ice. The latest research suggests that, where Arctic sea ice is concerned, only steep, sharp emissions cuts might be able to reverse the effects of the warming already underway. “We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” said Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany and one of the new study’s five authors.

Persons: ”, Dirk Notz, “ We’ve Organizations: University of Hamburg Locations: Germany

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