Record pollution and heat herald a season of climate extremes
Scientists have long warned that global warming will increase the chance of severe wildfires like those burning across Canada and heat waves like the one smothering Puerto Rico.
It’s not officially summer yet in the Northern Hemisphere. But the extremes are already here.
Fires are burning across the breadth of Canada, blanketing parts of the eastern United States with choking, orange-gray smoke. Puerto Rico is under a severe heat alert as other parts of the world have been recently. Earth’s oceans have heated up at an alarming rate.
Human-caused climate change is a force behind extremes like these. Though there is no specific research yet attributing this week’s events to global warming, the science is unequivocal that global warming significantly increases the chances of severe wildfires and heat waves like the ones affecting major parts of North America today.
Continue reading on New York Times.
The wildfires in Canada are abnormally early and widespread this year. What’s at play?
In recent years, the word “wildfire” has conjured heartbreaking images that became grimly predictable: California ablaze, from its mighty forests to gracious vineyards and traffic-clogged highways of fleeing people.
It’s different this year, as the East Coast chokes on smoke blown south from abnormally early and widespread wildfires in Canada. Pennsylvania and New Jersey are now facing critical risks of fire danger, and more broadly the Northeast and Midwest also face elevated risks of wildfires, while California is at lower risk thanks to a record-high snow pack from this past winter.
What’s at play, climate scientists said, is an atmosphere increasingly roiled by conditions that can unpredictably shift areas of drought to deluge, as has happened in California, only to sow drought and excessive heat in another.
Continue reading on The Boston Globe.
Is this the end of lettuce? Why Canada’s food supply is headed for uncharted territory
Approximately three quarters of all produce consumed in Canada is imported, and California supplies a major chunk of that. So Canadians feel it when California is hammered by drought, flooding and other weather extremes.
Picture the Titanic, except filled with lettuce instead of passengers. Now picture five Titanics filled with lettuce, plus another half-filled ship. Picture this armada of ships, laden with romaine, spring mix, red leaf, green leaf, and iceberg, all setting sail for Canada.
This is how much lettuce our country imports every year: 265,000 metric tons in 2022 alone.
Read more on The Toronto Star.
‘Murderers’ and ‘criminals’: Meteorologists face unprecedented harassment from conspiracy theorists
“Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.”
These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across one of its buildings.
Dr. Jennifer Francis – 2023’s symptoms of climate chaos, El Niño, ocean heatwaves, and Arctic sea ice lows
In this ClimateGenn episode I am speaking with Dr Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woods Hole Climate Research Center, in the US. 2023 has already seen record breaking temperatures in the atmosphere, land and oceans, with horrific impacts to human life, communities and ecology.
Here we focus on three factors in the climate system that drive these extremes and are still set to break more records, creating a great deal more destruction this year. We focus on the forming El Niño climate phenomenon, as well as ocean heatwaves, impacting the Atlantic and the North Pacific.
It’s already a large fire year in Canada: Weather watch
Fire season is underway in Canada. It tends to start early in Alberta and forests do burn, but the difference this year is one of scale: 2023 is an “already large fire year and it’s only mid-May,” said Brendan Rogers, an associate scientist who studies fires in Canada and Alaska’s boreal forests at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Continue reading on BNN Bloomberg.
Summit County Department of Health’s Climate Change and Public Health speaker series
The World Health Organization and other leading public health agencies recognize that climate change is growing public health challenge. Recently, the Summit County Department of Health launched a Climate Change and Public Health speaker series to talk about the issues. The first of the three-event program was May 9 and focused on environmental health.
Listen on KPCW’s This Green Earth.
What will happen when the permafrost thaws?
Since the Industrial Revolution nearly 150 years ago, global average temperatures have increased by more than 1 degree C (1.9 degrees F), with the majority of that warming occurring since 1975. But during these recent decades of accelerated warming, temperatures in the arctic (latitudes above 66 degrees north) have have been rising even faster – nearly four times faster than the average global rate.
Listen to the podcast on Climate Now.