Where has all the rain gone? Bone-dry October strikes much of US
A bone-dry October is pushing nearly half of the United States into a flash drought, leading to fires in the Midwest and hindering shipping on the Mississippi River.
More than 100 different long-term weather stations in 26 states, including Alaska, are having their driest October on record, through Sunday, according to records by the Southern Regional Climate Center and Midwest Regional Climate Center. Cities that have had no measurable rain for October include New York, Houston, Dallas, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Sioux City, Iowa, along with normal dry spots such as Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix, National Weather Service records show.
The Y-K Delta’s permafrost could be entirely gone within decades
All over Alaska, perennially frozen ground, or permafrost, is melting. During a panel discussion at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in April, an ecologist said the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta is set to lose nearly all of its permafrost in the next two decades. And a warming climate is to blame.
“It’s bad news,” said Sue Natali, a Senior Scientist and leader of the Permafrost Pathways Initiative at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. The goal of the initiative is to help develop strategies to manage and adapt to the enormous impact permafrost thaw is having on Y-K Delta communities. “It’s worse if you don’t know, it’s worse if you don’t plan and it’s worse if you’re not part of the planning process,” she said.
In the US, state and federal governments regularly fight wildfires that threaten people and property, but Alaska’s Yukon Flats National Wildlife Refuge recently began piloting a novel strategy: putting out fires to prevent climate-warming carbon emissions from being released from trees and soils.
Read more on caryinstitute.org
Could a big hurricane whack New England? ‘More of a question of when than if.’
When Hurricane Helene blasted through western North Carolina in late September, devastating a region normally immune to severe damage from hurricanes, it woke up a wide swath of the country to a hard fact: We’re not as safe as we think.
That’s true in New England, too.
The nature of hurricanes has shifted as the planet warms due to climate change, with bigger, wetter, and stronger storms — something we’ve now seen happen twice in rapid succession, with Hurricane Milton following Helene.
Read more on The Boston Globe.
A new study, published in Nature Communications Earth and Environment and co-authored by researchers at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, Inc. (AER) and Woodwell Climate Research Center, finds that abnormally warm temperatures in the Arctic are associated with a higher likelihood of severe winter weather including cold-air outbreaks and heavy snowfall in Northern Hemisphere continents.
“When the Arctic atmosphere is warmer than normal, we see a much higher likelihood of extreme winter weather across much of Canada, the northern U.S. and northern Eurasia,” remarked lead author, Dr. Judah Cohen at AER. “The relationship is especially strong in the northeastern sections of the continents.”
“Even though we’re seeing cold records being broken less often as the globe warms, we’ll still see debilitating spells of severe winter weather,” added co-author Dr. Jennifer Francis at Woodwell Climate. “There will be plenty of ice, snow, and frigid air in the Arctic winter for decades to come, and that cold can be displaced southward into heavily populated regions during Arctic heat waves.”
Recent disruptive extreme winter weather events—such as the deadly Texas cold spell of February 2021—have occurred and will continue to occur in the future, wreaking havoc on infrastructure, human wellbeing, and ecosystems, especially in areas unaccustomed to and ill-equipped for dealing with winter extremes.
“The Arctic may seem irrelevant and far away to most folks, but our findings say the profound changes there are affecting billions of people around the Northern Hemisphere,” added Dr. Francis. To reverse these trends, “it will take bold and rapid actions to reduce our burning of fossil fuels and the build-up of heat-trapping gasses in the atmosphere, but the tools exist if we can muster the will.”
According to Francis, recent studies have theorized that rapid Arctic warming, a pace three-to-four times faster than the globe as a whole, may increase the likelihood of extreme weather events owing to a reduced north/south temperature difference. In addition, slower westerly winds of the jet stream lead to more frequent convoluted jet-stream configurations, which lead to unusual weather.
“Disruptions in the typically stable stratospheric polar vortex may also occur more often in a warming climate,” noted Cohen, “and we know hazardous winter weather is more likely during these disruptions.”
Nowhere in America is safe from climate-fueled storms and fires
Forecasters had warned for days that Hurricane Helene was likely to cause widespread devastation. But when the powerful storm struck Florida and barreled through the eastern US last week, killing more than 180 people and taking whole communities offline, it still managed to come as a shock.
Florida’s Big Bend, where Helene made landfall, previously went decades without a hurricane strike. In the past year or so, it has now seen three. The western half of North Carolina, once held up as a haven from the worst impacts of climate change, has been paralyzed by floods.
Destructive hurricanes like Helene highlight that catastrophic impacts from storms can extend far inland
Inland communities will increasingly need to prepare for impacts from storms.
Destructive hurricanes like Helene are a stark reminder that significant and devastating impacts from many major storms are not relegated to coastal cities and communities — inland regions often face catastrophic impacts too, experts are warning.
The Category 4 hurricane made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend region Thursday night before tracking north, leaving a wake of destruction over 400 miles in the days the followed.
