Arguments
Apartments on the outskirts of New Delhi, India. (Photo credit: Adam Cohn / It was 117 degrees Fahrenheit (47°C) in Tunisia in July, yet our colleague Manel Ben Khelifa could not turn on the air conditioning “because the electricity grid has been shut down,” she explained.
“The power company is trying to conserve energy during peak periods by doubling electricity prices to discourage people from using air conditioning, but it’s not working,” Ben Khelifa told us during a heat wave in July 2024.
“It’s so hot, people would rather turn off anything but the air conditioning,” she said. “So then the power company turns off the power. It’s OK for young people like me but for my babies and my father, who has health issues, it’s inhumane. It wasn’t like this when I was a girl. It’s getting hotter.”
Extreme heat has gotten worse in many places as the Earth has warmed due to our reliance on fossil fuels. And we can’t just air-condition our way out of the problem, as about 7% of global emissions of heat-trapping pollution come from burning fossil fuels to generate heat and cooling inside buildings. This percentage will only grow without a serious course correction, especially in the developing world, which is rapidly urbanizing.
Life in the Appalachians once felt ‘untouchable.’ Then Helene struck.
Posted on 15 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Tree Meinch
A person bicycles through floodwaters remaining from Hurricane Helene on October 4, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Hundreds of people were killed in six states in the wake of the powerful hurricane, which made landfall as a Category 4. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
You could say James Guill has been running from hurricanes for his whole life.
The New Orleans native was just two years old when Hurricane Katrina swallowed his city in 2005 and became the most costly hurricane in U.S. history, claiming 1,833 lives.
During and after the storm, Guill’s family evacuated and sheltered in Virginia for two months. Then they returned, salvaged their house, and spent nearly two more decades – enduring other life-threatening storms and evacuations – at sea level.
Guill’s mother, Terenia Urban Guill, calls her son a Katrina baby, in the same way young parents today call their 2020 kids COVID babies: the world-altering moment shaped and informed them in fundamental ways.
“I don’t have direct memories,” James Guill said of Katrina. “But I say it’s in my bones.”
His history with torrential rains, flooding, and roof-shearing winds influenced his trajectory straight out of high school. He enrolled at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where he’s studying environmental science.
“Being high up in the mountains felt a little bit untouchable,” Guill said. “It felt like one of the more secure areas.”
In recent years, many people have uprooted their lives to relocate to these mountains, driven by the growing risks of extreme weather events elsewhere. Asheville, North Carolina, has ranked high on lists of cities that some thought would be relatively shielded from climate change.
Hurricane Helene upended that understanding.
At least 230 people died across six states, nearly half of those in North Carolina, during the storm’s September 2024 rampage. Two weeks after Helene, many communities in the region remained without water or power. The devastation blindsided many residents, shaking their sense of climate security.
It’s a feeling that I know intimately. I grew up in western North Carolina before moving out of state to start my career.
Today, my hometown of Swannanoa looks like a wasteland. Semitrailers split open, spilling their innards across the muddy street above the Swannanoa River. Entire homes were swept from their foundations and ripped to pieces. Cars are still bent around mangled hardwoods.
Why have hurricanes gone crazy?
Posted on 14 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Kevin Trenberth
Have there been other years where multiple hurricanes hit Florida? That is one of the questions I am now getting. The answer is yes: in 2004, for instance.
The summer of 2004 was when four hurricanes made landfall in Florida, and the question was whether there was a human global warming role in the activity and thus the damage. To me it was obvious that there was.
I had worked extensively on climate change, and had connected the increases in sea surface temperatures, which were clearly and demonstrably linked to global warming, to increases in water vapor in the atmosphere.
This link is strong and physically based: over the oceans, where there is ample water at the surface, the water vapor goes up at 7% per 1C warming, the same rate as the atmosphere’s ability to hold water vapor. Accordingly, all storms reach out and gather in the available water vapor, which fuels the storm, and it rains harder. I reasoned that this should also apply to hurricanes.
None of this was reflected in any official 2004 NOAA statements on hurricanes and instead the extra activity was all attributed to natural variability. I agreed to participate in a news conference on the topic, set up by Harvard University, in which I cautiously suggested that yes, global warming was undoubtedly playing some role.
This led to a major outcry from the hurricane meteorologists, who were amazingly ill-informed about climate change matters. I did not answer the criticism directly, and instead published my views in a perspective in Science magazine in June 2005.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #41
Posted on 13 October 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Story of the week
For the third week in a row our Story of the Week involves hurricanes, most recently Hurricane Milton which led a brief life distinguished by explosive intensification, placing it as the Gulf of Mexico's most energetic late-season storm on record. The word cloud here captures the flavor of the past week's journalistic preoccupation with this storm as a feature related to and at least partially dependent on human-caused climate change.
Thanks to our increasing the efficiency of Earth's insulating blanket of greenhouse gases, we're having an affect on all features of the weather we experience. Unless we're to be mystified, surprised and needlessly harmed by bad weather we've added to our annual odds, it's important that we be able to distinguish our effects on the geophysics we experience as rain, wind, and the other features of our restless atmosphere that we call "weather." Fortunately there's an outfit doing exactly that, an initiative called World Weather Attribution (WWA). While the center of mass of WWA is academic in nature, the organization flips the usual sequence of publication; WWA analyses frequently feature as peer-reviewed publications in major academic journals, but their initial reporting is released as rapidly as possible, for the beneifit of ephemeral public attention.
Too late to make it into our collection of articles this week, WWA provided a detailed briefing on how Hurricane Milton was "upgraded" by our accidental tampering with our climate. In brief and as synopsized by Yale Climate Connections, here's what we know about Milton's juicing:
World Weather Attribution’s analysis found that storms with Milton’s wind speeds have become approximately 40% more frequent and the winds associated with storms of similar rarity have become nearly 11 mph (5 m/s) higher (an increase of about 10%) because of the 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3°F) of global warming since preindustrial times. Thus, without climate change, Milton would have hit Florida as a Cat 2 with 110 mph winds instead of a Cat 3 with 120 mph winds.
Bold ours. No analogy is perfect, but we all know that if we turn up the burner beneath a pot of soup the soup will seethe more vigorously. Similarly and unsurprisingly, as we turn up the temperature of the Earth we inhabit it follows that certain features of our atmosphere will tend to behave more kinetically, including hurricanes. We've followed hurricanes Helene and Milton and both followed this simple logic. In Helene's case we saw ample evidence not only of surprising intensification but also the effects of the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship, whereby slightly warmer air can carry and later dump disproportionately larger amounts of moisture.
The larger story of Milton is that of violent weather inhabiting expanded brackets we ourselves have set. Is there a conclusion to this narrative? Perhaps it's that we should try to narrow the span of those brackets back to "normal" variations.
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before October 6
- Greening of Antarctica Is Another Sign of Significant Climate Shift on the Frozen Continent, Science, Inside Climate News, Bob Berwyn. "New research documents accelerating plant growth on the Antarctic Peninsula and nearby islands."
- Why Hurricane Helene Could Finally Change the Conversation Around Climate Change The massive personal and economic toll of unexpected inland, Science, Inside Climate News, Interview by Steve Curwood, Living on Earth. "The massive personal and economic toll of unexpected inland flooding may represent a turning point."
- The UK coal-fired power station that became a giant battery, Future, BBC News, Michael Marshall. "With the closure of the last coal-fired power station in the UK, it raises questions about how old fossil fuel infrastructure can be repurposed. One option is to use them to store energy from renewables."
- Hurricane Helene Prompts Questions About Raising Animals in Increasingly Vulnerable Places, Science, Inside Climate News, Georgina Gustin. "Greenhouse gas emissions from livestock are growing. So are climate-fueled storms that pummel the industry."
- Will carbon capture help the UK tackle climate change?, Climate & Science, BBC News, Mark Poynting & Justin Rowlatt.
- Hurricane Helene is a humanitarian crisis – and a climate disaster, Comment os Free, The Guardian,, Opinion by Rebecca Solnit. "Behind the violence of extreme weather is that of the fossil fuel industry, and Americans are suffering for it"
- A warmer, sicker world': Mosquitoes carrying deadly diseases are on an unstoppable march across the US, BBC Future, David Cox. "malaria and dengue are gaining new ground in the US. The mosquitoes that carry these diseases are thriving in a warming world."
Fact brief - Is more CO2 a good thing because it’s plant food?
Posted on 12 October 2024 by Guest Author
Skeptical Science is partnering with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. This fact brief was written by Sue Bin Park from the Gigafact team in collaboration with members from our team. You can submit claims you think need checking via the tipline.
Is more CO2 a good thing because it’s plant food?
While CO2 is necessary for plant growth, the negative impacts of climate change, driven by man-made CO2 emissions, far outweigh short-term productivity gains.
Plants need a balance of CO2, sunlight, water, and nutrients. Though more CO2 can initially boost growth, rising temperatures, disease vulnerability, shifting land fertility, and increased water demands offset these benefits.
The UN warns that global crop yields could decline by up to 30% by 2050, while a 2017 meta-analysis linked each degree of warming to a 3-7% yield loss for key crops like corn and soybeans. Losses are also attributed to increased disease pressure from altered climates.
Raised CO2 levels can also lower food quality. Reviews found reduced levels of essential nutrients in staple crops, while protein concentrations in grains like wheat and rice dropped by 10-15%.
The rapid human-induced accumulation of CO2 is producing more negative than positive consequences—for plants and the Earth at large.
Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science or to the fact brief on Gigafact
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
Columbia Climate School How Climate Change Will Affect Plants
Scientific American Ask the Experts: Does Rising CO2 Benefit Plants?
Global Commission on Adaptation ADAPT NOW: A GLOBAL CALL FOR LEADERSHIP ON CLIMATE RESILIENCE
National Academy of Sciences Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates
Nature Climate change impacts on plant pathogens, food security and paths forward
Global Change Biology Effects of elevated CO2 on the protein concentration of food crops: a meta-analysis
PONIT and PLAAT: The FLICC poster now also available in Russian and Romanian
Posted on 11 October 2024 by BaerbelW
It is one of the most successful products of our German-language partner website klimafakten.de: a large-format infographic about typical disinformation strategies, not just in terms of climate. The poster has previously been available in eight languages, and now two more have been added. The new translations were produced with partners from Moldova and Russia.
If you are a regular user of our website, the abbreviation "FLICC" will certainly ring a bell. But you may also have seen it in connection with Covid-19 or the Cranky Uncle game or elsewhere on the Internet. In any case, the five letters stand for the five most common tricks used by disinformation campaigns: fake experts, logical fallacies, impossible expectations, cherry picking and conspiracy theories. Four and a half years ago, in April 2020, the collaboration between our team and klimafakten.de resulted in the initial publication of the poster in German ("PLURV") and English ("FLICC"). in addition to the digital online version, it's also available in A2 format on paper.
Over the years we have translated the graphic into six other languages: Dutch and Portuguese, Spanish and French, Luxembourgish and Polish. Now two more languages have been added: Russian and Romanian. And as with the previous versions, we have once again learned something about the respective target language. "Fake experts" are called "Psevdoyeksperty" in Russian and "Pseudi-Experti" in Romanian. "Logical fallacies" are called "Oshibki logiki" in Russia and "Logica Ernonatá" in Romania.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #41 2024
Posted on 10 October 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Manifold increase in the spatial extent of heatwaves in the terrestrial Arctic, Rantanen et al., Communications Earth & Environment:
It is widely acknowledged that the intensity, frequency and duration of heatwaves are increasing worldwide, including the Arctic. However, less attention has been paid to the land area affected by heatwaves. Here, using atmospheric reanalysis and global climate models, we show that the area covered by heatwaves is substantially expanding in the terrestrial Arctic. Compared to the mid-20th century, the total land area affected by severe heatwaves in the Arctic has doubled, the area of extreme heatwaves has tripled, and the area of very extreme heatwaves has quadrupled. Furthermore, climate model projections suggest that the extent of heatwaves will continue to increase in the 21st century, but with large regional differences in heatwave magnitudes due to summer intraseasonal temperature variability. Our findings underscore the growing vulnerability of the Arctic region to extreme heat, potentially leading to severe impacts on both ecosystems and societies.
Anomalous Arctic warming linked with severe winter weather in Northern Hemisphere continents, Cohen et al., Communications Earth & Environment:
We have extended a recently developed metric that ingests United States station data—the accumulated winter season severity index—to a global indicator based on temperature and snowfall from reanalysis output. The expanded index is analyzed to reveal relationships between Arctic air temperatures/pressures and the probability of severe winter weather across the Northern Hemisphere midlatitudes. Here we find a direct and quasilinear relationship between anomalously high Arctic temperatures/pressures and increased severe winter weather, especially in northeastern continental regions downstream of maximum regional Arctic warming. Positive temperature trends in the Arctic are associated with positive trends in severe winter weather across the continents in mid- to late-winter, coinciding with an increase in stratospheric polar vortex disruptions. During the era of rapid Arctic warming, variability has decreased over the Arctic Ocean and Europe, but has increased in Canada, the Northern US and northeast Asia, indicating more pronounced shifts in weather conditions.
Rightwing populist attitudes and public support for climate policies in Western Europe: Widening the scope using the European Social Survey, Kulin & Johansson Sevä, PLOS Climate:
In Western Europe, rightwing populist parties and their supporters frequently deny the realities of climate change and oppose climate policies. Meanwhile, public opinion research has tied ideological orientations associated with rightwing populism to climate change denial/skepticism and climate policy opposition. Yet, comprehensive studies assessing the relative importance of various rightwing populist orientations across national contexts are lacking. Using European Social Survey data (Round 8) from 15 Western European countries, we systematically investigate the relationships between a large set of orientations related to rightwing populism and public views about climate change. The results show that nationalism and nativism, that is, orientations associated with the thick ideology of rightwing populism, appear to be comparably strong and consistent predictors, especially regarding opposition to climate change mitigation policies. However, the relative importance of different orientations varies across Western European countries, and depend on whether the focus is on policy attitudes or climate change beliefs.
A multi-model assessment of inequality and climate change, Emmerling et al., Nature Climate Change:
Climate change and inequality are critical and interrelated issues. Despite growing empirical evidence on the distributional implications of climate policies and climate risks, mainstream model-based assessments are often silent on the interplay between climate change and economic inequality. Here we fill this gap through an ensemble of eight large-scale integrated assessment models that belong to different economic paradigms and feature income heterogeneity. We quantify the distributional implications of climate impacts and of the varying compensation schemes of climate policies compatible with the goals of the Paris Agreement. By 2100, climate impacts will increase inequality by 1.4 points of the Gini index on average. Maintaining global mean temperature below 1.5 °C reduces long-term inequality increase by two-thirds but increases it slightly in the short term. However, equal per-capita redistribution can offset the short-term effect, lowering the Gini index by almost two points. We quantify model uncertainty and find robust evidence that well-designed policies can help stabilize climate and promote economic inclusion.
The energy commons: A systematic review, paradoxes, and ways forward, Bauwens et al., Energy Research & Social Science:
The growing literature on energy commons suggests that reimagining energy as a common resource is critical for transitioning away from fossil fuel-based systems. However, conceptual and empirical fragmentation in this literature limits our understanding of energy commoning practices. Through a systematic review of 85 articles, we aim to unify the field by analyzing it across three dimensions: material, institutional, and cultural. Materially, we find a focus on energy production, distribution, and use, with less attention to renewable resource harvesting, upstream (e.g., mining), and downstream (e.g., waste management) operations. Institutionally, the emphasis is on local, community-driven initiatives and participatory governance, with limited exploration of multi-scale approaches and other institutional logics. Culturally, the research is centered on Western contexts, highlighting a need for broader geographic and theoretical perspectives. From our analysis, we identify five paradoxes in the literature: 1) inclusivity and exclusivity, 2) a Western focus and the pluriverse, 3) decentralization alongside the need for coordinated governance, 4) a focus on generation and distribution as well as a whole value chain approach, and 5) viewing commons as an alternative to capitalism while acknowledging their co-optation by capitalist systems
Context matters when evacuating large cities: Shifting the focus from individual characteristics to location and social vulnerability, Rufat et al., Environmental Science & Policy:
Recent studies have found inconclusive results on the determinants of evacuation-related decisions and have reported widely varying evacuation rates, especially in high-density areas. We use a large dataset of geotagged evacuation choices in Paris, France (n?=?2976) during a flood, to show that while they are rarely addressed, location, social vulnerability, length of residence, and hazard exposure are critical predictors. They can be used to infer the impact of previous experience on evacuation intentions, which is usually difficult to collect at scales relevant to decision-making. We address multiple evacuation choices over time that have previously been overlooked, including gradually self-fueling spontaneous evacuations after observations of peers evacuating or flooding proximity and post-impact evacuation due to infrastructure disruption. Our findings reveal that many people wait until their home is flooded to evacuate. The gap between the initial share of people leaving immediately and the minority refusing to leave in any case even after their housing is flooded gradually fills when considering different evacuation behaviors over time. Such chronology might explain the wide range of evacuation rates reported in the literature. However, people in vulnerable situations and with increased hazard exposure are more likely to declare that they would disregard evacuation instructions. One key implication is that policies aimed at reducing social vulnerability might be more effective than communication campaigns to increase preparedness and support evacuation.
From this week's government/NGO section:
Pan-Arctic Methane: Current Monitoring Capabilities, Approaches for Improvement, and Implications for Global Mitigation Targets, Ackermann et al., Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars/ Polar Institute
Arctic carbon emissions from thawing permafrost will accelerate the pace of global climate disruption and reduce the remaining headroom for direct human emissions before agreed global temperature targets are exceeded—the so-called “carbon budgets” for staying below, e.g., 1.5°C or 2.0°C above the pre-industrial global average surface temperature. The key questions are how much and how fast. The proportion of future Arctic carbon emissions that will be methane (CH4) rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) is of particular importance in determining the answers because of CH4’s much higher impact, per molecule, on global temperature over the next several decades.
Navigating the peace and security implications of climate change: Recommendations on the climate-conflict nexus at COP29, Community of Practice on Environment, Climate, Conflict, and Peace
The authors provide further nuance to some of the most pressing topics within the interlinked environmental, climate change, conflict, and peace domains. Eight core issues are explored alongside actionable recommendations that key decision-makers can enact or demand within the UNFCCC negotiations, at COP29.
119 articles in 50 journals by 665 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
Changes in the SST Seasonal Cycle in a Warmer North Pacific without Ocean Dynamical Feedbacks, Yu et al., Journal of Climate 10.1175/jcli-d-24-0029.1
Sensitivity of Simulated Arctic Ocean Salinity and Strait Transport to Interannually Variable Hydrologic Model Based Runoff, Weiss?Gibbons et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2023jc020536
Climate change made Hurricane Helene and other 2024 disasters more damaging, scientists find
Posted on 9 October 2024 by dana1981
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections
Emily Ogburn, right, hugs her friend Cody Klein after he brought her a meal on October 2, 2024, in Swannanoa, North Carolina. Ogburn's home was spared and she spent the morning of the storm helping and comforting neighbors who had found shelter on a neighbor’s porch. (Photo by Melissa Sue Gerrits/Getty Images)
Deadly Hurricane Helene, wildfires in the Amazon, an extreme monsoon downpour in India, a heat wave during the Summer Olympics, and other dangerous and devastating weather events in 2024 were all made more likely and damaging by climate change, scientists have found.
Climate scientists quantified the link by running thousands of simulations in climate models, some that included and some that did not include the effects of human-caused climate pollution in the atmosphere. They also examined past and present weather data to see how the probability of these kinds of events has changed in a hotter world.
This approach, known as attribution science, is a relatively new branch of climate science. It has enabled scientists to conclude that human-caused climate change made many recent extreme weather events much more damaging, deadly, and expensive than they would otherwise have been.
Climate change increased Hurricane Helene’s and Milton’s potential destructiveness
Hurricane Milton, which formed in the Gulf of Mexico in early October, offers an example of how climate change amplifies extreme weather. As a result of high water temperatures, the storm rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to reach Category 5 status. The scientists at Climate Central estimated that those unusually warm sea surface temperatures were made up to 400 to 800 times more likely by climate change.
Hurricane Helene made landfall on September 26, 2024, near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4 with 140 miles per hour winds. The storm is being blamed for 247 deaths, with hundreds more still missing, making it the fourth-deadliest U.S. hurricane since at least 1963. And a new study published in Nature found that the death toll associated with hurricanes is dramatically underestimated, perhaps by hundreds of times, due to knock-on effects lasting for over a decade.
Early estimates have placed the economic costs of the storm at up to $47 billion.
On Wednesday, the attribution science group World Weather Attribution released an analysis of how climate change affected Hurricane Helene. Their main findings:
Climate change made Helene's rainfall more severe
Posted on 8 October 2024 by Zeke Hausfather
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink
Much of my immediate family lives in Asheville and Black Mountain, NC. While everyone is thankfully safe, this disaster struck much closer to home for me than most. There is lots that needs to be done for disaster relief, and I’d encourage folks who can to donate to the recovery effort.
But as Western North Carolina and other areas of the Southeastern US work to recover after the catastrophic flooding caused by Helene, its worth exploring the role that climate change may have played in the event.
While Helene would have been a disaster even in a world without climate change, the intensification of severe rainfall events is one of the most clear-cut impacts of a warming world. Research in recent years has found that intensification of rainfall during hurricanes is particularly pronounced, and a very preliminary analysis by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) finds that rainfall from Helene could have been increased by up to 50% in some regions by the warming the world has experienced over the past 170 years.
A warmer wetter world
Simply put, warmer air can “hold” more water before it precipitates out, and the amount of moisture in the atmosphere is expected to increase by up to 7% per degree of warming. This, in turn, is expected to increase the severity of heavy precipitation events almost everywhere in the world – even if the average amount of rainfall does not change.
The figure below, from Fischer et al 2014, shows the percent change in heavy precipitation (defined as the highest daily precipitation experienced each year) across the CMIP5 ensemble of climate models as a function of global warming. Changes are shown per degree C, and scale relatively linearly with warming, and stippling represents areas where models agree on the sign of the change. Almost everywhere in the world is expected to see increases in heavy precipitation, with the exception of a few areas over the ocean.
There is also evidence that this relationship between warming and rainfall is even stronger in hurricanes, which can result in “super-scaling” of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation that governs increases in atmospheric water vapor and temperature. As Liu et al 2019 note, “the percentage increase for inner-core tropical cyclone rainfall rates in our model is markedly larger than the Clausius-Clapeyron rate” and scales with storm intensity. They found that rainfall from tropical storms increases by 13% per degree C to 17% per degree C (e.g. an increase 17% to 22% at current warming levels of 1.3C above preindustrial).
You will not escape the climate crisis
Posted on 7 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from the Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
On Bluesky, it was pointed out that Asheville, NC was recently listed as a place to go to avoid the climate crisis.
Mother Nature sent a “letter to the editor” indicating that she didn’t agree:
Helene’s climate link
While climate change does not cause hurricanes, we are certain it makes them more destructive. Humans have increased sea level, leading to more destructive storm surge, and a warmer atmosphere produces more rain.
Many people don’t understand how this will affect them. They think it’s a long-term problem where small impacts accumulate over decades, eventually leading to significant consequences far in the future.
In reality, though, these increases in storm surge and rainfall push our physical environment beyond thresholds that infrastructure was designed to handle.
As a result, the impacts of climate change are non-linear: they are zero until you cross the threshold and then, suddenly, you are wiped out. This leads to headlines like this:
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40
Posted on 6 October 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Story of the week
We're all made of standard human fabric so it's nobody's particular fault but while "other" parts of the world have very recently lived (mostly) through enormous floods with huge consequences, only over the past week has the United States focused its immediate attention on hydrometeorological extremes— thanks to the arrival and massive hammer blow of Hurricane Helene and its titanic delivery of rainfall (see "psychological distance").
Our Story of the Week is statistically obvious by headcount in the list below. It's all about Hurricane Helene. A common theme in reportage from affected areas is the element of surprise in arrival of flooding on a previously unimagined and unexperienced scale. Affected residents of a swathe of states spanning from Florida to Virginia were depending on guidance from experts to prepare for this storm and despite fairly strident warnings it's safe to say that the advice they received didn't encompass the unfolding reality of the storm, particularly as it intruded into the continental interior and subsequently stalled as it died away into a tropical depression.
How could we be so surprised by something as hard to hide as 40 triilion gallons (1.514 liters) of water? Perhaps it's because we're using outmoded and inappropriate metrics when evaluating the threat posed by hurricanes. Our focus when it comes to hurricane preparation has traditionally been centered on wind and storm surge. These are certainly germane to coastal locations in terms of threat to life and overall destruction. Storm surge in particular is an urgent matter for people and infrastructure directly facing seas and oceans.
But are wind and storm surge the center of mass of potential hurricane disaster? With so much inland population potentially affected by hurricanes— and with the behavior of hurricanes now being significantly affected by global warming— how best can emergency commmunications serve the public? A hint lies in the fact that fresh water delivered by hurricanes typically kills more people than do wind or surge.
Storm surge fades as a factor not far from the coastline. Farther than a relatively few miles from shore and leaving surge behind, a hurricane's principal impact and threat transitions from crazy wind speed and invasive waves to something more generally familiar: rain. Only this isn't normal rain but instead precipitation from air absolutely stuffed with moisture thanks to its passage over warm ocean. The warmer the water, the higher the risk. Hurricane Helene was positivily juiced with moisture by passing over a Gulf of Mexico that like the rest of the world ocean is freakishly warm, and the storm carried that moisture just as far as it could— before shedding its unbearable load on Georgia, Tennessee, South Carolina and Virginia.
We clearly need to be thinking about a different perspective on hurricane risk and how to talk about it, and fortunately we have experts doing exactly that. We didn't cover it in this week's listing but the New York Times just ran an article laying out the current defects with how we convey hurricane threats, The Problem With the Hurricane Category Rating. In a nutshell, over half of US hurricane fatalities are due to deluges of fresh water, yet our thinking about these disasters is myopically focused on coastal contexts. We do as a technical matter know much better. For a comprehensive review of circumspect weather hazard communications (important in a non-stationary climate!), see Improving Societal Outcomes of Extreme Weather in a Changing Climate: An Integrated Perspective (pdf), Morss et al., Annual Review of Environment and Resources.
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before September 29
- Sorry, AI won’t “fix” climate change, Opinion, MIT Technology Review, James Temple. "OpenAI’s Sam Altman claims AI will deliver an 'Intelligence Age,' but tech breakthroughs alone can't solve global warming."
- As Florida Storms Worsen, Some in Tampa Bay Wonder: Is Living There Worth It?, US, New York Times, Isabelle Taft, Elisabeth Parker, Valerie Boey Ramsey & Patricia Mazzei. "Residents of the booming region are confronting a new reality: Even when storms make landfall far away, their impact is being felt."
- A Controversial Play — and What It Taught Me About the Psychology of Climate, TedTalks on Youtube, David Finnigan.
Skeptical Science New Research for Week #40 2024
Posted on 3 October 2024 by Doug Bostrom, Marc Kodack
Open access notables
Sloth metabolism may make survival untenable under climate change scenarios, Cliffe et al., PeerJ:
Sloths are limited by the rate at which they can acquire energy and are unable to regulate core body temperature (Tb) to the extent seen in most mammals. Therefore, the metabolic impacts of climate change on sloths are expected to be profound. Here we use indirect calorimetry to measure the oxygen consumption (VO2) and Tb of highland and lowland two-fingered sloths (Choloepus hoffmanni) when exposed to a range of different ambient temperatures (Ta) (18 °C –34 °C), and additionally record changes in Tb and posture over several days in response to natural fluctuations in Ta. We use the resultant data to predict the impact of future climate change on the metabolic rate and Tb of the different sloth populations. The metabolic responses of sloths originating from the two sites differed at high Ta’s, with lowland sloths invoking metabolic depression as temperatures rose above their apparent ‘thermally-active zone’ (TAZ), whereas highland sloths showed increased RMR. Based on climate change estimates for the year 2100, we predict that high-altitude sloths are likely to experience a substantial increase in metabolic rate which, due to their intrinsic energy processing limitations and restricted geographical plasticity, may make their survival untenable in a warming climate.
Temperature-Driven Dengue Transmission in a Changing Climate: Patterns, Trends, and Future Projections, Feng et al., GeoHealth:
We analyzed dengue incidence trends and the relationship between annual mean minimum temperatures (AMMTs) and dengue incidence rates from 1990 to 2019 in 122 countries using the Global Burden of Disease and TerraClimate data sets. We also projected global dengue incidence rates under different carbon emission scenarios using temperature data from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project Phase 6 (CMIP6) data set. Our results reveal a significant increase in global dengue cases from 1990 to 2019 and a positive correlation between temperature and dengue incidence. The association between AMMT and dengue incidence strengthened at temperatures exceeding 21°C. Central and eastern sub-Saharan Africa, as well as Oceania, were identified as the regions most sensitive to dengue; males and individuals aged 15–19 or 70–84 years were the most susceptible to dengue under rising temperatures. Our projections suggest that global dengue incidence will substantially increase by 2050 and 2100. By 2100, regions including Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, the southern United States, southern China, and island countries in the Pacific and Indian Oceans are projected to become year-round dengue-endemic under a high-emission climate scenario.
Inverse modeling of 2010–2022 satellite observations shows that inundation of the wet tropics drove the 2020–2022 methane surge, Qu et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
Atmospheric methane concentrations rose rapidly over the past decade and surged in 2020–2022 but the causes have been unclear. We find from inverse analysis of GOSAT satellite observations that emissions from the wet tropics drove the 2010–2019 increase and the subsequent 2020–2022 surge, while emissions from northern mid-latitudes decreased. The 2020–2022 surge is principally contributed by emissions in Equatorial Asia (43%) and Africa (30%). Wetlands are the major drivers of the 2020–2022 emission increases in Africa and Equatorial Asia because of tropical inundation associated with La Niña conditions, consistent with trends in the GRACE terrestrial water storage data. In contrast, emissions from major anthropogenic emitters such as the United States, Russia, and China are relatively flat over 2010–2022. Concentrations of tropospheric OH (the main methane sink) show no long-term trend over 2010–2022 but a decrease over 2020–2022 that contributed to the methane surge.
Geospatial assessment of the cost and energy demand of feedstock grinding for enhanced rock weathering in the coterminous United States, Li et al., Frontiers in Climate:
Enhanced rock weathering (ERW)—the artificial enhancement of chemical weathering of rocks to accelerate atmospheric CO2 capture—is now widely seen as a potentially promising carbon dioxide removal (CDR) strategy that could help to achieve U.S. climate goals. Grinding rocks to smaller particle size, which can help to facilitate more rapid and efficient CO2 removal, is the most energy-demanding and cost-intensive step in the ERW life cycle. As a result, accurate life cycle analysis of ERW requires regional constraints on the factors influencing the energetic and economic demands of feedstock grinding for ERW. Here, we perform a state-level geospatial analysis to quantify how carbon footprints, costs, and energy demands vary among regions of the coterminous U.S. in relation to particle size and regional electricity mix. We find that CO2 emissions from the grinding process are regionally variable but relatively small compared to the CDR potential of ERW... Overall energy requirements for grinding are also modest, with the demand for grinding 1 Gt of feedstock representing less than 2% of annual national electricity supply. In addition, both cost and overall energy demand are projected to decline over time. These results suggest that incorporating feedstock grinding into ERW deployment at scale in the coterminous U.S. should generally have only modest impacts on lifecycle emissions, cost-effectiveness, and energy efficiency.
Accelerating transmission capacity expansion by using advanced conductors in existing right-of-way, Chojkiewicz et al., Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:
As countries pursue decarbonization goals, the rapid expansion of transmission capacity for renewable energy (RE) integration poses a significant challenge due to hurdles such as permitting and cost allocation. However, we find that large-scale reconductoring with advanced composite-core conductors can cost-effectively double transmission capacity within existing right-of-way, with limited additional permitting. This strategy unlocks a high availability of increasingly economically viable RE resources in close proximity to the existing network. We implement reconductoring in a model of the US power system, showing that reconductoring can help meet over 80% of the new interzonal transmission needed to reach over 90% clean electricity by 2035 given restrictions on greenfield transmission build-out. With $180 billion in system cost savings by 2050, reconductoring presents a cost-effective and time-efficient, yet underutilized, opportunity to accelerate global transmission expansion.
From this week's government/NGO section
The F-List 2024. The Mad Men Fueling the Madness, Nayantara Dutta, Clean Creatives
The advertizing agencies working with fossil fuel clients remain stuck in the Mad Men era, ignoring the impact of their work for polluters, and its consequences for their reputation and talent. The authors share 1,010 fossil fuel contracts held by 590 advertizing and public relations agencies in 2023-2024. Like every other outdated practice of the ad industry, it is only a matter of time before fossil fuel campaigns come to an end. Mad Men no longer rule Madison Avenue, and climate madness must end. Clean agencies who reject fossil fuel clients are the future.
Fossil Fuel Ad Bans: protecting the public from corporate climate disinformation, Climate Action Against Disinformation
The fossil fuel industry, just like the tobacco industry before them, has spent decades advertising, explicitly to normalize their operations and mislead consumers about the dangers of their product, and even promote polluting products as climate solutions. That is why there is broad public support for an emerging global consensus on banning fossil fuel ads, like tobacco ads. As long as a fossil fuel lifestyle is considered normal, climate policy that focuses on demand reduction will never gain enough support to successfully meet the Paris Agreement goals. Fossil fuel ads are an obstacle to equitable climate action.
174 articles in 64 journals by 967 contributing authors
Physical science of climate change, effects
A climate change signal in the tropical Pacific emerges from decadal variability, Jiang et al., Nature Communications Open Access 10.1038/s41467-024-52731-6
Dense Water Production in Storfjorden, Svalbard, From a 1-Year Time Series of Observations and a Simple Model: Are Polynyas in a Warming Arctic Exporting Heat to the Deep Ocean?, Vivier et al., Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans Open Access 10.1029/2024jc020878
Increasing contribution of the atmospheric vertical motion to precipitation in a warming climate, Jun & Rind Rind, Communications Earth & Environment Open Access 10.1038/s43247-024-01676-1
The unsung heroes of India’s extreme weather disasters
Posted on 2 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Sanket Jain
Noushadbi Mujawar has created a community health model that helps people in India build resilience amid the rising climate disasters. (Photo credit: Sanket Jain)
Community health care worker Noushadbi Mujawar safely evacuated everyone from Rajapur, an isolated village in India, as its streets began flooding in August 2019. Mujawar, 42, remained in the village herself even as floodwaters rose 12 feet above her house.
“I moved to a nearby taller building and decided to stay,” said Mujawar, who wanted to help those villagers who stayed with their property as the floodwaters rose.
“Many people stay in their homes during floods to care for their cattle, as evacuating them involves significant risks,” she said.
Mujawar is one of over a million accredited social health activists, known as ASHAs, in India, one for every 1,000 people in villages and towns. ASHAs help make public health care accessible.
Mujawar has tried to keep people safe during deadly floods that inundated her village in Maharashtra state in 2005, 2019, 2021, and 2024. She makes it a point to talk to every community member during any disaster to ensure their safety even as flooding deprives many of electricity, food supplies, and essentials.
“This is the most dangerous moment when people are at risk of mental health issues, and most of them never seek treatment because of the taboo,” Mujawar said.
Social stigma, cultural barriers, and fear of judgment often prevent people from discussing mental health issues and seeking treatment, especially in remote villages, where emotional vulnerability is seen as a weakness.
Four ways climate change likely made Hurricane Helene worse
Posted on 1 October 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from Yale Climate Connections by Jeff Masters
Hurricane Helene at sunset on Sep. 26, 2024, as the storm was closing in on the Florida coast as a Cat 4 with 130 mph winds. (Image credit: NOAA/RAMMB-CIRA Satellite Library)
After a spectacular burst of rapid intensification, Hurricane Helene made landfall just east of the mouth of the Aucilla River, about 10 miles west-southwest of Perry, Florida, at about 11:10 p.m. EDT Thursday. Top sustained winds were estimated at 140 mph, making Helene a Category 4 hurricane at landfall. We’ll have much more on Helene’s many impacts—some still unfolding on Friday—in our next Eye in the Storm post.
Helene’s landfall gives the U.S. a record eight Cat 4 or Cat 5 Atlantic hurricane landfalls in the past eight years (2017-2024), seven of them being continental U.S. landfalls. That’s as many Cat 4 and 5 landfalls as occurred in the prior 57 years. The only comparable beating the U.S. has taken from Category 4 and 5 landfalling hurricanes occurred in the six years from 1945 to 1950, when five Category 4 hurricanes hit South Florida.
With the U.S. taking such a beating from extreme hurricanes in recent years, it’s worth reviewing how climate change is contributing to making hurricanes worse.
Landfalling U.S. Cat 4s and 5s
The eight Cat 4 and 5 landfalls since 2017: Harvey (2017 in Texas), Irma (2017 in Florida), Maria (2017 in Puerto Rico), Michael (2018 in Florida), Laura (2020 in Louisiana), Ida (2021 in Louisiana), Ian (2022 in Florida), Helene (2024 in Florida).
The eight Cat 4 and 5 landfalls in the prior 57 years: Charley, 2004; Andrew, 1992; Hugo, 1989; Celia, 1970; Camille, 1969; Betsy, 1965; Carla, 1961; Donna, 1960.
How many people did the Beryl blackout kill?
Posted on 30 September 2024 by Guest Author
This is a re-post from The Climate Brink by Andrew Dessler
You should probably learn the term compound climate event. It refers to the occurrence of multiple weather- or climate-related hazards happening simultaneously or in close succession, leading to amplified impacts.
One of the most feared compound events is a hurricane causing massive infrastructure damage followed by extreme heat. If the damage caused a blackout, it could leave a huge population without access to air conditioning, leading to heat-related illnesses and fatalities.
This is far from a theoretical occurrence: It just happened in Houston when Hurricane Beryl hit the city, knocking out power for days.
Various news reports put the number of deaths due to Beryl at a few dozen. A third to half of these deaths have been attributed to extreme heat associated with the blackout. So maybe a dozen or so.
Is that estimate reasonable? Measuring heat-related deaths is challenging. When someone dies during a heatwave, the cause might be recorded as a heart attack, stroke, or respiratory failure, without acknowledging that heat played a role in triggering these conditions. This leads to chronic underestimations of the true toll of heat on public health.
2024 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #39
Posted on 29 September 2024 by BaerbelW, Doug Bostrom, John Hartz
Story of the week
Given the headlines dominance of hot oceans lofting water into the atmosphere where it then obeys the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship thereby leading to catastrophic rainfall, our Story of the Week might have been a composite of misery brought down on many heads thanks to our having changed Earth's climate. For an example of our hydrometeorological scope of disaster being widened in plain view over the past week alone, simply scan the article listing below to see how the story of Hurricane Helene evolved.
But extreme rainfall is not uppermost in the thoughts of our Skeptical Science team. Instead, a much more local tragedy has overwhelmed us: the sudden loss of key Skeptical Science author and highly esteemed and valued colleague John Mason. John passed away on Friday, September 20, untimely and wholly unanticipated. Not only was John extraordinarily productive for Skeptical Science but he was also a person who inevitably ended up being counted as a friend to any colleague with whom he shared purpose and effort. John's death is a full-spectrum loss, a cruel blow. For us, the Story of the Week is about Remembering our friend John Mason.
Stories we promoted this week, by publication date:
Before September 22
- COP29 aims to boost battery storage and grids for renewables, as pledges proliferate, Politics, Climate Home News, Jo Lo. "Governments are being asked to sign up to a goal to boost energy storage six-fold and renew or add 80 million km of electric grids, among other initiatives"
- Why everywhere seems to be flooding right now, Climate, Vox, Li Zhou. "Unique factors have driven torrential rains around the world — but there’s also a likely common thread."
- Even solar energy’s biggest fans are underestimating it, Climate, Vox, Umair Irfan. "Solar’s extraordinary forecast-defying growth, explained."
- Turning the Tide on Climate Change, ClimateAdam on Youtube, Adam Levy.
- Video: Can a colossal extreme weather event galvanize action on the climate crisis?, Eye on the Storm, Yale Climate Connections, YCC Team. "Many extremes over the past 40 years might have triggered transformational change – but didn’t. Meteorologist Dr. Jeff Masters explains."
