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6/9/23, Bonn’s battles – Climate Weekly

6/9/23, Republicans’ anti-ESG attack may be silencing insurers, but it isn’t changing their pro-climate business decisions

6/8/23, Rich world’s leaders fail to commit to Paris global financing summit

6/8/23, World Bank set to take on risk of insuring carbon credits amid market upheaval

6/7/23, Confusion surrounds China’s pledged climate finance towards the Global South

6/6/23, Bitter conflicts stop Eastern Europe from choosing next year’s Cop host

6/6/23, Turkiye joins Australia in race to host Cop31 climate talks

6/6/23, Fake social media profiles wage “organised” propaganda campaign on Cop28

6/5/23, Bonn talks offer opportunity to bridge the adaptation gap

6/5/23, Colombia accuses Drummond coal mining exec of funding paramilitary group

6/2/23, “Green” funds destroy Indonesia’s forests – Climate Weekly

6/1/23, How a local victory against petrochemicals can spur global action on plastics

6/1/23, “Green” finance bankrolls forest destruction in Indonesia

5/31/23, Row over veto powers holds up Paris plastic treaty talks

5/31/23, FSC’s rehab scheme for forest destroyers under fire after fresh allegations

5/30/23, Climate movement must switch on to UAE threat

5/30/23, Amazon gateway city Belém will host Cop30 climate talks

5/26/23, Drought victims let down – Climate Weekly

5/26/23, Japan joins anti-plastic coalition ahead of Paris treaty talks, leaving US isolated

5/26/23, Governments fall short in UN’s East Africa drought appeal

5/25/23, UN advises against offsets for carbon removal technologies

5/25/23, World Bank body delays vote on controversial loan to Brazilian dairy firm

5/24/23, UK sued over plan to import more polluting Australian beef

5/24/23, Climate Home News is hiring! Apply to be our Audience Engagement Editor

5/24/23, Restrictions on energy firm’s borrowing complicates South Africa’s energy transition

5/23/23, Verra boss steps down after criticism of its carbon credits

5/23/23, Lula set to improve Brazil’s climate target

5/22/23, G7 calls on all countries to reach net zero by 2050

5/22/23, Rich nations “understanding” of South African delay to coal plant closures

5/19/23, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Climate Weekly

5/19/23, Study: Fossil fuel firms owe $209bn a year for climate damage

5/19/23, Regulator blocks Brazilian oil drilling, sparking conflict within government

5/18/23, UAE appoints fossil fuels execs and climate campaigners as Cop28 advisers

5/18/23, Top German energy official resigns after favoritism allegations

5/18/23, G7 leaders must fulfil their promise to stop funding fossil fuels

5/17/23, Regulators crack down on corporate carbon neutrality claims

5/17/23, France proposes tax credits for green technology

5/16/23, UAE invites Syria’s Assad to Cop28 in latest rehabilitation push

5/16/23, US backs Indonesian oil refinery despite pledge to end fossil fuel finance

5/15/23, Vietnamese anti-coal campaigner freed early from prison

Yale Environment 360

6/9/23, Satellite Images Show Spread of Wildfire Smoke Across Eastern U.S.

6/8/23, How Warming Ruined a Crab Fishery and Hurt an Alaskan Town

6/7/23, Destruction of Ukraine's Kakhovka Dam Has Decimated Wildlife

6/6/23, Beyond the Yuck Factor: Cities Turn to ‘Extreme’ Water Recycling

6/5/23, Wealthy Nations Overstating Climate Aid, Report Finds

6/2/23, Youth Climate Lawsuit Against Federal Government Headed for Trial

6/1/23, As Plastics Keep Piling Up, Can ‘Advanced’ Recycling Cut the Waste?

5/31/23, Scientists Identify Bacteria That Can Break Down 'Forever Chemicals'

5/30/23, Shanghai Sees Hottest May Weather on Record

5/26/23, Antarctic Ocean Circulation Has Slowed Dramatically, Research Shows

5/25/23, Are Sea Cucumbers a Cleanup Solution to Fish Farm Pollution?

5/24/23, Among Some Fish, Heat Stress May Be Contagious, Study Finds

5/23/23, Beyond Factory Farms: A New Look at the Rights of Animals

5/22/23, As Peak Oil Looms, Exxon Wades into Lithium Mining

5/19/23, New York City Sinking Under Weight of Skyscrapers

5/18/23, The Upper Atmosphere Is Cooling, Prompting New Climate Concerns

5/17/23, April Heat Wave in South Asia Made 30 Times More Likely by Climate Change

5/16/23, Biggest Fossil Fuel Firms Responsible for a Third of Western Forests Burned, Study Finds

5/12/23, Amazon Deforestation Down 40 Percent So Far This Year

5/11/23, As Ocean Oxygen Levels Dip, Fish Face an Uncertain Future

U.S. Global Change Research Program

4/24/23, U.S. Global Change Research Program Welcomes Dr. Julian Reyes as Deputy Director for Services

3/27/23, U.S. Global Change Research Program Welcomes Dr. Phillip Levin as Director of National Nature Assessment

2/9/23, Department of Homeland Security Becomes 14th Member of USGCRP

11/10/22, USGCRP at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting 2022

11/9/22, USGCRP hosting free webinars in support of National Climate Assessment

3/8/22, Fifth National Climate Assessment Update: March 2022

8/16/21, Fifth National Climate Assessment Update: August 2021

7/13/21, USGCRP Welcomes Allison Crimmins as Director of the Fifth National Climate Assessment

5/27/21, Dr. Mike Kuperberg Returns as USGCRP Executive Director

1/25/21, Updates on NCA5

NOAA State of the Climate updates

The Guardian

5/29/23, ‘It’s ridiculously antiquated’: could robot boats transform ocean science?

5/29/23, Starwatch: Why ‘night shine’ clouds at edge of space may be product of pollution

5/14/23, Climate crisis deniers target scientists for vicious abuse on Musk’s Twitter

5/6/23, Climate scientists first laughed at a ‘bizarre’ campaign against the BoM – then came the harassment

5/5/23, April Mediterranean heatwave ‘almost impossible’ without climate crisis

4/25/23, Carbon dioxide removal: the tech that is polarising climate science

4/17/23, Protesters urge caution over St Ives climate trial amid chemical plans for bay

4/12/23, From the archive – The sound of icebergs melting: my journey into the Antarctic – podcast

4/9/23, Five Times Faster by Simon Sharpe review – a radical but realistic path to net zero emissions

4/4/23, ‘Tornado alley’ is shifting farther into the US east, climate scientists warn

4/2/23, British cows could be given ‘methane blockers’ to cut climate emissions

3/29/23, Melting Antarctic ice predicted to cause rapid slowdown of deep ocean current by 2050

3/20/23, World can still avoid worst of climate collapse with genuine change, IPCC says

3/20/23, From climate change ‘certainty’ to rapid decline: a timeline of IPCC reports

3/18/23, Aviation chiefs rejected measures to curb climate impact of jet vapours

3/15/23, Russell Brand is the latest to platform climate conservative Bjørn Lomborg’s ‘reckless’ net-zero cost claims | Temperature Check

3/10/23, From the archive: The real David Attenborough – podcast

2/28/23, Before the floods I thought climate change wasn’t my problem. Now, I’m not waiting for someone else to fix it | Ella Buckland

2/27/23, The big idea: why you can’t leave climate out of history

2/17/23, From the archive: Snow machines and fleece blankets: inside the ski industry’s battle with climate change – podcast

Inside Climate News

6/9/23, Your Smokepocalypse Guide

Your Smokepocalypse Guide

Inside Climate News

Today's Climate

A twice-a-week digest of the most pressing climate-related news, released every Tuesday and Friday, written by Kristoffer Tigue.

Your Guide to Understanding the East Coast Smokepocalypse

NEW YORK CITY—Millions of East Coasters awoke to clearer skies today after ash-laden smoke from raging Canadian wildfires turned much of the Northeast this week into a toxic, crimson hellscape.

The smoke, which began to billow into the U.S. from Quebec on Tuesday, engulfed entire skylines in a thick haze of soot, aggravating asthma attacks and prompting officials to declare air quality alerts from Pittsburgh to Baltimore to Provincetown, Massachusetts. By Wednesday afternoon, the haze had swallowed all of New York City, blotting out the sun and tinting the sky an ominous dark orange—like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie.

It was some of the worst air pollution the region had experienced on record, causing major disruptions as schools and restaurants opted to close, professional sports leagues delayed their games and federal officials curbed air travel due to poor visibility. Nearly 600 flights across the country were delayed or canceled as of Thursday afternoon. Even the White House Pride celebration, which was expected to draw thousands of people to the South Lawn on Thursday, was postponed to Saturday.

But while the Smokepocalypse—as it’s been dubbed on the internet—clears in some places, experts say that the situation is far from over. This curated guide will arm you with everything you need to know, including how to protect yourself, your loved ones and even your car the next time you find yourself enveloped by wildfire smoke—because, yes, climate change is making that scenario more likely to occur again.

How, exactly, did all of this smoke get here from Canada?

There are roughly 430 wildfires burning in Canada right now, with more than 140 of them just north of New England in Quebec. Many of those fires are burning incredibly intense right now, and it’s producing a lot of smoke. The smoke that engulfed much of the East Coast this week came specifically from the Quebec hotspots, with help from a cold front that guided it hundreds of miles south into the U.S.

Satellite images like this one offer a good visual on how it played out. Vermont, for example, was spared thanks to the jet stream.

What’s next? Is the Smokepocalypse over?

Not quite. Yes, the air quality greatly improved by Friday morning in some of the hardest hit cities, including New York City and Washington, D.C. But those noxious wildfire fumes could be blown as far south as Florida and as far west as Ohio. As many as 18 states issued air quality alerts across the country this week, and some of that smoke has even traveled as far as Norway.

In general, people living on the East Coast and in the Midwest should be mindful of their air quality through at least the weekend, especially because the haze will likely appear much thinner than what many in the East Coast and Mid-Atlantic regions experienced on Wednesday and Thursday. That could mislead people into believing the smoke won’t affect their health. It definitely can.

In fact, air quality remained “moderately unhealthy” across much of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York as of Friday afternoon, according to the federal government’s air quality monitoring website. That’s a huge step down from the “very unhealthy” category—or “code purple”—that covered most of the region earlier this week, but it could still pose a risk to those with asthma or other breathing sensitivities.

It’s also a larger issue than this one event. New Yorkers and others living in the Northeast may be seeing more wildfire smoke throughout the summer—at least until the hundreds of blazes in Canada are finally squelched.

Just how dangerous is wildfire smoke?

Smoke in general is dangerous to inhale. It contains a host of byproducts that are harmful to human health, including nitrogen oxides, ground-level ozone and fine particulate matter. Those toxic materials can irritate your lungs, exacerbate asthma and other respiratory conditions, and over a long enough period, lead to increased risk of lung disease and other serious ailments.

But research has shown that wildfire smoke is especially dangerous for humans. In fact, one study found that wildfire smoke is up to 10 times more harmful to humans than other air pollution sources, such as car exhaust.

That’s largely because of the high concentration of particulate matter in wildfire smoke. Particulate matter, or PM2.5, are microscopic particles of soot that can embed deep within your lung tissue and even make it into your bloodstream, where it has the potential to cause serious, long-term health problems like cardiovascular disease.

Exposure to this type of pollution is very risky for the elderly, pregnant people, young children and those with compromised health. Too much exposure can even increase the chances of getting sick from colds, the flu and Covid 19. You can monitor your exposure risk through this federal website.

How can I protect myself, my loved ones and … my car?

The biggest way to protect yourself is to get away from the smoke, if possible. But if you’re stuck living with wildfire smoke, as many on the West Coast can attest to, there are some ways to reduce your exposure and safeguard your health. Dani Anguiano put together a bunch of useful tips for the Guardian, tapping some of the nation’s most qualified wildfire experts: Californians.

Here’s a quick breakdown: 1) Avoid going outside and limit outdoor activity 2) Wear a mask if you must go outside, preferably an N95 or similar quality mask 3) Run an air purifier day and night 4) If you’re using air conditioning, be sure it’s recirculating air from inside.

For those with central air conditioning, be sure it’s equipped with the right filters, such as the MERV 13. Emily Pontecorvo from Heatmap News does a good job of explaining filters—and even how to create your own makeshift air purifier with a floor fan.

Other tips include avoiding exacerbating indoor pollution while you wait out the Smokepocalypse in your home—so no cooking with a gas stove or anything involving fire, if possible. And for East Coasters who don’t know, wildfire ash can also ruin your car’s paint, as one veteran Californian explained online this week. “Don’t rinse it with water, which makes it worse,” she said. “Try to wipe it off dry, or cover your car if you can.” Ash plus water

Finally, climate change is to blame, right?

Well, kind of. It’s not that simple.

Determining the influence that climate change has played in a single weather event, or in this case, several hundred wildfires, is called attribution science. And it’s a tricky and complicated process.

So far, no attribution studies have made a climate connection with the ongoing wildfires in Canada, according to Carbon Brief. But as the London-based climate think tank notes, there are plenty of other studies that have generally shown how climate change is exacerbating heat waves, drought and other conditions that make wildfires more likely and more intense when they happen.

One study, for example, found that climate change made a 2020 Siberian heat wave at least 600 times more likely, and those extreme temperatures in turn led to an outbreak of massive wildfires. Research has also found that climate change is lengthening the wildfire season in North America, meaning it starts earlier and ends later. That may have influenced the current Canadian fires, considering Quebec and other parts of Canada’s Atlantic region have been experiencing droughts since February.

More Top Climate News

It May Be Too Late to Save Arctic Summer Sea Ice, New Research Suggests: A new study suggests that summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean might be a thing of the past by the 2030s, no matter what we do to curb emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming, Doyle Rice reports for USA TODAY. That’s a decade sooner than what has been predicted by previous studies, many of which “significantly” underestimated the trend in sea ice decline in the region, the researchers said. It could also open the door to a host of other tipping points that accelerate climate change even more.

A California Bill Could Reveal Corporate America’s Climate Secrets: For months, Republicans have waged a war on so-called “woke finances,” hoping to stop a new Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would require corporate America to report its carbon footprint and climate risks to the federal government. But many of those companies may be pressured into giving that information up even without the new rule under a bill now being considered in California, Max Graham reports for Grist.

Marjorie Taylor Greene Is Using Climate Change to Argue Against Immigrants: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene—who has largely dismissed the climate crisis, once even calling it a “scam”—is now pointing to the issue as a reason to deter immigrants from entering the southern border of the United States, Aditi Bharade reports for Insider. “Natural disasters, talk about climate change,” the Georgia GOP lawmaker said this week at a committee hearing. “We have a wide range of natural disasters—97 natural disasters occurred in 2021 … I don’t think this is very safe for migrants here in America.”

Today’s Indicator

31%

That’s the amount of electricity generated by solar and wind sources this May in the European Union, a new report found. It marks the first full month that renewables produced more power for the bloc than fossil fuels, which made up a record low of 27 percent last month.

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6/9/23, Department of Agriculture Conservation Programs Are Giving Millions to Farms That Worsen Climate Change

6/8/23, It’s the Features, Stupid: EV Market Share Is Growing Because the Vehicles Keep Getting Better

It’s the Features, Stupid: EV Market Share Is Growing Because the Vehicles Keep Getting Better

Clean energy stories behind the headlines reported by Dan Gearino

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Electric-vehicle market share has soared in the last decade, but there has been no measurable change in the share of consumers who want to buy an EV just because it’s an EV.

This finding, from a recent paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicates that the growth in demand for EVs is largely due to the appeal of the models’ technology and features, not a deeper attachment to the idea of owning an EV than in the past.

The results were surprising to Kenneth Gillingham, a Yale University economist and co-author of the study. “I went into it actually expecting to see some pretty notable changes in consumer preferences,” he said.

He embarked on the research project thinking that the number of people who are predisposed to wanting an EV would have risen in the last decade.

While some car buyers may indeed want an EV on principle—like many of the early adopters who helped the vehicles get their first couple of percentage points of market share—researchers report that the size of this group does not appear to have changed. Meanwhile, EVs made up 7.2 percent of the market for new cars and light trucks in the first quarter of this year, more than double the share from two years ago, according to the research arm of Cox Automotive.

Or, as another co-author of the study, the Carnegie Mellon University engineering professor Jeremy Michalek, puts it: “Consumers haven't changed. It’s technology that's driving EV adoption."

What does this say about the EV market?

It means that as EVs improve their features, the rapid rise in sales should continue. The features helping to drive sales include long battery ranges, fast acceleration and low costs for maintenance. But these specifics don’t quite capture the appeal of the whole package, which is that many consumers find EVs to be fun to drive in terms of ride quality in a way that gasoline vehicles are not.

Also, it’s important to note that this most recent survey of prospective buyers was conducted in 2020 and 2021, before the introduction of some intriguing technologies, like the ability of an electric vehicle to provide battery backup to a house, were available.

The biggest factor hindering EV demand is that the models are more expensive than equivalent gasoline models, the paper finds. But the cost gap is shrinking, which should help with growth in market share.

“This is positive news because it’s showing that even when we’re talking about mainstream consumers, they're still valuing the attributes” of all-electric vehicles, said Kate Whitefoot, another co-author and engineering professor at Carnegie Mellon. “And as we continue to see increases” in a range of [EVs] and “dropping prices relative to gasoline vehicles, more and more mainstream consumers will choose electric vehicles.”

The paper is based on answers to online questionnaires from 734 people who planned to buy a car and 862 people who planned to buy an SUV in 2020 or 2021. The authors compared the responses with those from a survey conducted in 2012 and 2013.

Whitefoot emphasized that the results present a picture of all car and SUV buyers, as opposed to zeroing in on people who already drive EVs or plan to buy an EV.

The green in the bar charts shows the share of people who prefer an EV when asked to choose between it and an equivalent gasoline model, including a projection of what the share would be in 2030 based on technology trends. This is from a paper based on a survey of car and SUV buyers. Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

The authors also drew on projections of advancements in vehicle technologies from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine and predicted what consumer preferences might look like in 2030.

They found, for example, that a majority of consumers would choose the projected 2030 version of an EV like the Nissan Leaf when given a choice between that and the 2030 version of an equivalent gasoline model, the Nissan Versa.

The main differences between now and 2030 would be in cost and battery power. The price gap between the Leaf and the Versa would be less than half the $10,000-plus that it is today before tax credits. And the Leaf is projected to have about 300 miles of range on a charge in 2030, compared with 149 miles today.

Some of these findings seem obvious. Of course, a decrease in the price premium for an EV will help sales, as will increases in battery range.

What’s striking isn’t that those factors matter. It’s how much they matter. The change in prices and the improvements in features will have a strong influence on what consumers are considering when they go to the dealership, even if they have no other reason—air pollution, climate change worries, public reputation—to favor an EV.

I asked Gillingham to spell out the main factors that could prevent this shift in the market from happening as quickly as he expects.

He listed three. Automakers may not have enough EVs available to give consumers a range of choice between equivalent gasoline and electric options; a lack of adequate charging infrastructure could slow the growth of people’s willingness to buy EVs; and the projections of technological advancements from the National Academies could turn out to be overly optimistic.

That final point touches on some of the most complex elements of the transition to EVs, like the availability of lithium and other battery materials and the speed in development of next-generation batteries that have much longer ranges.

But that’s enough throat-clearing. The larger point is that we’re heading to a market in which EVs will be the leading options largely because they have better features. In that market, we may stop thinking of them as EVs. As others have said before me, they’ll just be cars.

Top Photo Credit: William West/AFP via Getty Images

Other stories about the energy transition to take note of this week:

The U.S. Clean Energy Manufacturing Boom Has Begun: Starting with a visit to the groundbreaking for a plant that will make long-duration batteries in West Virginia, Canary Media has a series of articles this week about the clean energy manufacturing boom. “The scale and speed of the shift has been stunning,” writes Julian Spector. “Clean energy is no niche industry anymore; it’s become a pillar of the national economy. And now that climate-friendly technologies are bringing eye-popping job and investment packages, the states most resistant to climate policy have proven themselves the most enthusiastic adopters of the factories.”

Mining Vital to Renewable Energy Is Tied to Hundreds of Human Rights Abuses: Hundreds of alleged human rights abuses have been committed by over 90 corporations that are mining minerals critical to the production of clean energy, my colleague Katie Surma reports, citing tracking by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center. The center says the abuses arise from the failure of the United States and other nations to develop appropriate labor and environmental safeguards in the mining regions involved, and calls for the issue to be addressed immediately.

Regardless of What Mr. Bean Says, EVs Are Much Better for the Environment than Gasoline Vehicles: The comedian and actor Rowan Atkinson wrote last week in The Guardian that he felt “duped” by the promise that electric vehicles are better for the environment. I wrote for ICN about how Atkinson’s piece is touching on some familiar and misleading tropes used by people and groups with a financial interest in slowing the transition to EVs. Auke Hoekstra, a sustainable energy researcher in the Netherlands who has become a leading debunker of such arguments, says Atkinson’s article is “cranky nitwittery.” There is voluminous evidence that EVs are much better for the environment than gasoline vehicles, and I include links to some of it in my story. It’s important to specify that there are legitimate concerns about the growing use of EVs, like the human rights issues mentioned just above. But the problems with EVs can be reduced or fixed. There is no substantive fix for the environmental harm caused by the production of fossil fuels and burning those fuels in engines.

Hundreds of Localities Restrict Renewables Siting, with 293 Projects Currently Contested: A report from Columbia Law School found 228 local restrictions on renewable energy development in 35 states and identified 293 projects that have drawn significant opposition in 45 states, as Diana DiGango reports for Utility Dive. The report shows some of the big picture that I spent much of last year exploring in my Solar Opposites series.

New Jersey Puts Clean Energy Bill on Hold: New Jersey’s governor and legislative leaders would like to pass the most ambitious clean energy law in the country, but they’re not going to do it right away, as Ry Rivard reports for Politico. The bill would set a path for the state to get to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2035, which is really soon for a shift of that magnitude. The measure has support, but legislative leaders are now saying they’re going to wait until after the November election. I’ll be following this one, as New Jersey is poised to join Minnesota and other states with landmark clean energy bills in 2023.

Electric Vehicles Appeal to Conservative Buyers Sick of Gas Guzzlers: Some reliably Republican counties in Texas have EV market shares that are higher than the national average, indicating that the vehicles have an appeal beyond the stereotype of the tree-hugging early adopter, as Jeanne Whalen reports for The Washington Post. I’m not surprised to see these findings, which are based on county-level data from S&P Global Mobility. They’re also in line with what the Yale and Carnegie Mellon researchers learned in the surveys I write about above.

Inside Clean Energy is ICN’s weekly bulletin of news and analysis about the energy transition. Send news tips and questions to dan.gearino@insideclimatenews.org.

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6/7/23, Mining Critical to Renewable Energy Tied to Hundreds of Alleged Human Rights Abuses

Mining Critical to Renewable Energy Tied to Hundreds of Alleged Human Rights Abuses

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In the 06/07/2023 edition:

Mining Critical to Renewable Energy Tied to Hundreds of Alleged Human Rights Abuses

America’s Iconic Beech Trees Are Under Attack

Puerto Rico Is so Hot This Week, It’s Astonishing Some Meteorologists

Mining Critical to Renewable Energy Tied to Hundreds of Alleged Human Rights Abuses

A report released Wednesday faults the U.S. and other nations for providing incentives for the mining of rare metals like lithium and cobalt without enacting adequate labor and environmental safeguards.

By Katie Surma

Over the past dozen years, hundreds of alleged human rights abuses have been committed by over 90 corporations mining minerals critical to the production of clean energy, a U.K.-based human rights organization said in a report released on Wednesday.

America’s Iconic Beech Trees Are Under Attack

The number of states with trees battling beech leaf disease tripled from 2019 to 2022. It is especially common in trees around Lake Erie, where the disease turned up in half of the beeches studied.

By Grant Segall

Lovers often carve their initials in the smooth gray bark of beech trees. Now those beloved trees—which can reach nearly 40 meters tall, live up to 400 years and are among the most abundant forest trees in the Northeast and Midwestern U.S.—are increasingly threatened by beech leaf disease.

Puerto Rico Is so Hot This Week, It’s Astonishing Some Meteorologists

Parts of the U.S. territory reached a “life-threatening” heat index of 125 degrees Fahrenheit on Monday, driven by a combination of an intense heat dome, El Niño and climate change.

By Kristoffer Tigue

Puerto Ricans are no strangers to heat.

6/6/23, Puerto Rico’s Life-Threatening Heat

Puerto Rico’s Life-Threatening Heat

Inside Climate News

Today's Climate

A twice-a-week digest of the most pressing climate-related news, released every Tuesday and Friday, written by Kristoffer Tigue.

Puerto Rico Is so Hot This Week, It’s Astonishing Some Meteorologists

Puerto Ricans are no strangers to heat.

Even on its coldest winter days, the Caribbean island and largest U.S. territory rarely sees daytime temperatures below 70 degrees Fahrenheit. But Puerto Rico is so hot this week that it’s baffling some weather experts, who warn that other parts of the world will likely experience similar extreme heat this year as climate change and an exceptionally strong El Niño drive global temperatures to historic highs.

In a series of tweets Monday, Florida-based meteorologist Jeff Berardelli warned of “life-threatening heat” in Puerto Rico, with conditions on the island becoming “so hot that some meteorologists are astonished.”

The heat index—which combines temperature with humidity—soared above 100 degrees Fahrenheit across much of the territory on Monday, with parts of Puerto Rico reaching a heat index as high as 125 degrees. High humidity combined with high temperatures can be especially dangerous since less sweat can evaporate off your body to cool it off. That heat is expected to persist through at least Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service, which issued an excessive heat warning across the island, urging Puerto Ricans to “take extra precautions” to stay cool while outside.

Berardelli linked Puerto Rico’s extreme heat spell this week to several overlapping factors, including the formation of a fierce heat dome just east of the island, a strong El Niño weather pattern amplifying heat waves and other extreme weather and climate change generally making the oceans warmer. Tropical oceans, he said, have warmed roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the Industrial Revolution.

The high temperatures might also be getting impacted by what Berardelli called a “wavy jet stream,” when the fast flowing air current that moves around the upper hemisphere of the planet gets interrupted and wobbles like a spinning top rotating off kilter. It’s the same mechanism that has also caused the polar vortex to shoot down into southern states in the U.S. in recent winters, and scientists believe climate change is playing a role in that interruption.

There’s a lot of work being done to figure out the link between climate change and the wavy jet stream, Berardelli said, adding that “the loss of sea ice and uneven heating at the poles is likely a factor” in that dynamic.

Ultimately, Berardelli said, Puerto Rico’s heat wave shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated incident, and he warned that other parts of the world should anticipate similar hot spells in the coming months. “As we go deeper into 2023 and El Niño intensifies, we should expect a stunning year of global extremes which boggle the meteorological mind,” he said. “The base climate has heated due to greenhouse warming and a strong El Niño will push us to limits we have yet to observe.”

It’s a grim prediction that several other scientists have made for this year as well.

Last month, the United Nations’ weather agency warned in a major report that the combined forces of climate change and El Niño will likely drive temperatures to record highs in many parts of the world over the next five years. And a peer-reviewed study, also released last month, warned that a fifth of the world could live in dangerously hot conditions by the end of the century.

For Puerto Rico, the rising heat is compounding other climate-related threats. Studies have shown that Caribbean islands are particularly vulnerable to climate change. Rising temperatures are driving up the dangers of heavy rainfall and powerful storms in the region, where many governments struggle to recover in the wake of disasters due to a lack of resources. The situation is only made worse by high energy costs related to importing fossil fuels and crippling debt that has become all too common for Caribbean island nations and colonial territories.

In fact, much of Puerto Rico is still recovering from Hurricane Maria, which crippled the island’s power grid in 2017 and sparked an ongoing fight over the future of the island’s energy infrastructure. Even as billions of dollars in federal aid flow to the U.S. territory to help rebuild its infrastructure, hundreds of thousands of residents continue to face regular power outages every year. Such blackouts can be dangerous during a heat wave, preventing people from keeping cool with air conditioning or making it difficult to store perishable medicine like insulin, which needs to be refrigerated.

By Monday night, Puerto Ricans were already complaining online about the heat, with some saying they’ve never experienced such a severe heat wave before.

“My town is surrounded by mountains and lots of vegetation,” posted one Twitter user, who said she lived in the rural town of Villalba. “It’s usually colder than most towns in Puerto Rico, but let me tell you that it’s been EXTREMELY HOT. It’s gone beyond 100 degrees. It’s insane.”

More Top Climate News

Biden Orders 20-Year Ban on Oil, Gas Drilling to Protect Tribal Sites in New Mexico: The Biden administration on Friday declared in a new order that hundreds of square miles in New Mexico will be withdrawn from further oil and gas production for the next 20 years on the outskirts of Chaco Culture National Historical Park that tribal communities consider sacred, Morgan Lee reports for the Associated Press. Chaco Culture National Historical Park is thought to be the center of what was once a hub of Indigenous civilization.

COP28 Climate Talks May Not Address Phasing Out Fossil Fuels: Scientists have long said the world can’t keep global warming in line with the Paris Agreement without phasing out fossil fuels. But such a phase-out plan may not even be on the agenda at the upcoming COP28 international climate talks, the United Nations’ climate chief told the Associated Press in an interview this week. That agenda decision is up to this year’s conference president, who happens to be the head of the United Arab Emirates’ Abu Dhabi National Oil Company—a leadership choice scorned by environmentalists.

Good Luck Insuring Your New Home in California. You Can Blame Climate Change: Major insurance companies, such as State Farm and Allstate, have stopped accepting new applications for business or personal property and casualty insurance in California in part because of climate change, Umair Irfan reports for Vox. Wildfires in particular have become a major issue for some areas of California. Last month, State Farm said it was facing “historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure and a challenging reinsurance market.”

Today’s Indicator

424

Measured in parts per million, that’s the concentration of carbon dioxide that federal scientists measured in the atmosphere from their Hawaii observatory last month, officials announced Monday, making it one of the largest annual May-to-May increases in CO2 levels on record.

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6/6/23, Abandoned Oil and Gas Wells Emit Carcinogens and Other Harmful Pollutants, Groundbreaking Study Shows

6/5/23, This Texas Community Has Waited Decades for Running Water. Could Hydro-Panels Help?

6/4/23, Log and Burn, or Leave Alone? Indiana Residents Fight US Forest Service Over the Future of Hoosier National Forest

6/3/23, EPA Spurns Trump-Era Effort to Drop Clean-Air Protections For Plastic Waste Recycling

EPA Spurns Trump-Era Effort to Drop Clean-Air Protections For Plastic Waste Recycling

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In the 06/03/2023 edition:

EPA Spurns Trump-Era Effort to Drop Clean-Air Protections For Plastic Waste Recycling

Cleveland’s Tree Canopy Is in Trouble

Disruptive Climate Protests Spur Police Raids in Germany and the US

EPA Spurns Trump-Era Effort to Drop Clean-Air Protections For Plastic Waste Recycling

Affirming long-standing incineration regulations, the Biden administration has withdrawn a plan to help ease the way for unchecked pyrolysis and gasification of plastic.

By James Bruggers

Reversing its own Trump-era proposal, the Environmental Protection Agency has spurned a lobbying effort by the chemical industry to relax clean-air regulations on two types of chemical or “advanced” recycling of plastics.

Cleveland’s Tree Canopy Is in Trouble

New efforts are afoot to bring more trees back to Forest City to address both climate resilience and environmental justice.

By Kathiann M. Kowalski

Cleveland, Ohio has long been called the Forest City, although sources differ on whom to credit for the moniker. Back in 1831, French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville described Lake Erie’s shores as a “primeval forest.” And in the early 1850s, Mayor William Case, a businessman and horticulturist, actively encouraged citizens to plant trees.

Disruptive Climate Protests Spur Police Raids in Germany and the US

German police seized assets from one climate group known for blocking traffic and other aggressive tactics. U.S. police also arrested three organizers involved in Atlanta’s “Cop City” protests.

By Kristoffer Tigue

A series of police raids in Germany and the United States this week are resparking the debate over what is and isn’t an acceptable form of protest, as climate activists frustrated by the slow progress of their governments to curb rising carbon emissions continue to block traffic, target art installations and generally disrupt day-to-day public life.