Hothouse Earth

Abrupt, climate-induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s

Via Nature Communications: Abrupt, climate-induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s. The abstraact:

In the province of British Columbia, Canada, four of the most severe wildfire seasons of the last century occurred in the past 7 years: 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023. To investigate trends in wildfire activity and fire-conducive climate, we conducted an analysis of mapped wildfire perimeters and annual climate data for the period of 1919–2021. 

Results show that after a century-long decline, fire activity increased from 2005 onwards, coinciding with a sharp reversal in the wetting trend of the 20th century. Even as precipitation levels remain high, moisture deficits have increased due to rapid warming and increased evaporative demand. Bottom-up factors further influence fire activity, as the legacy of past wildfires, insect outbreaks, and land-use practices continually influence fire regimes. 

The compound effects of climate-induced moisture changes and altered fuels now force British Columbians to confront the harsh reality of more frequent years of intense and prolonged wildfire activity.

Abrupt, climate-induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s

Via Nature Communications: Abrupt, climate-induced increase in wildfires in British Columbia since the mid-2000s. The abstraact:

In the province of British Columbia, Canada, four of the most severe wildfire seasons of the last century occurred in the past 7 years: 2017, 2018, 2021, and 2023. To investigate trends in wildfire activity and fire-conducive climate, we conducted an analysis of mapped wildfire perimeters and annual climate data for the period of 1919–2021. 

Results show that after a century-long decline, fire activity increased from 2005 onwards, coinciding with a sharp reversal in the wetting trend of the 20th century. Even as precipitation levels remain high, moisture deficits have increased due to rapid warming and increased evaporative demand. Bottom-up factors further influence fire activity, as the legacy of past wildfires, insect outbreaks, and land-use practices continually influence fire regimes. 

The compound effects of climate-induced moisture changes and altered fuels now force British Columbians to confront the harsh reality of more frequent years of intense and prolonged wildfire activity.

Ocean temperatures, already warmer than usual, face El Niño wild card

Via The Globe and Mail: Ocean temperatures, already warmer than usual, face El Niño wild card. I am already worried about the predicted rise in temperatures here in southwestern BC. Excerpt:

Scientists are monitoring a large marine heat wave that has warmed some parts of the Pacific Ocean 5º C above normal and is approaching the Canadian and U.S. west coasts.  

Andrew Leising, a research oceanographer with the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said the heat wave formed in the Northeast Pacific in mid-May and grew in size as it advanced toward British Columbia, Washington State and Oregon. It is now roughly four million square kilometres and 200 kilometres away from land.  

Dr. Leising described the event as significant but not extreme, noting there have been marine heat waves of similar size, duration and intensity in recent years. The wild card, he said, is the looming El Niño, the recurring climate phenomenon known for playing havoc with ocean and atmospheric conditions around the Pacific and beyond.  

“The last time we had a large heat wave like we’ve got right now, and had El Niño looming along the equator, that was in 2014, and that led to ‘the blob,’” he said, referencing the prolonged marine heat wave that created huge blooms of harmful algae and shuttered fisheries up and down the coast.  

“So it leaves you to speculate: Will we have in 2024 another whole Pacific Northwest region-spanning ‘blob’ like we did in 2015? It’s not out of the realm of possibility that we get another large heat wave that lingers through the winter.”  

Dr. Leising said marine heat waves of recent years have followed a pattern of building up far offshore in the spring, growing as they approach coastal waters in the summertime, and receding from the coastline by October or November. 

“The best-case scenario will be that the heat wave we have now will back off like it has the last several years, we have a little bit of return to normal during November, December, January, but then it’s followed by the El Niño,” he said, noting that this scenario could still have a cumulative effect on marine animals.  

“The worst-case scenario would be that the El Niño weather patterns that develop on the equator affect the atmosphere in the North Pacific and it reinforces and maintains the heat wave, so that it does not recede from the coast as much as it has in recent years. I think that is less likely, but possible.”  

The U.S. Climate Prediction Center says there is a 90-per-cent chance El Niño will continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter, peaking with moderate to strong intensity between November and January.  

The approaching marine heat wave comes during a summer of extremes. Across Canada, 133,000 square kilometres of land have burned, making 2023 the country’s worst wildfire season. On Tuesday, the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said July was the hottest month globally since record-keeping began in 1940. In late July, water temperature near the southern tip of Florida reached 38.4 C – hot-tub temperature.

Meanwhile, Environment Canada is tracking a “very strong atmospheric signal” that is expected to bring air temperatures of more than 10 degrees above seasonal to the West Coast by late weekend and early next week.

South Korea: World Scout Jamboree continues despite U.S., U.K. withdrawals amid heat wave

Via Yonhap: (4th LD) World Scout Jamboree continues despite U.S., U.K. withdrawals amid heat wave. Excerpt:

SEOUL, Aug. 5 (Yonhap) -- Representatives of the participating countries decided to go ahead with the World Scout Jamboree on Saturday despite sweltering temperatures and other challenges that led U.S., British and other Scouts to pull out from the campsite on the country's southwest coast.  

Prime Minister Han Duck-soo announced the decision after a meeting of leaders of national contingents, reiterating Seoul's commitment to providing "sufficient" support to the event, which has been marred by heat-related illnesses, the spread of coronavirus, insect bites and other on-site obstacles since its opening in the Saemangeum reclamation area Wednesday.  

"The representatives held a meeting and decided to continue to proceed with the event without a pause," Han said during a briefing at the jamboree's press center.

In light of the heat wave, the government is encouraging various programs to take place in other regions beyond Saemangeum, Han added.  

The decision to proceed with the event was a relief for South Korean organizers as the moves by U.S., British and Singaporean Scouts to leave the Saemangeum site sparked speculation that other participants could follow suit, potentially leading the event to be halted or cut short.  

Han enumerated a set of steps by the Seoul government to bring the jamboree event back on track.  

They included the mobilization of more than 700 personnel to keep shower and other facilities clean, the provision of 104 additional air-conditioned buses and 64 canopies and the deployment of 60 more medical professionals, including 28 doctors.

Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022

Via Nature Medicine: Heat-related mortality in Europe during the summer of 2022. The abstract:

Over 70,000 excess deaths occurred in Europe during the summer of 2003. The resulting societal awareness led to the design and implementation of adaptation strategies to protect at-risk populations. We aimed to quantify heat-related mortality burden during the summer of 2022, the hottest season on record in Europe. 

We analyzed the Eurostat mortality database, which includes 45,184,044 counts of death from 823 contiguous regions in 35 European countries, representing the whole population of over 543 million people. We estimated 61,672 (95% confidence interval (CI) = 37,643–86,807) heat-related deaths in Europe between 30 May and 4 September 2022. 

Italy (18,010 deaths; 95% CI = 13,793–22,225), Spain (11,324; 95% CI = 7,908–14,880) and Germany (8,173; 95% CI = 5,374–11,018) had the highest summer heat-related mortality numbers, while Italy (295 deaths per million, 95% CI = 226–364), Greece (280, 95% CI = 201–355), Spain (237, 95% CI = 166–312) and Portugal (211, 95% CI = 162–255) had the highest heat-related mortality rates. 

Relative to population, we estimated 56% more heat-related deaths in women than men, with higher rates in men aged 0–64 (+41%) and 65–79 (+14%) years, and in women aged 80+ years (+27%). 

Our results call for a reevaluation and strengthening of existing heat surveillance platforms, prevention plans and long-term adaptation strategies.

The Texas heat dome shows an exhausting glimpse of the future

Via The New York Times, an op-ed by Jeff Goodell: The Texas Heat Dome Shows an Exhausting Glimpse of the Future. Excerpt:

In 2019, I happened to be visiting Phoenix on a 115-degree day. I had a meeting one afternoon about 10 blocks from the hotel where I was staying downtown. I gamely thought I’d brave the heat and walk to it. How bad could the heat really be? I grew up in California, not the Arctic. I thought I knew heat. I was wrong. After walking three blocks, I felt dizzy. After seven blocks, my heart was pounding. After 10 blocks, I thought I was a goner.  

That experience led me to spend the next three years researching and reporting a book about the dangers of extreme heat and how rising temperatures are reshaping our world. I talked to doctors about how when the core temperature of our bodies rises too high, the proteins in our cells begin to unravel.  

I sailed to Antarctica to see how changes in ocean temperature accelerate the melting of glaciers, causing seas to rise and flooding coastal cities around the world. I talked to people in the slums of India and in oven-like apartments in Arizona and in stifling hot garrets in Paris. I trapped mosquitoes in Houston and learned about how the spread of dengue fever and malaria is altered by hotter temperatures. I talked to engineers about how heat bends railroad tracks and weakens bridges. 

In short, I thought I had a pretty good idea about the impacts of extreme heat in our world.

And then, in mid-June, a few weeks before publication of my book, a heat dome settled over the entire Southwest as well as Mexico, breaking temperature records and turning asphalt to mush. I had recently moved to Austin, Texas. Yes, Texas is a hot place. But this was different. We’re talking about a heat index — the combination of temperature and humidity — as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Events disturbingly similar to what I had reported on in other places several years earlier were playing out in real time around me, like hikers dying of heatstroke and thousands of dead fish washing up on Gulf Coast beaches (hotter water contains less oxygen, making it difficult for fish to breathe). The red-faced desperation on the faces of homeless people living beneath an overpass near me was spookily evocative of the red-faced desperation I’d seen on the faces of people in India and Pakistan.  

You can argue that Texas has done this to itself. The planet is getting hotter because of the burning of fossil fuels. This is a simple truth, as clear as the moon in the night sky. No state has profited more from fossil fuels than Texas. Revenues from oil and gas production have long been central to the Texas economy and are at least partly responsible for the more than $32 billion projected surplus in the state’s 2024-25 budget. And Texas is also responsible for emitting more than 600 million metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, more than twice as much as any other state.  

The heat dome made visible the barbarity of the state’s political leadership. More workers die in Texas from high temperatures than anywhere else in the country. Nevertheless, on the very day when it was so hot that I didn’t want to walk outside to check the mail until after dark, Gov. Greg Abbott gave final approval to a law that will eliminate local ordinances requiring water breaks for construction workers. Despite the state’s massive budget surplus, many Texas prisons remain without air-conditioning, turning cells into torture chambers on hot days.

How a week of extreme weather sowed chaos in central China. Again.

Via Sixth Tone: How a Week of Extreme Weather Sowed Chaos in Central China. Again. Excerpt:

HENAN, Central China — Du Yingke runs his fingers mournfully through the wheat in his fields in Zhulou, a village in central China’s Henan province. The crops are a sorry sight: spiky, wilting, and spotted with black mold.  

“Now this can’t be eaten,” says Du, gazing into the distance. “It’s probably worthless even as animal feed. We waited for a year, and in the end gained nothing.”  

Until a few weeks ago, the 61-year-old was anticipating a bumper harvest. But like many farmers in this region, he is now facing crippling losses after being hit by what local media have described as “the worst pre-harvest rain in more than a decade.”

In late May, a sudden deluge struck Henan as the wheat harvest approached. While not as severe as the 2021 floods, which claimed 33 lives and caused widespread destruction, this rainfall proved particularly devastating to local crops.  

Known as “China’s granary,” Henan has 85 million mu (5.6 million hectares) of wheat fields that produce one-quarter of the country’s total output. But the grain is highly vulnerable to pre-harvest rain, which causes it to sprout prematurely, lowering its quality or even rendering it unusable.  

Over the following weeks, Henan launched a frenzied effort to salvage its rapidly deteriorating crops. Farmers harvested through the night, illuminated by overhead drones. Local officials fought to secure access to scarce machinery. Two hundred million yuan ($30 million) of emergency funding was released to help farmers dry their waterlogged grain.  

Yet the impact was still severe. Chinese authorities have yet to publish estimates of the damage to the wheat harvest, but Mysteel — a commodity data provider — said telephone interviews with farmers in southern Henan indicated that over 30% of the grain in that region had sprouted early.  

Some farmers have been wiped out. Du says most of the wheat on his 500 mu farm was completely ruined, and that his losses are likely to exceed 800,000 yuan.  

Moreover, the crisis has exposed how vulnerable Chinese agriculture remains to the effects of climate change. Farmers were left unable to access harvesters and drying equipment during the downpours, as a system built for an era of predictable weather proved brittle when placed under stress.  

Freak weather events are becoming a new normal in this region. This is the second time in three years that summer rain has disrupted Henan’s wheat harvest — Du also lost hundreds of thousands of yuan during the 2021 floods. Experts say more needs to be done to prepare China’s wheat farms for a more unstable future.

Earth shatters heat records, faces uncharted extreme weather

Via The Washington Post: Earth shatters heat records, faces uncharted extreme weather. The headline might better be "Humanity shatters heat records." Excerpt:

A remarkable spate of historic heat is hitting the planet, raising alarm over looming extreme weather dangers — and an increasing likelihood this year will be Earth’s warmest on record.  

New precedents have been set in recent weeks and months, surprising some scientists with their swift evolution: Historically warm oceans, with North Atlantic temperatures already nearing their typical annual peak; unparalleled low sea ice levels around Antarctica, where global warming impacts had, until now, been slower to appear; and the planet experiencing its warmest June ever charted, according to new data.  

And then, on Monday came Earth’s hottest day in at least 125,000 years. Tuesday was hotter.  

“We have never seen anything like this before,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. He said any number of charts and graphs on Earth’s climate are showing, quite literally, that “we are in uncharted territory.”

It is no shock that global warming is accelerating — scientists were anticipating that would come with the onset of El Niño, the infamous climate pattern that reemerged last month. It is known for unleashing surges of heat and moisture that trigger extreme floods and storms in some places, and droughts and fires in others.  

But the hot conditions are developing too quickly, and across more of the planet, to be explained solely by El Niño. Records are falling around the globe many months ahead of the El Niño’s peak impact, which typically hits in December and sends global temperatures soaring for months to follow.

“We have been seeing unprecedented extremes in the recent past even without being in this phase,” said Claudia Tebaldi, an earth scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, Wash. With El Niño’s influence, “the likelihood of seeing something unprecedented is even higher,” she said.  

In recent weeks, weather extremes have included record-breaking heat waves in China, where Beijing surpassed 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, and in Mexico and Texas, where officials were once again struggling to keep the electricity grid up and running.

Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’

Via The Guardian: Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’. Excerpt:

Global heating will drive billions of people out of the “climate niche” in which humanity has flourished for millennia, a study has estimated, exposing them to unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather.  

The world is on track for 2.7C of heating with current action plans and this would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past.  

Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places, the scientists said, although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts.  

However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80%, to 400 million.  

The analysis is the first of its kind and is able to treat every citizen equally, unlike previous economic assessments of the damage of the climate crisis, which have been skewed towards the rich.  

In countries with large populations and already warm climates most people will be pushed outside the human climate niche, with India and Nigeria facing the worst changes. India is already suffering from extreme heatwaves, and a recent study found that more than a third of heat-related deaths in summer from 1991-2018 occurred as a direct result of human-caused global heating.  

Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, UK, who led the new research, said: “The costs of global warming are often expressed in financial terms but our study highlights the phenomenal human cost of failing to tackle the climate emergency.  

“Economic estimates almost always value the rich more than the poor, because they have more assets to lose, and they tend to value those alive now over those living in the future. We’re considering all people as equal in this study.”  

Prof Chi Xu, at Nanjing University in China, and also part of the research team, said: “Such high temperatures [outside the niche] have been linked to issues including increased mortality, decreased labour productivity, decreased cognitive performance, impaired learning, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased crop yield, increased conflict and infectious disease spread.”  

Prof Marten Scheffer at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and a senior author of the study, said those pushed outside the climate niche might consider migrating to cooler places: “Not just migration of tens of millions of people but it might be a billion or so.”

Climate emotions and anxiety among young people in Canada: A national survey and call to action

Via The Journal of Climate Change and Health: Climate emotions and anxiety among young people in Canada: A national survey and call to action.

Young people have a unique positionality in relation to the mental and emotional dimensions of climate change: they have contributed the least to the crisis, they are and will be disproportionately impacted, and they have limited opportunities and invaluable perspectives for influencing action. Evidence increasingly illustrates that young people are particularly vulnerable to climate distress and anxiety.  

Methods: The purpose of this study was to generate knowledge about climate emotions and climate anxiety among young people using a representative survey. We surveyed 1000 young people (aged 16–25) across Canada. The online survey asked respondents about: (i) climate emotions and their impacts, (ii) perspectives on the future due to climate change, (iii) perspectives and feelings about government (in)action, (iv) perspectives on supports, programs, and resources needed to cope with climate emotions and anxiety, and (v) perspectives on climate change education (including socio-emotional dimensions).  

Data were weighted to improve representativeness according to age, gender, and region. Descriptive analyses were conducted, scales were generated, and textual responses were analyzed using thematic analysis.  

Results: Young Canadians are experiencing a diversity of challenging climate emotions. At least 56% of respondents reported feeling afraid, sad, anxious, and powerless. 78% reported that climate change impacts their overall mental health and 37% reported that their feelings about climate change negatively impact daily functioning.  

Data also illustrate that climate change is contributing to negative perceptions about their future. For example, 39% of respondents report hesitation about having children due to climate change, 73% report thinking that the future is frightening, and 76% report that people have failed to take care of the planet.  

Respondents rated governmental responses to climate change negatively and reported greater feelings of betrayal than of reassurance.  

The data show that young Canadians need a diversity of coping supports and believe the formal education system should be doing more to support them.  

Conclusion: This study adds to the emerging and increasingly concerning evidence base on climate emotions and anxiety among young people. We conclude by summarizing key directions for future research.