Tag: heat wave

Studies: NY Times Climate FWD: May 5, 2021

Articles include: Washington moves to cut greenhouse gases; A deadly combination: Extreme heat and power failures; People of color face more pollution. This study was still a surprise; Study: Emissions Cuts Could Drop the Impact of Melting Ice on Oceans by Half; and more.

Report: Average Arctic Ocean temperatures in February warmer than past two decades

The Hill: Average Arctic Ocean temperatures in February warmer than past two decades.

The Arctic Ocean saw February temperatures that were warmer than the past two decades’ average, according to a report released Monday by Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.

Worldwide, the month’s temperatures were close to the average for the past 30 years but included the coldest anomaly in nearly six years, according to the organization’s report.

Study: Global Warming’s Deadly Combination: Heat and Humidity

New York Times: Global Warming’s Deadly Combination: Heat and Humidity. A new study suggests that large swaths of the tropics will experience dangerous living and working conditions if global warming isn’t limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Here’s one more reason the world should aim to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, a goal of the international Paris Agreement: It will help keep the tropics from becoming a deadly hothouse.

A study published Monday suggests that sharply cutting emissions of greenhouse gases to stay below that limit, which is equivalent to about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit of warming since 1900, will help the tropics avoid episodes of high heat and high humidity — known as extreme wet-bulb temperature, or TW — that go beyond the limits of human survival.

Study: The life-altering effects heat is having on American children

The Guardian: The life-altering effects heat is having on American children. Global heating takes a disproportionate toll on Black and Latino children – and the danger begins before they are even born.

Joe Biden has vowed to uproot what he describes as the systemic racism that has caused certain communities “disproportionate harm from climate change and environmental contaminants for decades”.

The need for this is increasingly clear. The roots of systemic racism run so stubbornly deep in the US, recent research has revealed, that global heating harms Black and Latino children before they are even born, as well as in the first years of their lives.

“Unfortunately many children will be marked for life because of what their mothers are exposed to, affecting the brain, lungs, pancreas, everything,” said Susan Pacheco, an associate professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center who co-authored research released last summer that found that pregnant women exposed to heat and air pollution are at heightened risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes.

Study: Climate crisis: world is at its hottest for at least 12,000 years

The Guardian: Climate crisis: world is at its hottest for at least 12,000 years – study. Scientists say temperatures globally at highest level since start of human civilization.

The planet is hotter now than it has been for at least 12,000 years, a period spanning the entire development of human civilisation, according to research.

Analysis of ocean surface temperatures shows human-driven climate change has put the world in “uncharted territory”, the scientists say. The planet may even be at its warmest for 125,000 years, although data on that far back is less certain.

The research, published in the journal Nature, reached these conclusions by solving a longstanding puzzle known as the “Holocene temperature conundrum”. Climate models have indicated continuous warming since the last ice age ended 12,000 years ago and the Holocene period began. But temperature estimates derived from fossil shells showed a peak of warming 6,000 years ago and then a cooling, until the industrial revolution sent carbon emissions soaring.

“We demonstrate that global average annual temperature has been rising over the last 12,000 years, contrary to previous results,” said Samantha Bova, at Rutgers University–New Brunswick in the US, who led the research. “This means that the modern, human-caused global warming period is accelerating a long-term increase in global temperatures, making today completely uncharted territory. It changes the baseline and emphasises just how critical it is to take our situation seriously.”

One study, published in 2017, suggested that global temperatures were last as high as today 115,000 years ago, but that was based on less data.

Lijing Cheng, at the International Centre for Climate and Environment Sciences in Beijing, China, recently led a study that showed that in 2020 the world’s oceans reached their hottest level yet in instrumental records dating back to the 1940s. More than 90% of global heating is taken up by the seas.

Yale Climate Connections, January 22,2021

Articles include: Congressional Review Act and climate change rules; Biden first 100 days;  12 books on climate change;  Yard Maintenance;  evacuate with pets during a wildfire, hurricane, or other disaster;  Advocate and scholar Beverly Wright wants to put justice in climate solutions;  Lizards and snakes will feel global warming’s effects;  College course teaches students how to be climate leaders;  Study – link between hotter weather and lower student test scores.

Study: Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020

ABC.net.au: Climate change pushed ocean temperatures to record high in 2020, study finds. The world’s oceans absorbed 20 sextillion joules of heat due to climate change in 2020 and warmed to record levels, a study has found.

Key points:

  • Last year the world’s oceans absorbed 20 zettajoules of heat
  • Higher ocean temperatures can lead to an increase in extreme weather
  • Seas are warming at twice the global average in Australia’s south-east

Report: In Florida and Arizona, Worsening Heat Puts More People at Risk – 2 articles

Public Integrity: IN FLORIDA, WORSENING HEAT PUTS MORE PEOPLE AT RISK. Farmworkers have long faced dangers from laboring outside in sweltering heat. As climate change raises temperatures, heat illness could come for far more people. For more than two decades now, Jeannie Economos has been advocating for farmworkers’ health. Pesticide exposure was her first focus. But for half that time, she’s also zeroed in on deadly heat. “It gets hotter every summer,” said Economos, coordinator of pesticide safety and environmental health at Farmworker Association of Florida. “This past summer was one of the hottest on the record and the number of hot days are getting more and more every year.”

Public Integrity: Dangerous Heat, Unequal Consequences. How two neighborhoods in Arizona and Florida became hotspots for sickening heat. Poor communities are bearing the brunt of sickening heat in these states, an analysis by Columbia Journalism Investigations and the Center for Public Integrity found. Federal data capturing most emergency room visits and hospitalizations in Arizona and Florida reveal higher rates of heat-related illnesses in areas with less income. The data, never before made public at the ZIP code level, also show that the highest rates of heat-related illnesses are in neighborhoods with a history of racial segregation. Experts say racist policies of the past created conditions, never corrected, that make heat more dangerous for people there today.

Study: Baby sharks emerge from egg cases earlier and weaker in oceans warmed by climate crisis

The Guardian: Baby sharks emerge from egg cases earlier and weaker in oceans warmed by climate crisis. Weaker sharks are less effective hunters, which can upset the balance of the ecosystem, say authors of study into impacts of hotter oceans.

Baby sharks will emerge from their egg cases earlier and weaker as water temperatures rise, according to a new study that examined the impact of warming oceans on embryos.

About 40% of all shark species lay eggs, and the researchers found that one species unique to the Great Barrier Reef spent up to 25 days less in their egg cases under temperatures expected by the end of the century.

The extra heat caused embryonic epaulette sharks to eat through their egg yolks faster and when they were born, the rising temperatures affected their fitness.

She said the results of the study, published Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports, presented a “worrying future” because many sharks were already under threat.