Jesus Hernandez guides his granddaughter Angelina via a container through a street flooded in the passing of Hurricane Helene, in Batabano, Mayabeque province, Cuba, on Thursday, 26 September 2024. Photo: Ramon Espinosa / AP Photo

Our dystopian climate isn’t just about fires and floods. It’s about society fracturing.

By Bill McKibben 9 October 2024 (The Guardian) – Even as the good people of Florida’s west coast pulled the soggy mattresses from Helene out to the curb, Milton appeared on the horizon this week – a double blast of destruction from the Gulf of Mexico that’s a reminder that physics takes no time off, not even in the […]

Ocean Climate Shift Index (CSI) along the track of Helene, as it developed from disturbance to tropical storm to hurricane to major hurricane. Ocean CSI in surrounding regions are drawn from 24 September 2024, when the storm developed from a potential tropical cyclone to a tropical storm, coinciding with the highest Ocean CSI (in excess of 500) measured along its track. Graphic: Climate Central

Hurricane Helene was supercharged by ultra-warm water made up to 500 times more likely by global warming, study finds – “The heat that human activities are adding to the atmosphere and oceans is like steroids for hurricanes”

By Rachel Ramirez 9 October 2024 (CNN) – The exceptionally warm water of the Gulf of Mexico that supercharged deadly Helene last month was made up to 500 times more likely by human-caused climate change, which also ramped up the hurricane’s wind and rain, according to a new scientific analysis. Helene, which made landfall in Florida as […]

A resident helps free a stranded car as Hurricane Helene strikes Boone, North Carolina. Photo: Jonathan Drake / Reuters

I wasn’t prepared to be a climate refugee – A climate advocate learns firsthand the price of climate change in our lives and calls for voters to head off future disasters – “My daughter is still having nightmares”

By Melissa Hanson 4 October 2024 (Scientific American) – I wasn’t prepared to be a climate refugee. Not after relocating my family from drought and wildfire-prone California to the “climate haven” of Asheville, N.C. But less than two months after we moved into our delightfully wooded, mild-weather community, we were forced to leave. Even before […]

Wrecked homes are seen in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, Wednesday, 2 October 2024, in Chimney Rock Village, N.C. Photo: Mike Stewart / AP Photo

Homeowners hit by Hurricane Helene face the grim task of rebuilding without flood insurance – “There will absolutely be people who will be financially devasted by this event”

By Sally Ho 5 October 2024 (AP) – A week after Hurricane Helene overwhelmed the Southeastern U.S., homeowners hit the hardest are grappling with how they could possibly pay for the flood damage from one of the deadliest storms to hit the mainland in recent history. The Category 4 storm that first struck Florida’s Gulf […]

A rescue team paddles down the Swannanoa River after the remnants of Hurricane Helene caused widespread flooding, downed trees, and power outages in western North Carolina, 29 September 2024. Photo: Travis Long / The News and Observer / Reuters

Asheville tragedy shows there are no climate change safe havens – North Carolina city once viewed as a safe haven for climate refugees – “Climate change is a pervasive issue that is going to affect communities all over the world – not equally – but definitely it will impact everyone, everywhere in some way”

By Kiara Alfonseca 30 September 2024 (ABC News) – Asheville, North Carolina, has been called a potential safe haven for climate refugees by real estate researchers, praised for its temperate mountain weather, distance far from the coast, experiencing less extreme heat and fewer wildfires. The city of around 95,000 people was believed markings of a place where those escaping […]

A property is engulfed in flames as the Thompson Fire burns, Tuesday, 2 July 2024, in Oroville, California. Photo: Ethan Swope / AP

Persistent heat wave in the U.S. expected to shatter new records as it bakes West and swelters in East – “Unfortunately, there won’t be much relief overnight either”

By Margery A. Beck 7 July 2024 (AP) – A long-running heat wave that has already shattered previous records across the U.S. will persist, baking parts of the West with dangerous temperatures that will soar into the 100s and holding the East in its hot and humid grip throughout the week, forecasters said Sunday. An excessive heat warning […]

(a) Total, (b) global, (c) linear, and (d) regional and local nonlinear sea-level rise (SLR) rates for three sites (New Jersey, Cheesequake; Florida, Nassau; Scotland, Kyle of Tongue) are shown with the time of emergence for each site. Model predictions are the mean with 1σ uncertainty. Note variable y-axes. Graphic: Walker, et al., 2022 / Nature Communications

Onset of modern sea level rise began in 1863, international study finds – “We can be virtually certain the global rate of sea-level rise from 1940 to 2000 was faster than all previous 60-year intervals over the last 2,000 years”

18 February 2022 (Rutgers University) – An international team of scientists including Rutgers researchers has found that modern rates of sea level rise began emerging in 1863 as the Industrial Age intensified, coinciding with evidence for early ocean warming and glacier melt. The study, which used a global database of sea-level records spanning the last […]

Map showing ground temperatures in the Pacific Northwest during the record-breaking heatwave in June 2021. Ground temperatures reached as high as 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) in Wenatchee, Washington. Graphic: European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-3

Ground temperatures reached an astounding 145 degrees during the Pacific Northwest heatwave in early summer 2021

By Brian Kahn 29 June 2021 (Gizmodo) – Air temperatures during record-setting heatwave in the Pacific Northwest were bad enough. But the ground was on a whole other level. Stunning new satellite imagery from the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-3 satellite shows ground temperatures reached as high as 145 degrees Fahrenheit (63 degrees Celsius) in Wenatchee, Washington. Apparently […]

Map showing Federal government estimates of Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy in the U.S., estimated percentage of adults who may be hesitant to get the vaccine by county. Data: Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. Graphic: The New York Times

Least vaccinated U.S. counties have something in common: Trump voters – “It’s terrifying to think that this may never end. So much hinges on these vaccinations”

By Danielle Ivory, Lauren Leatherby, and Robert Gebeloff 17 April 2021 (The New York Times) – About 31 percent of adults in the United States have now been fully vaccinated. Scientists have estimated that 70 to 90 percent of the total population must acquire resistance to the virus to reach herd immunity. But in hundreds […]

Deer photographed by a remote camera on 11 August 2020 in a forest destroyed by climate change in North Carolina. Sea level rise and saltwater intrusion are killing trees en masse, causing ghost forests. Photo: Emily Ury

Sea level rise is killing trees along the Atlantic coast, creating “ghost forests” that are visible from space

By Emily Ury 6 April 2021 (The Conversation) – Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in […]

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