Climate
AM Briefing: North America Ablaze
On the Park Fire, coastal climate resilience, and flight delays
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On the Park Fire, coastal climate resilience, and flight delays
On an important endorsement, Ford’s earnings report, and tree bark
Plus answers to other pressing questions about the offshore wind project.
On this week’s heat, nitrous oxide emissions, and Q2 earnings
On early reactions to the legislation, AI weather forecasts, and bull sharks
While the Northeast might start breathing more easily this week, the heat will intensify again in the West. Keep reading to discover what sweltering lies in store.
The weekend brough intense heat to the Northwest, with many cities inching close to their all-time temperature records. While the potential for record-breaking heat is set to decrease throughout the week, temperatures in the region will remain above average, Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service, told me. Cities like Spokane, Washington and Boise, Idaho will continue to see triple-digit temperatures until at least Wednesday. In fact, on Thursday, Boise might see its 10th day in a row above 100 degrees, breaking the city’s record.
The region also struggled this weekend — and will continue to struggle this summer — with increased wildfire activity. On Saturday, residents of Baker County had to evacuate as a fire spread to residential areas. As of yesterday, Oregon’s firefighters were dealing with 81 active fires, burning through over 500,000 acres of the state. This week, a high pressure area combined with moisture coming from the Pacific Ocean may contribute to thunderstorms — but not enough precipitation to break the dry conditions in the region. The pattern will increase the likelihood of wildfires, as lighting might spark blazes.
All across the East Coast temperatures shattered records last week. On July 16, thermometers in Washington, D.C. reached 104 degrees for just the 13th time in history. The next day the District capped off a run of four days with temperatures above 101 degrees, setting — you guessed it — a new record. And that was just the heat — factoring in humidity, the weather felt more like 108 degrees at its hottest.
In Maryland, summer camps had to move activities indoors for the campers’ safety. Last Monday, only 75 children attended the Horizon Day Camp in Baltimore County. Usually there are around 200 campers.
The heat wave also brought back transit issues across the region. Commuters in the D.C. area and in New York struggled through train cancellations and delays.
In Arizona County alone, more than 300 deaths are being linked to record-breaking heat, NBC News reported on Thursday. Also, 23 deaths in the county have been confirmed to have been caused by heat or heat-related complications — and those numbers are up to date only through July 13, meaning they don’t include last week’s heat. But unlike other parts of the country, the Southwest will continue to broil this week.
“Highs will be closer to historical averages in Phoenix next week, but still above 110 in Las Vegas most days, which could challenge some daily records again later next week,” Dan Pydynowski, senior meteorologist at AccuWeather, told me.
Sorry, California. According to Oravec, for at least the month of August, most of the extreme heat in the U.S. will remain concentrated in the West. That’s not the worst of it, even — conditions will also be very dry. “There’s really not a very good chance of rain across the West, especially across parts of the Northwest and the Great Basin where there’s going to be a lot of record high temperatures,” Oravec told me. When hot and dry conditions occur together, that means wildfires.
On the bright side, CNETreported that California’s investment in solar-powered batteries might have kept the state’s lights on during a heat wave that lasted through July 12. The batteries provided an additional 10,000 megawatts of power.
Sweltering heat continues to spread across Europe. Early last week, Italy placed several cities under its most severe heat alert. The country also reported an increased number of wildfires — two firefighters died while putting out a fire in Southern Italy.
That said, most of the extreme heat hitting the region seems to be in the past now. “If we are looking for extreme heat, chances of that being widespread across Italy to Ukraine looks to be on the low side for the rest of the summer,” Pydynowski told me. In the second half of August, temperatures might return to the high 90s for a while, at least.
In Greece, authorities shut down the Acropolis on Wednesday to protect tourists and workers from extreme temperatures. Earlier in the day, before the closure, Red Cross volunteers were distributing bottled water to those waiting in line for the attraction. Several Greek islands have also been dealing with severe water shortages, and some have resorted to desalinating seawater for drinking and banning the refilling of swimming pools. Next week, the interior and coastal regions of the country will continue to see temperatures around 95 degrees, with the possibility of reaching 104 degrees.
On the 2024 presidential race, the EPA’s climate grants, and COP29
Current conditions: England’s wet and cold summer has been linked to a concerning decline in insect populations • At least 11 people died in northern China after torrential rain caused a bridge to collapse • The West Coast’s record-breaking heat wave will last at least through Wednesday.
President Biden announced yesterday he will not run for re-election and endorsed his vice president, Kamala Harris, for the 2024 Democratic ticket. Tributes from his colleagues poured in quickly, with many hailing Biden’s decision as brave and patriotic, and others recounting his accomplishments during three-and-a-half years in office, including his climate record. “Biden will leave office with easily the strongest climate record of any president — and one of the stronger environmental records, generally, in decades,” wrote Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer. Biden signed the largest investment in clean energy and decarbonization in American history, oversaw a revitalization of American industrial strategy, passed the bipartisan infrastructure law and CHIPS and Science Act (both of which funded or expanded climate-friendly programs), and moved quickly to regulate greenhouse gas emissions using executive authority. “Democrats had tried and failed for 30 years to pass a climate law through the Senate,” Meyer said. “Biden succeeded.”
Would a President Harris carry on this legacy? As Bloombergnoted, her own climate agenda as a presidential candidate in 2019 was more ambitious even than Biden’s. She called for a carbon tax, a ban on fracking and fossil fuel leases on public lands, and $10 trillion in spending to curb greenhouse gas emissions. She also was an early co-sponsor of the Green New Deal. She supported a pollution fee, a crackdown on fossil fuel companies, and as a top attorney in California, spearheaded several investigations into and lawsuits against major oil companies. She has also been a vocal advocate for protecting frontline and disadvantaged communities bearing the brunt of the climate crisis.
The Biden administration this morning announced the 25 recipients of more than $4 billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to “implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce air pollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition.” The EPA estimates that the projects, when taken together, would have the greenhouse gas reduction potential equivalent to 971 million metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2050. The grants will fund projects across 30 states and one Tribe. The largest grant, of $500 million, will go to California’s South Coast Air Quality Management District project to decarbonize transportation and goods movement in Los Angeles and Long Beach. Other large-sum recipients include:
The CPGR program was created under the Inflation Reduction Act. EPA administrator Michael Regan said these funds would be allocated by the fall. As E&E Newsnoted, this timeline “would make them virtually impossible for a new administration to rescind.”
EV startup Rivian opened a first-of-its-kind “charging outpost” – or, as Engadgetcalls it, a “crunchy not-gas station.” It’s a rest stop, basically, but instead of filling up with gas you top up your EV charge and get a chance to use the bathroom, grab some snacks, and even do some reading at the onsite library. The outpost, which has five DC fast chargers, is located about 24 miles outside of Yosemite National Park in Groveland, California, and sits on the site of an old gas station. It’s the first of what Rivian hopes will be many such EV rest stops near national parks and other high-traffic areas.
Rivian
Azerbaijan, the host of this year’s COP29 climate summit, has set up an international fund to pool money from polluting countries and governments to help poorer countries adapt and build resilience to the climate crisis. Contributions to the “Climate Finance Action Fund” will be voluntary and will only go ahead if pledges reach $1 billion collectively between at least 10 countries. Meanwhile, “negotiations on the core outcome of the summit — a new, large-scale financial aid target to support climate action in developing countries — remain deadlocked,” Politicoreported. The fund is one of 14 non-binding initiatives Azerbaijan announced on Friday, none of which “directly address” fossil fuel use. At a press conference on the same day, the summit’s chief executive Elnur Soltanov suggested that reducing fossil fuel extraction was not necessary to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement. “We should somehow delineate between a 1.5C alignment and this view about hydrocarbons,” Soltanov said. Azerbaijan is heavily dependent on income from fossil fuels, which make up more than 90% of its exports.
Former President Donald Trump over the weekend changed his tone slightly on electric vehicles, telling a crowd at a rally in Michigan that he’s “totally for” EVs so long as they don’t make up 100% of the market. He said something similar at an event last month, announcing he was a “big fan” of EVs: “I think a lot of people are going to want to buy electric cars but…if you want to buy a different type of car you have to have a choice—some people need to go far.”
Trump has repeatedly vowed to end the (non-existent) EV “mandate” if he’s elected in November and has a history of complaining that EVs run out of battery. A report in The Wall Street Journal suggests his blossoming “bromance” with Tesla CEO Elon Musk may be inspiring the messaging shift. The two men have reportedly been chatting behind the scenes, and Musk has endorsed Trump. “He’s very nice when he calls,” Musk told an investor recently, adding that he can be very persuasive. “I was like, you know, electric cars I think are pretty good for the future, America’s the leader in electric cars…buy America.” At the Michigan event over the weekend Trump said he “loves” Elon.
“We can turn a wrench in an oil and gas field to reduce methane emissions. There’s no wrench we can turn to slow emissions from the Amazon or permafrost.” –Rob Jackson, author of a new book on climate solutions calledInto the Clear Blue Sky