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Climate

The Smoke Is Actually Making Us Colder — For Now

It will probably warm the planet in the long run.

A graph.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Even though severe wildfires can warm the planet over time, right now the smoke floating down from Quebec to the United States is actually making temperatures cooler.

Robert Field, a scientist at NASA and Columbia University, told me that by his rough estimation the smoke earlier in June reduced temperatures by around 5 degrees Celsius — or 9 degrees Fahrenheit — in New York City.

Field came to this figure by comparing weather forecasts, which are produced by models that do not account for smoke, and the actual observed temperature on the given smokey day.

This effect was also observed on the East Coast by electric grid operators, who noted that lower than expected temperatures led to less usage of air conditioning and demand on the grid (although the smoke also meant less generation from solar panels).

This is hardly a surprising or counterintuitive finding: Smoke essentially works as a cloud, blocking energy from the sun from reaching the surface.

A team of scientists looking at the climate effects from COVID-19 and the attendant lockdowns actually found that the larger influence on climate came from the Australian wildfires of 2019 and 2020, which caused “a strong and abrupt climate cooling.” Some of the most dramatic climatic events have been cooling associated with pumping aerosols into the atmosphere, either from volcanic eruptions or, uhhh, wildfires in Canada.

And then there’s the long-term effect on the climate. These wildfires have pumped a massive amount of carbon into the air, but an exact accounting for forest fires in high latitude, boreal forests is tricky, Field explained, because there’s a natural fire cycle. “The starting point is that fire is a necessary ecological process in those forests. Those forests are meant to burn every 70 to 80 years. And over that time period the CO2 emissions that we’re seeing now will be offset over time by regenerating forests,” Field said.

But, he cautioned, in a warming world, these cycles could be disrupted. “Higher intensity fires can be harder to recover from and that carbon offsetting can take longer,” Field told me.

There are also worries about how in some northern forests, the soil’s so-called “legacy carbon” — old leaves, branches, and roots that have been long-buried — could be released by recent forest fires.

The exact effect of fire on greenhouse gas concentrations remains an active area of research. What’s well established is that when fire leads to changes in land use like clearing rainforests for agriculture — carbon emissions will go up and stay up.

In short, what clearly matters for emissions is not so much forests burning, but forests turning into something else after they burn, whether it be pasture or crops or degraded forests that absorb less carbon. One paper found that about a fifth of fire emissions “represent a source of CO2 that can be termed as irreversible … because it cannot be recovered by vegetation regrowth or soil carbon rebuild.”

Climate change is almost certainly making wildfires more likely and more severe with all sorts of horrible impacts on our health. But what's truly scary is that these wildfires may also be making climate change itself worse.

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Politics

The Climate Election You Missed Last Night

While you were watching Florida and Wisconsin, voters in Naperville, Illinois were showing up to fight coal.

Climate voting.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

It’s probably fair to say that not that many people paid close attention to last night’s city council election in Naperville, Illinois. A far western suburb of Chicago, the city is known for its good schools, small-town charm, and lovely brick-paved path along the DuPage River. Its residents tend to vote for Democrats. It’s not what you would consider a national bellwether.

Instead, much of the nation’s attention on Tuesday night focused on the outcomes of races in Wisconsin and Florida — considered the first electoral tests of President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s popularity. Outside of the 80,000 or so voters who cast ballots in Naperville, there weren’t likely many outsiders watching the suburb’s returns.

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Energy

Exclusive: Trump’s Plans to Build AI Data Centers on Federal Land

The Department of Energy has put together a list of sites and is requesting proposals from developers, Heatmap has learned.

A data center and Nevada land.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

The Department of Energy is moving ahead with plans to allow companies to build AI data centers and new power plants on federal land — and it has put together a list of more than a dozen sites nationwide that could receive the industrial-scale facilities, according to an internal memo obtained by Heatmap News.

The memo lists sites in Texas, Illinois, New Jersey, Colorado, and other locations. The government could even allow new power plants — including nuclear reactors and carbon-capture operations — to be built on the same sites to generate enough electricity to power the data centers, the memo says.

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Economy

AM Briefing: Liberation Day

On trade turbulence, special election results, and HHS cuts

Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ Tariffs Loom
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

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THE TOP FIVE

1. Trump to roll out broad new tariffs

President Trump today will outline sweeping new tariffs on foreign imports during a “Liberation Day” speech in the White House Rose Garden scheduled for 4 p.m. EST. Details on the levies remain scarce. Trump has floated the idea that they will be “reciprocal” against countries that impose fees on U.S. goods, though the predominant rumor is that he could impose an across-the-board 20% tariff. The tariffs will be in addition to those already announced on Chinese goods, steel and aluminum, energy imports from Canada, and a 25% fee on imported vehicles, the latter of which comes into effect Thursday. “The tariffs are expected to disrupt the global trade in clean technologies, from electric cars to the materials used to build wind turbines,” explained Josh Gabbatiss at Carbon Brief. “And as clean technology becomes more expensive to manufacture in the U.S., other nations – particularly China – are likely to step up to fill in any gaps.” The trade turbulence will also disrupt the U.S. natural gas market, with domestic supply expected to tighten, and utility prices to rise. This could “accelerate the uptake of coal instead of gas, and result in a swell in U.S. power emissions that could accelerate climate change,” Reutersreported.

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