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According to new data from the Rhodium Group analyzed by ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine, warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley.
Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers modeled the human climate “niche”: the regions where temperature and precipitation have been most suitable for humans to live in over the past 6,000 years.
In the United States, that niche today blankets the heart of the country, from the Atlantic seaboard through northern Texas and Nebraska, and the California coast. But as the climate warms, the niche could shift drastically northward. Under even a moderate carbon emissions scenario (known as RCP 4.5), by 2070 much of the Southeast becomes less suitable and the niche shifts toward the Midwest.
America is cutting carbon again.
U.S. emissions are on track to fall by as much as 3 percent in 2023, according to a pair of recent analyses — reversing two years of flat or increasing output of planet-warming pollution.
The projected drop is particularly notable as it comes during a year when the U.S. economy is set to expand by almost 2.5 percent — a sign that emissions are decoupling from economic growth. It also represents one of the largest annual emission declines of the last decade.
Even so, the United States has considerable work to do to meet its commitments under the Paris climate accord, which calls for a 50 percent reduction in emissions by the end of the decade. Meeting that goal would require the United States to cut emissions by roughly 6 percent a year through 2030.
“We are seeing consistent emission decreases at the scale of the entire country, but not at the pace that we need,” said Chris Field, who leads the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University.
States and urban areas will be required to set goals to reduce carbon emissions from cars and trucks on their roads under a new federal rule issued Wednesday, part of the Biden administration’s efforts to link tens of billions of dollars in highway funding from the infrastructure law to its environmental priorities.
The rule, issued by the Federal Highway Administration, has the backing of environmentalists and some Democratic-led states, which say it’s an important recognition of how funding road construction tends to encourage more driving and higher emissions. But the proposal has faced fierce opposition from many state transportation agencies, which argue they have limited options to meet their goals and dispute the federal government’s legal authority to set a binding rule.
While the rule is final, it is likely to become embroiled in a battle pitting Republican lawmakers and conservative states against the Biden administration. Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States, and the federal government has been trying to steer funding from the law toward projects such as transit lines, sidewalks and electric vehicle charging. But the highway administration has few tools to force states to spend money in ways Washington would like — and even guidance from federal officials has met pushback.
On Friday, November 17, 2023, the Earth appeared to have crossed a threshold into new climatic territory. That day was the first that the average air temperature near the surface of the Earth was 2 degrees Celsius warmer than preindustrial levels. Saturday was the second.
The planet has been this hot before, but never in the era relevant to modern humanity. For those two days, we were the furthest we have ever been from the average climate of 1850–1900, the time just before humans began industrializing in earnest and adding large quantities of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. We are now a large margin away from the climate in which nearly all of human history has played out.
The world is on track for a “hellish” 3C of global heating, the UN has warned before the crucial Cop28 climate summit that begins next week in the United Arab Emirates. The report found that today’s carbon-cutting policies are so inadequate that 3C of heating would be reached this century.
Temperature records have already been obliterated in 2023 and intensifying heatwaves, floods and droughts have taken lives and hit livelihoods across the globe, in response to a temperature rise of 1.4C to date. Scientists say far worse is to come if temperatures continue to rise. The secretary general of the UN, António Guterres, has said repeatedly the world is heading for a “hellish” future.
The UN Environment Programme (Unep) report said that implementing future policies already promised by countries would shave 0.1C off the 3C limit. Putting in place emissions cuts pledged by developing countries on condition of receiving financial and technical support would cut the temperature rise to 2.5C, still a catastrophic scenario.
Earth facing dire sea level rise — up to 20m — even if climate goals met
Global News
Capping global temperature rise at two degrees Celsius over baseline is no longer seen as enough to avoid a catastrophic rise in sea levels that would decimate the earth’s coastlines and displace hundreds of millions of people, climate scientists warn.
A report released Thursday by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, compiled by more than 60 scientists and policy experts, is sounding the alarm on new modelling data that indicates the 2015 Paris Agreement is woefully out-of-date.
The consortium is urging world leaders to take stock of new research ahead of the United Nations’ COP28 climate conference later this month. According to the report, the only road forward is ensuring that global temperatures do not rise over 1.5C above pre-industrial levels, much lower than the two degree maximum set at the Paris Climate Accords.
“We have time, but not much time,” reads the report’s preface, written by the president of Chile and prime minister of Iceland. “We cannot negotiate with the melting point of ice.”
Climate change: Is the world warming faster than expected?
BBC News
[…] It's now "virtually certain" that 2023 will be the hottest year on record. That's something that no major climate science body expected at the start of the year.
Scientists have long known that temperatures will continue to rise as humans keep releasing record amounts of planet-heating greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, mainly through burning fossil fuels. This is the main cause of global warming. […]
While the rate of warming seems to have sped up in recent decades, this has not yet consistently exceeded the range of possible temperatures that scientists expected from climate models.
This provides some reassurance that the world hasn't yet tipped into a new phase of runaway climate change.
However, a group of leading climate scientists recently warned that the climate may change more quickly than expected in the future.
Ecosystems as Infrastructure: A New Way of Looking at Climate Resilience
Yale Environment 360
When people think of landscape architecture, small-scale recreational spaces like urban parks, gardens, and golf courses may come to mind. MacArthur “Genius Award” winner Kate Orff has a grander and more ecologically ambitious vision.
Orff, director of Columbia University’s Urban Design Program, believes that architects should do more than just create beautiful spaces: They also need to work with nature to create resilient living environments that both help to knit human communities together and protect them against the ravages of climate change. […]
In an interview with Yale Environment 360, Orff said that it is not enough simply to restore natural systems to their former condition. “There is no ‘pure nature’ that’s outside of us, untouched up there in the foothills somewhere,” she said. “We’ve ‘made’ the world what it is already, so now we need to take a very, very strong hand in the remaking. … A big part of climate adaptation may simply be unbuilding what we’ve already built.”
In early 2029, Earth will likely lock into breaching key warming threshold, scientists calculate
Phys.org
In a little more than five years—sometime in early 2029—the world will likely be unable to stay below the internationally agreed temperature limit for global warming if it continues to burn fossil fuels at its current rate, a new study says.
The study moves three years closer the date when the world will eventually hit a critical climate threshold, which is an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since the 1800s.
Beyond that temperature increase, the risks of catastrophes increase, as the world will likely lose most of its coral reefs, a key ice sheet could kick into irreversible melt, and water shortages, heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report.
Hitting that threshold will happen sooner than initially calculated because the world has made progress in cleaning up a different type of air pollution—tiny smoky particles called aerosols. Aerosols slightly cool the planet and mask the effects of burning coal, oil and natural gas, the study's lead author said. Put another way, while cleaning up aerosol pollution is a good thing, that success means slightly faster rises in temperatures.
The study in Monday's journal Nature Climate Change calculates what's referred to as the remaining "carbon budget," which is how much fossil fuels the world can burn and still have a 50% chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times. That is the threshold set by the 2015 Paris agreement.
Record-breaking heat set to hit Southern Hemisphere as summer begins
Nature
The Southern Hemisphere is facing a summer of extremes, say scientists, as climate change amplifies the effects of natural climate variability. This comes in the wake of a summer in the Northern Hemisphere that saw extreme heatwaves across Europe, China and North America, setting records for both daytime and night-time temperatures in some areas.
Andrew King, a climate scientist at the University of Melbourne, Australia, says that there is “a high chance of seeing record-high temperatures, at least on a global average, and seeing some particularly extreme events in some parts of the world”.
As 2023 draws to a close, meteorologists and climate scientists are predicting weather patterns that will lead to record-high land and sea surface temperatures. These include a strong El Niño in the Pacific Ocean, and a positive Indian Ocean Dipole.
Amazon region hit by trio of droughts in grim snapshot of the century to come
The Conversation
The Amazon is facing an unprecedented drought that is projected to continue affecting the region at least until mid-2024. The lowest water levels in 121 years of river-level records have been recorded in the city of Manaus. Vast areas of the Amazon River’s bed have been exposed, and more than 150 dolphins died in a lake where water temperatures reached 39°C (2°C above human body temperature). Human populations along Amazonian rivers have been isolated, stripped of their livelihoods and lack basic necessities.
This year has brought three kinds of drought simultaneously, resulting in practically the entire Amazon region being affected. The forecast for November 2023 through January 2024 is for drought across almost the whole region. Some projected rain in Peru may help with water levels in the Amazon River, but the wider region remains exposed to drought stress and forest fires. […]
The projections for changes in Amazonia’s climate by the year 2100 are truly catastrophic. Many of today’s children will live to see it. Global mean temperature has so far increased by 1.2 °C since the beginning of the industrial revolution in 1750, and the impacts of this are already apparent around the world, including in Amazonia.
The Amazon’s record-setting drought: how bad will it be?
Nature
Last month, a portion of the Negro River in the Amazon rainforest near Manaus, Brazil, shrank to a depth of just 12.7 metres — its lowest level in 120 years, when measurements began. In Lake Tefé, about 500 kilometres west, more than 150 river dolphins were found dead, not because of low water levels, but probably because the lake had reached temperatures close to 40 °C.
These are symptoms of the unprecedented drought gripping the Amazon rainforest this year. Climate change is involved. But researchers who study the rainforest say other factors have come together to exacerbate this crisis, which has cut river communities off from supplies including food, and has forced Indigenous residents to use dirty, contaminated water, resulting in gastrointestinal and other illnesses.
The drought is the sum of three things, says Luciana Gatti, a climate-change researcher at Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (Inpe) in São José dos Campos. The first is deforestation, “which is killing the rainforest’s resilience and turning it into a drier, hotter place”, she says.
Torrential Rain and Floods Wreak Havoc Across East Africa
The New York Times
Heavy rains and floods have killed scores of people and displaced hundreds of thousands of others across eastern Africa in recent weeks, governments and the United Nations said, underscoring the intensifying climatic hazards in a politically and economically tumultuous region. […]
The torrential rains, which have devastated other nations including Burundi, Sudan, South Sudan and Uganda, have affected more than three million people in a region that was already reeling from its worst drought in four decades.
Since 2020, the drought conditions, aggravated by climate change, have decimated crops and livestock and left millions of people hungry and malnourished, and hundreds of children dead.
The United Nations has attributed the heavier-than-usual rains to two climatic events: the El Niño phenomenon, which originates in the equatorial Pacific Ocean and whose conditions release additional heat into the atmosphere, and a similar phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole.
Worrying news – ozone layer not recovering after all
Cosmos Magazine
Alarming news from New Zealand scientists suggests the ozone layer might not be recovering after all, with the problem exacerbated by bushfires, volcanic eruptions and greenhouse gas emissions.
The research published in Nature Communications suggests the Antarctic ozone layer has reduced by 26% since 2004, contrary to previous reports of recovery by actions taken under an agreement called the Montreal Protocol.
The authors say wildfire and volcanic aerosols together with greenhouse gas emissions probably explain recent setbacks with record large, long-lived ozone holes re-emerging over Antarctica during Spring since 2020. Climate change is influencing the severity and frequency of bushfires.
The ozone hole was previously thought to be under repair thanks to a global agreement signed in Montreal, Canada to limit ozone depleting substances. But the paper finds insignificant long-term change in the total ozone column since the early 2000s, “even where significant recovery has previously been reported”.
It’s not just extreme weather: ‘Climate-sensitive’ diseases are spreading through the US
Grist
This week, the United States government and leading climate researchers from institutions across the country released the Fifth National Climate Assessment, a report that takes stock of the ways in which climate change affects quality of life in the U.S. The assessment breaks down these impacts geographically — into 10 distinct regions encompassing all of the country’s states, territories, and tribal lands — and forecasts how global warming will influence these regions in the future. […]
In the previous installment of the report, released in 2018, the government warned that rising temperatures, extreme weather events, drought, and flooding threatened to unleash a surge of fungal pathogens, toxic algal blooms, mosquito- and tick-borne illnesses, and other climate-linked diseases. The new report, published on Tuesday, demonstrates that this prediction is unfolding right on schedule.
“Health risks from a changing climate,” the report says, include “increases in the geographic range of some infectious diseases.” West Nile virus, dengue fever, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, rabies, and Valley fever, carried by mosquitoes, ticks, mammals, and soil, are among the infectious diseases the report has identified as “climate sensitive.” Climate change isn’t the only reason more people are being affected by these illnesses — urban sprawl, deforestation, cyclical environmental changes, and other influences are also at play — but it’s a clear contributing factor.
Alarming Level of Microplastics Found in Fish—Eating It 'A Personal Choice'
Newsweek
A large proportion of fish meant for human consumption may contain microplastics, scientists have found, with one expert saying that the decision whether to eat fish or not was a "personal choice."
According to a paper published in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin, three quarters of fish caught off the coast of southern New Zealand contained some degree of microplastic in their tissues.
Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic defined as being less than 0.2 inches in diameter.
"75% of fish that I sampled had ingested microplastic. I sampled fish over a two-year period, throughout all seasons, along the south-east coastline of southern Aotearoa (New Zealand), from Oamaru to Te Waewae Bay," coastal scientist and lead author of the study, Isabella Clere, told Newsweek.
Inside Climate News
Fossil fuel and chemical company interests are out in force at the United Nations meeting in Nairobi, where delegates from about 170 countries are negotiating the potential terms of a global treaty to reduce plastic pollution.
The Center for International Environmental Law, after combing over the official list of participants, has identified what it describes as 143 fossil fuel and chemical industry lobbyists registered to attend the meeting, presumably to influence the outcome.
They come from some of the biggest names in the fossil fuel and chemical industries, including U.S.-based ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical, participating through trade or lobby organizations such as the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers or the Chemical and Allied Industries Association.
How the World Bank’s new boss is navigating a clash over climate change
The Washington Post
Fighting climate change increasingly comes down to money — who has it, who doesn’t and who has the levers to help the world’s developing countries withstand the ravages of climate change.
Ajay Banga controls some of those levers. In June, after decades as a corporate executive, he became the first person born in the Global South to lead the World Bank Group, a powerful set of institutions that last year issued $128 billion in loans, grants, investments and guarantees.
But while the Indian-born Banga may appear to have the credentials to bridge the divide between rich and poor countries, he faces multiple challenges just five months into the job.
Climate activists say that he’s not doing enough. Congressional Republicans refuse to appropriate the funds Banga needs to prove his critics wrong. And leaders from some developing nations reject the idea that the World Bank should have permanent control of a fund to help them cope with climate change, saying that it gives the United States too much influence.
World’s richest 1% pollute more than the poorest two-thirds, Oxfam says
The Washington Post
The report paints a grave portrait as climate experts and activists scramble to curtail global warming that is devastating vulnerable and often poor communities in Southeast Asia, East Africa and elsewhere. This month marked a long-dreaded milestone for the planet, when scientists recorded an average global temperature that was more than 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels on Friday.
“The super-rich are plundering and polluting the planet to the point of destruction, leaving humanity choking on extreme heat, floods and drought,” Oxfam International’s interim executive director, Amitabh Behar, said in a news release on Monday. He called for world leaders to “end the era of extreme wealth.”
The world’s vegetation has a remarkable ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air and store it as biomass. In doing so, plants slow down climate change since the CO₂ they take up does not contribute to global warming.
But what will happen under more advanced climate change? How will vegetation respond to projected changes in atmospheric CO₂, temperatures and rainfall? Our study, published today in Science Advances, shows plants might take up more CO₂ than previously thought.
We found climate modelling that best accounted for the processes that sustain plant life consistently predicted the strongest CO₂ uptake. The most complex model predicted up to 20% more than the simplest version.
Our findings highlight the resilience of plants, and the importance of planting trees and preserving existing vegetation to slow climate change. While this is good news, it doesn’t let us off the hook in the fight against climate change. The rapid increase in atmospheric CO₂ means we must still cut emissions.
For centuries, hedgerows defined the boundaries of agriculture. A hedgerow can be made up of any densely planted growth bordering a field that is cultivated to create a barrier. A traditional European hedgerow is a carefully grown, trained and woven-together series of small trees and shrubs that provide living fencing. But a hedgerow can also mean stands of cultivated scrub brush and flowers that create boundaries between open fields or cropland, which are sometimes also called “shelterbelts.”
Today, many people think of hedgerows as a European phenomenon. Picturing the pastoral fields of England, you may imagine hedges separating grazing sheep from fields of waving wheat. When it comes to North American farming, by contrast, people might picture wooden fences, wire fencing or terracing between one type of crop and another.
Shortly after the Revolutionary War, though, hedgerows were poised to be as much a part of US agriculture as they had been integral to UK farming. […]
The invention of barbed wire made hedgerows a less popular choice for boundaries on the Western frontier, but they were briefly revived as an integral part of the recovery of the Midwest during the Dust Bowl.