Facts on the Ground:
For 31 consecutive days, from late June through late July, Phoenix hit at least 110F, shattering its 18-day record set in 1974. The city had already set another record in July by attaining the most 115-degree days ever in a calendar year, part of a global heat wave that made July Earth’s hottest month on record.
The medical examiner in Phoenix reported 25 heat-related deaths this year and investigated 249 deaths for ties to heat. There were 425 record-breaking heat-related deaths last year across Maricopa County. Hospitals around Phoenix have treated more people for heat ailments and burns in July compared with previous summers.
In late July, 100 million Americans were under heat-related warnings as dangerous and record-breaking heat waves with triple digit temperatures covered large portions of the southern Plains, the lower Mississippi Valley, the lower Ohio Valley and parts of the Tennessee Valley.
California’s largest wildfire this year swept across thousands of acres in the Mojave Desert since late July and has been so powerful that it has produced spinning columns of fire, officials said. The blaze, the York fire, began in late July in the New York Mountain Range of the Mojave National Preserve in San Bernardino County.
About 77,000 acres had burned with no containment and had crossed into Nevada, fire officials said, making it the largest wildfire in California so far this year. The state’s second largest active fire, the Bonny fire in Riverside County, has consumed about 2,500 acres. Wildfires have consumed about 100,000 acres in California so far this year, according to Cal Fire. Dry and windy weather have helped make the York fire significantly more dangerous and challenging to control. Hazardous fire conditions also prompted road closures in the area and pushed smoke across state lines into Nevada and southern Utah. The combination of drifting smoke and thunderstorms created difficult travel conditions for air travelers. At Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, more than 300 flights were delayed and more than three dozen others were canceled.
It has been a devastating and dangerous fire season so far in other parts of the US and across the world. A wildfire in southern Oregon in July burned more than 40 homes and disrupted 911 services. In Canada, hundreds of wildfires have burned more than 47,000 square miles of forest, an area the size of New York State, since May. The fires have displaced more 25,000 Indigenous residents across the country and smoke has drifted southward, choking cities and towns along the East Coast and in the Midwest.
Heavy rains in mid-July led to road closures and several flash-flood warnings in Mississippi after warnings were issued for parts of Arkansas and Louisiana. About 13 inches of rain fell in Winston County, Miss. The weather followed days of destructive flooding across the Northeast. A flash-flood emergency alert, indicating life-threatening danger, was in effect for cities including Louisville, Miss. “It’s been raining about three inches an hour,” Sarah Sickles, a meteorologist in the Weather Service’s office, said. In addition to road closures, there were reports of people being rescued from their homes. Water reached the windows of homes and cars while also flooding businesses. At least one roof of a business collapsed from heavy rain in downtown Ackerman, Miss.
The governor of Vermont said the flooding there was “historic and catastrophic.” Most of Lincoln, Vt. was underwater in mid-July. Swollen by record-breaking rainfall, the Winooski River claimed nearly the entire downtown area of Montpelier. Rescue teams helped people escape from the upper floors of apartment buildings. Also, residents and business owners were stepping through the mud covering their front steps and basements to assess how much they had lost.
The storm dumped four to nine inches of rain on towns up and down VT, where the ground was already saturated. With nowhere else to go, it filled creeks flowed off the mountains and into rivers like the Winooski, the Mad and the Black and then into Montpelier, Ludlow, Richmond and Weston, where water submerged much of the fire station.
Wildfire smoke from Canada obscured the Chicago skyline just weeks after triggering a spike in asthma hospital admissions in New York and Washington, D.C.
In early July, eight inches of rain fell in a few hours near West Point, N.Y., a “once in a thousand year” event, as an entirely different band of violent storms also covered the Oklahoma City area in floodwaters.
On the same day, ocean temperatures off the Florida coast passed the 90-degree mark and would rise to over 100F.
Also in July, there was a rare tornado in Delaware, smoke from Canadian wildfires blanketed major cities around the country, a deadly heat wave hit Oklahoma and torrential rains flooded parts of Chicago. A decade ago, any one of these events would have been seen as an aberration, prompting Governor Kathy Hochul of New York, to call it “our new normal.”
“More and more people recognize climate change as a problem, but they don’t like the solutions,” Paul Slovic, a professor at the University of Oregon who specializes in the psychology of risk and decision making said. “They don’t want to have to give up the comfort and conveniences that we get from using energy from the wrong sources.”
Weather disasters that cost more than $1 billion in damage are on the rise in the US according to a Climate Central analysis of data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In 1980, the average time between billion-dollar disasters was 82 days but from 2018-22 the average time between these most extreme events, even controlled for inflation, was just 18 days. “Climate change is pushing these events to new levels,” said Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist at Climate Central. “We don’t get breaks in between them to recover like we used to.”
In New York in early July, at least one person, a woman in her 30s, died in flooding in the Hudson Valley after torrential rainfall flooded homes, stranded vehicles, and caused other damage. Steven M. Neuhaus, the county executive in Orange County, said that the victim had been trying to evacuate from her home while carrying a pet when she lost her footing and was swept into a ravine.
The Weather Prediction Center said that many areas in central and northern New England got 200-300% of their normal rainfall over a 14-day period. Transportation difficulties were reported throughout the region with dozens of flights canceled out of LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports in NY. More than 30 flights were also canceled out of Boston Logan International Airport. Amtrak services were suspended between NYC and Albany. A NYC-bound Amtrak train was halted near Poughkeepsie, preventing further travel due to a “complete washout of both tracks” south of the city. Metro-North suspended part of its Hudson Line between Croton-Harmon and Poughkeepsie when trees and other debris covered the tracks. Governor Hochul announced a state of emergency.
At least five people, four in Florida and one in Texas, have been infected with malaria in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a health advisory in late June. These are the first known cases of locally acquired malaria in the country since 2003. Malaria had been eradicated in the US decades ago, but cases have reappeared. Malaria is most common in warm climates, but some Anopheles mosquitoes have already expanded their ranges in ways that are consistent with climate change.
In Laredo, TX, in June, Alfredo Garza Jr. died in his bedroom with two broken air-conditioners. When his body was found, the temperature inside the room was 106F. On the same day, 67-year-old Jorge Sanchez endured the heat with nothing more than a fan to cool him and died when temperatures rose to 113F. A wave of extreme heat also killed another man who parked his truck on a busy residential street with its hazard lights flashing. The seemingly unending wave of punishing heat in Laredo and stifling humidity between mid-June and early July presented an unfamiliar and deadly new hazard.
“People are used to being without air conditioning, surviving without air conditioning,” Dr. Corinne Stern, the medical examiner for Webb County, which includes Laredo, said. “But it was just too hot. Residents were caught off guard, and we lost a lot of people because of it”, she added. Ten people died from heat-related illnesses in Laredo between June 15 and July 3, a toll unheard of in this heat-accustomed corner of Texas.
Across the country, extreme heat, which can strain the heart, lungs and kidneys, is a leading weather-related cause of death. In Texas last year, 298 people died of heat-related causes, according to the state health department, the highest annual total in more than two decades. Among them were 155 nonresidents, which includes migrants crossing the state’s harsh terrain. During the heat wave in Webb County, at least two migrants were found dead on local ranches. “Already we have about 35 danger days a year, where it’s too hot essentially to work outside,” Dr. Alicia Van Doren, a preventive medicine physician who is advising Louisiana on its heat-illness prevention program, said. With climate change, “that’s predicted to increase to about 100 by 2030.”
Most of those who were hospitalized in Dallas were men of working age, indicating that heat is an occupational hazard. “The data is what helps us get the message out there,” said Dr. Peter Huang, the director of Dallas County’s public health department. “Bottom line: The heat is getting bad. Everyone needs to do whatever they can — because we want to prevent people from dying.”
Texas cities reached an unprecedented heat index (which combines temperature and humidity) in late June. Corpus Christi hit 125F, Rio Grande Village reached 118F and Del Rio hit 115F. States including New Mexico, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Missouri also experienced searing heat. More than 40 million people in the US were under a heat alert. “Human-caused climate change made these conditions more than five times more likely,” Andrew Pershing, director of climate science at Climate Central, said.
Texas’s power utility urged users to cut back on AC use to alleviate the stress on the grid. Emergency crews in Tulsa, OK, responded to a record number of calls due to the heat and lack of power and in Jackson, MS, residents were without power and AC for about 100 hours.
An average of 702 heat related deaths occur in the US each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, 69 people in Oregon died from heat caused by a heat dome - hot ocean air trapped in the atmosphere. Heatwaves like these “will become more common in the future as we continue to burn coal, oil and natural gas”, Pershing added.
A powerful storm struck the northern Texas town of Matador in late June, killing at least four people, damaging about a dozen buildings and prompting a search for residents who might have been injured or trapped by debris. The storm swept through the town as thousands of people across the region were sweltering in a triple-digit heat wave. Earlier storms had produced deadly tornadoes and punishing hail across the South.
“There are buildings completely flattened, restaurants with the walls wiped away,” said Derek Delgado, a spokesman for the fire department in Lubbock, Texas. More than 200,000 homes and businesses were without power across Texas in late June after a series of storms.
The storm that hit Matador was part of a system that battered northern Texas and parts of Colorado with thunderstorms and sheets of hail. In Morrison, Colo., a concert at the outdoor Red Rocks Amphitheater was postponed because of a hailstorm. As concertgoers fled for shelter, dozens of people were injured, some hospitalized.
In mid-July, a tornado struck the town of Perryton, Texas, where three people were killed and dozens of mobile homes were mangled. The tornado was part of a ferocious series of storms that swept across the South. Scientists say that tornadoes seem to be occurring in greater “clusters” in recent years, and that the area of the country known as Tornado Alley, where most tornadoes used to occur, seems to be shifting eastward.
Officials in Texas asked residents to conserve electricity amid concerns that several days of triple-digit temperatures could strain the power grid. In Oklahoma, nearly 70,000 homes and businesses lost power, mainly in the Tulsa area, after storms killed at least two people.
At least one person was killed and 19 others were injured in late June when a tornado struck central Mississippi overnight and destroyed up to 30 structures. A tornado also struck the town of Louin. Gov. Tate Reeves of Mississippi said that another tornado had hit the city of Moss Point, in the southern part of the county. Eight people were trapped inside a bank after its roof collapsed, the mayor of Moss Point, Billy Knight, Sr. said. Several of the city’s roads were “impassable due to standing water, downed trees, and power lines,” The Moss Point Police Department said.
More than 370,000 customers across the South were without electricity, including more than 180,000 in Oklahoma and more than 29,000 in Mississippi, according to poweroutage.us.
Another storm system swept through Texas in mid-June killed three people and injured dozens of others. The three deaths and more than 75 injuries happened in Perryton, a city where a mobile home park took a direct hit from a tornado, the local fire chief, Paul Dutcher, said. One person died in the trailer park and two others died downtown, and one person was missing. About 200 homes and the town’s firehouse were destroyed.
About 50 to 75 patients were treated at the Ochiltree General Hospital in the city, Kelly Judice, the hospital’s administrator, said. Their injuries ranged from cuts to traumas and 10 patients with life-threatening injuries were sent to larger facilities in Amarillo. Over 230,000 customers in Texas were without power in mid-June, according to poweroutage.us. The Salvation Army opened several cooling stations across Texas to help people escape from the heat.
In mid-June, more than 30 million people in Texas, as well as Florida and Louisiana, were under heat advisories, according to the National Weather Service.
In early June, the NYC sky darkened rapidly as a plume of Canadian wildfire smoke approached the nation’s largest city and sent the air quality index above 400, well into the “hazardous” range and the worst since the EPA began recording air-quality measurements in 1999. Midtown Manhattan was plunged into a deep hazy orange and smoky clouds obscured visibility across the five boroughs and the region, canceling some flights. Commuters donned masks used amid the Covid-19 pandemic while walking the streets, children stayed indoors at recess, some schools closed and officials warned people against going outside. The air-quality index in Syracuse topped 400 too, according to AirNow, which designates a reading above 100 as “unhealthy” to breathe and above 300 as “hazardous.” Gov. Hochul called the worsening air quality in NYS “an emergency crisis.” The air quality in NY remained the worst it has been since the 1960s, according to the city’s health commissioner, Ashwin Vasan. The city’s schools were open but were not holding outdoor activities. Much of NYS was under an air quality health advisory alert.
In Canada in mid-June, nearly 250 fires were burning out of control and parts of Quebec and Ontario were under a smog warning. Smog warnings were in effect across a wide portion of the Northeast and Midwest US. Philadelphia was under a “code red,” meaning sensitive groups could be at risk. The New York Yankees’ game with the Chicago White Sox was postponed due to hazardous air and NYC registered the worst air quality in the world among major cities.
Wildfires in late May struck western Canada and a blaze in Halifax, Nova Scotia, had forced the evacuation of more than 16,000 people, compounding the national anxiety over out-of-control wildfires disrupting peoples’ lives. Wildfires burned throughout western Canada, including British Columbia. The worst hit was Alberta, a major oil and gas-producing province, which declared a state of emergency in earlier in May.
In Halifax, the city authorities declared a state of emergency, and provincial government officials said that an estimated 200 buildings and structures had been damaged by fire. Nova Scotia has had 195 wildfires so far this year compared with 153 in all of 2022. Officials said the blazes had intensified this year. Over 200 firefighters were mobilized to battle the fire with more than a dozen schools closed.
In Alberta, around 29,000 people were forced from their homes by wildfires in mid-May. The blazes in Alberta have revived bad memories of 2016, when a raging wildfire destroyed 2,400 buildings in Fort McMurray, the heart of Canada’s oil sands region with the third-largest reserves of oil in the world. In 2021, wildfire destroyed the tiny community of Lytton, British Columbia, after temperatures hit a record 49.6C, 121.3F.
In central and southern Italy and parts of Spain temperatures reached triple digits. At the Persian Gulf International Airport in Iran, the heat index, reached a life-threatening 152F.
Weeks of scorching summer heat in North America, Europe, Asia and elsewhere not only made July Earth’s warmest month on record, but July 6 was the hottest day on record, with 2023 displacing 2016 as the hottest year. The planet also experienced its hottest June since records began in 1850, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The eight warmest years on the books are the past eight. “The extreme weather which has affected many millions of people in July is unfortunately the harsh reality of climate change and a foretaste of the future,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization, said. “The need to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is more urgent than ever before.”
Earth has warmed roughly 2F since the 19th century and will continue to grow hotter until humans stop burning oil, gas and coal, and halt deforestation, scientists say. The warmer temperatures help make periods of extreme heat more frequent and more intense and exacerbate other extreme weather events like persistent drought, wildfires and torrential rain and flooding.
In the US, the heat has been particularly ferocious in the South and Southwest. In mid-July, the highest recorded temperature in the US was 122F at Death Valley, CA, the National Weather Service said.
Researchers who analyzed July’s severe heat waves in the Southwestern US, northern Mexico and Southern Europe said that the temperatures observed in those regions, over a span of so many days, would have been “virtually impossible” without the influence of human-driven climate change.
Forecasters warn that the Earth is entering a multiyear period of exceptional warmth driven by two main factors: humans continuing to burn oil, gas and coal alongside the return of El Niño, a cyclical weather pattern, after three years. Already, the surge has been drastic, as noted. In the North Atlantic, ocean temperatures were 2.9F hotter in May than they typically are at that time of year. Around Antarctica, sea ice levels have plunged to record lows.
Also in early July, global average temperatures reached 62.6F, or 17C, according to the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer. The record set was broken the next day when global average temperatures reached 62.9F. The overall warming of the planet is “well within the realm of what scientists had projected would happen” as humans continued to pump heat-trapping GHGs into the atmosphere, said Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth. El Niño-Southern Oscillation has pushed temperatures higher.
In late July, record heat and wildfires turned summer holidays into nightmares resulting in an uncertain future for cherished tourist destinations especially in Italy and its Mediterranean neighbors. An additional source of misery was hail, the size of billiards in northern Italy, as the country bounced between weather extremes. “In the face of climatic phenomenon of this type,” Italy’s civil protection minister, Nello Musumeci said, “either we change approach or we will be counting the dead.” During the first three weeks in July, temperatures in Italy reached 118F.
Greece registered its longest and most sustained heat wave on record. Outside work was banned in the afternoon heat. Archaeological sites were closed. About 400 wildfires devastated olive groves, pine forests, homes, farms and flocks. The fires prompted the Greek authorities to undertake a ‘war-time scale’ evacuation of about 20,000 tourists from the island of Rhodes. Five people were killed, including two pilots of a plane that crashed while fighting fires. The wildfires also engulfed a military warehouse, setting off huge explosions of ammunition and prompting evacuations of residents and tourists.
In Sicily, Italy, fires burned churches with the relics of saints inside and forced the closure of the island’s two main airports, Palermo and Catania. The island’s governor, Renato Schifani, declared a state of emergency. In Italy’s northern provinces, gale force winds and hail larger than tennis balls battered pedestrians, destroyed windows and cars, felled hundreds of trees, wiped out orchards and smashed the nose of a plane traveling to the US, forcing an emergency landing. In Calabria, a 98-year-old man died as the wildfires consumed his home.
Floods submerged the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna in May, killing 15 people, leaving thousands homeless and grinding transportation and businesses to a halt. Many experts in Italy, including Barbara Lastoria, a hydraulic engineer who works with the Italian National Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, have linked two devastating storms that occurred over a two-week period to climate change. The amount of rainfall, about 19.6 inches of rain in 15 days, more than half the average annual rainfall for the region, was extraordinary, experts say, and was made worse by a monthslong drought that had left the terrain struggling to absorb the rain. It swelled nearly two dozen rivers and sent billions of gallons of water pouring into streets and several acres of farmland.
“Extreme events have always happened, but because of climate change, they are becoming more frequent” and more expensive, Carlo Carraro, president emeritus and a professor of environmental economics at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, said. To confront the challenges of climate change, “Ensure that climate change is factored into all planning,” Ilaria Falconi of the Italian Society of Environmental Geology said.
Europe’s governments have in significant ways failed to heed the alarms sounded nearly 20 years ago when a heat wave in 2003, the continent’s hottest year on record, left 70,000 people dead by some estimates. A report published in July attributed 61,000 deaths in Europe to its searing temperatures last summer. In some parts of southern Europe this year, heat waves started as early as May and lifted temperatures above 37C or nearly 99F, in parts of Italy. In Lodi, northern Italy, a street worker collapsed and later died after working outside in 104F temperature.
China too has experienced deadly extreme weather this summer. For days, heavy rainfall battered Beijing and its surrounding areas in late July, in what the government said was the heaviest deluge China’s capital had seen since record keeping began 140 years ago. Officials in Hebei Province, which borders Beijing, had opened flood gates and spillways to prevent rivers and reservoirs from overflowing in Beijing and the region’s other metropolis, state media said. In the adjacent city of Zhuozhou in Hebei, which had already been struggling to contain its own floods after a levee broke and a local river overflowed, the streets and neighborhoods turned into a brown, muddy lake, with water up to 23 feet deep destroying homes and businesses. Nearly a million people were forced to evacuate. The flooding disrupted power supplies as well as internet and mobile connections, amid pleas from residents for help in finding hundreds of missing people. The flooding caused devastation elsewhere in city where a book publisher lost more than $3.5 million worth of books in a single hour and two Chinese partner groups of Humane Society International, the Capital Animal Welfare Association in Beijing and Dalian Vshine, estimated that floodwaters carried away 400 dogs and 300 cats from shelters, with some later found clinging to rooftops and treetops downstream. One of the world’s largest international airports at the Hebei border was closed by officials after commercial jetliners were wheels-deep in water.
A late July downpour along the Beijing-Hebei provincial border, with almost 30 inches of rain falling in northwestern Beijing, came soon after the most severe heat wave in Beijing since modern temperature readings began in 1961.
In mid-July, the temperature in China’s sandstone desert rose to a record 126F (52.2 C) breaking the old record by an unbelievable 3F. The Chinese capital recorded on July 18 as the 27th day this year that Beijing has recorded temperatures above 35C, or 95F, the most number of days above 35C in one year since records began.
Average surface temperatures in China have risen faster than the global average since the early 20th century, according to a report by China’s National Climate Center. The soaring temperatures started earlier than usual this year, officials said. Beijing, which in late June recorded its first-ever three consecutive days above 104F, has reported at least two heat-related deaths this summer, including a 48-year-old tour guide who died after leading a group of children through the Summer Palace.
Six power stations along the Yangtze River broke last year’s record for generating extra electricity. In the city of Hangzhou, a heavy storm left the city “steaming like a sauna,” according to local media, as raindrops turned to steam upon hitting the scorching pavement. Other cities have opened air raid shelters for residents looking to cool off.
The heat has been most intense in Xinjiang’s Turfan Depression, where the desert climate makes it regularly one of the hottest parts of China. The surface temperature in the Flaming Mountains there, rose to 176F in mid-July, China’s state broadcaster said, as the first typhoon made landfall this year, toppling trees and vehicles in China’s southern provinces.
In late June, the torrential rainfall, which began in late May, destroyed the wheat crops in central China. The unusually heavy rainfall, which local officials said was the worst disruption to the wheat harvest in a decade, underscored the risks of climate change. Extreme heat had also killed fish in rice paddies in southern China and thousands of pigs at a farm in the eastern city of Nantong, according to local news reports. The fire department in the northeastern city of Tianjin sprayed water on pigs that were suffering heat strokes while riding in a truck.
In June, record rainfall flooded the city of Beihai in southern China and other areas, including Shanghai and Beijing, which had already experienced unusually early heat waves this year, with June temperatures exceeding 106F in some areas.
Four bodies were recovered in mid-July from a flooded highway underpass in South Korea, officials said, bringing the death toll from flooding to at least 40. The country has been reeling from intense rainfall from the monsoon, which has swept across the nation, burying homes, knocking down trees, canceling flights and trains, and cutting power to tens of thousands of residents. The flooding and landslides also injured at least 34 people, according to local fire officials, with nine people missing. Over 30 inches of rain fell nationwide within a 24-hour period, according to the national weather agency.
As climate change warms South Korea, rain also appears to be coming in more intense bursts rather than slowly over a longer period, he added. At least five of the people killed in mid-July died inside homes and buildings that had collapsed in landslides, and one person was buried in earth and sand, the Interior Ministry said. Another victim died after a road collapsed. Several dams in the central part of the country began the controlled release of water, and one overflowed, prompting the evacuation of thousands of residents living downstream and a passenger train derailed when soil entered a railroad track. In August, some of the heaviest rains in decades led to the deaths of at least 14 people nationwide.
Heavy rains in southwestern Japan in mid-July washed away homes, flooded hospitals, disrupted mobile phone services and cut off power and water for hundreds of households, officials said. The unusually high level of rainfall in Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost main island, left at least six people dead and three missing, Japan’s government spokesman, Hirokazu Matsuno, said. Satoshi Sugimoto, a forecaster at the Japan Meteorological Agency, called it “the heaviest rain ever experienced” in northern Kyushu. Among those who died was a woman whose home was swept away by a landslide. Floods in Japan in July three years ago killed at least 86 people, mostly in Kyushu, and prompted the authorities to issue evacuation orders for millions of residents.
A weekend of heavy rains and flooding in mid-July left a trail of destruction across large areas of northern India, killing at least 23 people and causing landslides and flash floods that washed away bridges and buildings, officials said. Most of the deaths were in the Himalayan state of Himachal Pradesh, which received more than 10 times its average rainfall for this time of year. The devastation from the deluge forced the authorities there to shut down schools and advise residents to leave their homes only if necessary. Dozens of people have been killed in the state since the monsoon season began in June. Torrential rain pummeled many states, including the capital region of Delhi, where roads in several areas were submerged in knee-deep water and court hearings had to be suspended or shifted online due to flooded courthouses.
“The rainfall is several times more than normal,” R.K. Jenamani, who works for the India Meteorological Department in New Delhi, said. “For example, in Himachal Pradesh, the normal rainfall would have been around eight millimeters [less than half an inch], but it was 103.4 millimeters [four inches].” Jagat Singh Negi, horticulture minister in the state, said that at least 20 people had died in rain-related incidents there over a two-day period, making a total of more than 70 who had been killed since June 24 after floods covered entire villages, causing landslides and blocking hundreds of roads. The scale of the damage was terrifying and unprecedented, he added. Some of the heaviest rainfall in decades also struck the Delhi region, according to the India Meteorological Department. The rains flooded homes and streets, killing at least three people, Delhi fire department officials said. Residents waded through knee-deep water, as Delhi received 153 millimeters (6.02 inches) of rain in a day, the highest precipitation in a single day in July in 40 years, the meteorological department said. Some regions in India, received three inches of unseasonal snowfall, which had never been seen in July.
A State of emergency was declared in Siberia over raging wildfires as the head of Russia’s Republic of Sakha (also known as the region of Yakutia), in early July, said that more than 110 forest fires were raging across about 61,000 hectares, roughly three-quarters the size of NYC.
A winter storm in mid-June struck the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul with torrential rain, killing 11 people, leaving 20 missing and prompting a helicopter search and rescue for victims wading in flooded neighborhoods, the authorities said. The storm system that struck the country was an extra-tropical cyclone.
In Maquiné, one of the areas hardest hit by the storm, dozens of residents were forced out of their homes to shelters for food and dry clothes, the government of Rio Grande do Sul said. Maquiné had received nearly a foot of rain in one day, damaging rural properties and homes. The rain caused a total loss of lettuce production at one property, officials said. In total, more than 2,300 people in the state were seeking shelter after the storm. Firefighters also rescued patients from a flooded health care center in Sapiranga.
At least two people in India were killed and dozens were injured in mid-June, after Cyclone Biparjoy made landfall in the western part of the country near the border with Pakistan, knocking out power, damaging roads and uprooting trees, the authorities said.
A father and son were swept away after they entered a flooded area to save their livestock, state officials in Gujarat said, raising the number of causalities related to Biparjoy, to five. Earlier, three boys were killed after they drowned off the coast of Mumbai and another was missing, officials said. The storm had caused power outages in more than 4,600 villages in Gujarat, and strong winds had caused about 5,000 power poles and 1,100 trees to be knocked down, according to officials. “This is one of the largest evacuations in Gujarat’s history,” Alok Pandey, the commissioner of relief in Gujarat, said.
Tens of thousands of people in both countries had been evacuated from vulnerable areas before the storm’s arrival. In India, the authorities evacuated 100,000 people. In neighboring Pakistan, about 73,000 people were moved to safer locations, officials said. Pakistan is still reeling from last year’s devastating floods, which submerged large parts of the country, killed around 1,700 people and displaced many. Last year, torrential rains caused widespread urban flooding and damage to the port city of Karachi, bringing it to a standstill for days. At least 31 people died, many of whom were electrocuted or drowned after roofs and walls collapsed on them, the provincial disaster agency said. According to researchers, tropical cyclones in the Arabian Sea have become more frequent in recent decades because of warming sea-surface temperatures in the region, which are enhanced by a warming climate.
In May, Super Typhoon Mawar (also called Betty in the Philippines) had winds of 185 mph with a minimum central pressure of 897mb, making it the strongest tropical cyclone in the West Pacific on record for the month of May.
Devastating floods and landslides caused by heavy rains killed over 120 people in early May in Rwanda, the government said. That was the highest death toll from flooding reported in a single day in the country’s recent history. Entire families were killed, injured or left homeless and in desperate need of assistance and some people were trapped in their homes, with swollen rivers of mud and rocks streaming through villages and alongside houses, and into roads, homes and infrastructure. “Many houses collapsed on people,” Francois Habitegeko, the governor of the Rwanda’s Western Province, said.
In early May, the Red Cross said that landslides had killed six people in Uganda. Last year, a study found that human-caused climate change, which caused heavy rains that led to deadly floods in West Africa, made such events 80 times more likely. The scientists, part of the World Weather Attribution group, also found that the heavy rains that caused devastating flooding in South Africa last year had been made twice as likely by climate change.
In late June, surface air temperatures were the highest on record, global sea surface temperatures were at record highs, and global sea ice was at a record low. Experts said these extremes are almost statistically impossible without global warming and the extra push from the start of El Niño. In July, the Northern Hemisphere's oceans and seas exceeded those temperatures and the North Atlantic reached its highest temperature on record two days after the Mediterranean Sea reached its highest temperature in recorded history.
To the south across the Tropical Atlantic, sea surface temperatures were so hot between Africa and the Caribbean they reached levels expected during peak hurricane season in September. In general, the oceans have warmed around 2F since the early 1900s. Comparing ocean temperatures from a 1982 El Nino, one of the warmest ever, with June 2023, this year is far warmer across global oceans.
Another natural factor is the January 2022 underwater Hunga Tonga Volcano eruption in the South Pacific Ocean. That explosion spewed huge amounts of water vapor into the atmosphere where it lingers. This water vapor cools the upper atmosphere but warms Earth’s surface.
As 2023 unfolds, El Niño will continue to intensify in the Pacific, infusing the climate system with even more energy. On top of global heating, this will supercharge global weather patterns likely yielding extremes modern man has yet to experience. And as global heating persists in the coming decades, tipping points may very well be breached in the climate system, causing irreversible impacts.
A study published in late May showed that a major global deep ocean current has slowed down by approximately 30% since the 1990s as a result of melting Antarctic ice, which could have critical consequences for Earth’s climate patterns and sea level rise. Known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation, the global circulation system influences the Earth’s climate, including precipitation and warming patterns. It also determines how much heat and CO2 the oceans store and its slowdown could have drastic impacts depriving marine ecosystems of vital nutrients.
“Changes in the overturning circulation are a big deal,” said the study’s co-author, Dr Steve Rintoul, an oceanographer at the Australian government’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. “It’s something that is a concern because it touches on so many aspects of the Earth, including climate, sea level, and marine life.”
“The model projections of rapid change in the deep ocean circulation in response to melting of Antarctic ice might, if anything, have been conservative,” Rintoul said. “We’re seeing changes have already happened in the ocean that were not projected to happen until a few decades from now.” “We expect in the longer term that while there will be ups and downs related to sea ice formation, the overall trend is that Antarctica is losing more ice, is melting more, and that will gradually slow down this overturning circulation.” “Unless we act soon we will commit ourselves to changes that we’d really rather avoid,” he said. “We need to act to reduce emissions and we need to do everything we can as fast as we can.”
Melting ice in the Arctic is also a major concern to climatologists. The first summer on record that melts practically all of the Arctic’s floating sea ice could occur as early as the 2030s, about a decade sooner than researchers previously predicted. A report issued in early June says that this milestone of climate change could materialize even if nations cut GHG emissions more decisively than they are currently doing.
“We are very quickly about to lose the Arctic summer sea-ice cover, basically independent of what we are doing,” said Dirk Notz, a climate scientist at the University of Hamburg in Germany and one of the new study’s five authors. “We’ve been waiting too long now to do something about climate change to still protect the remaining ice.”
The effects of this loss of Arctic sea ice extend far beyond the region. Sea ice reflects solar radiation back into space (the Albedo Effect), so the less ice there is, the faster the Arctic warms. This causes the Greenland ice sheet to melt more quickly, adding to sea-level rise globally. The temperature difference between the North Pole and the Equator also influences storm tracks and wind speed in the mid-latitudes, which means Arctic warming could be affecting weather events like extreme rainfall and heat waves in temperate parts of North America, Europe and Asia.
Over the past four decades, the far north has been warming four times as quickly as the global average, a phenomenon that scientists call Arctic amplification. “Our result suggests that the Arctic amplification will be coming faster and stronger,” said Seung-Ki Min, a climate scientist at Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea and another author of the new paper. “That means the related impacts will be also coming faster.”
The loss of this sea ice has been increasing ever since continuous satellite measurements began in 1979. Since then, the Arctic sea has been transforming into a bluer ocean, setting off vast changes to polar bear populations, shipping routes, access to natural resources and geopolitics. “It’s already happening,” said Dr. Mark Serreze, who was not involved in the new research. “And as the Arctic continues to lose its ice, those impacts will grow and grow and grow.”
As is clear from the above Facts on the Ground, extreme weather is global and can strike anywhere. A report issued in mid-November, 2022 asked which parts of the US have suffered the greatest number of federally declared disasters that were so severe they overwhelmed the ability of state and local officials to respond.
From 2011 through 2021, 90% of US counties had experienced a flood, hurricane, wildfire or other disaster serious enough to receive a federal disaster declaration. More than 700 counties suffered five or more such disasters, 29 states had, on average, at least one federally declared disaster a year. Five states experienced at least 20 disasters since 2011.
“Climate change is here,” said Amy Chester, the managing director of Rebuild by Design, a nonprofit that helps communities recover from disasters, and which prepared the report. “Every single taxpayer is paying for climate change.”
Using this metric, five counties have each experienced, on average, more than a disaster every year since 2011. Those counties are concentrated in two areas: Southern Louisiana (where counties are called parishes) and eastern Kentucky. Louisiana also outpaces the rest of the US in disaster money received per capita: $1,736 for each resident. Only NY State comes close, at $1,348.
Since 2011, California has received 25 federal disaster declarations, including for wildfires in 2017 and 2018 that resulted in $2.5 billion in federal money to rebuild public infrastructure. Mississippi and Oklahoma have each suffered 22 disasters. Iowa has had 21, mostly for severe storms and flooding.
Fairfield County, Conn., which includes Greenwich and Stamford, has received eight federal disaster declarations since 2011. Grafton County, in central New Hampshire, has had seven. Morris County, N.J., 30 miles west of Manhattan, has had nine.
The states with the fewest federal disaster declarations include Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Michigan, with an average of roughly one disaster every two years. Nevada had the least with just three declarations since 2011 while its neighbor, Arizona had just six. But, using a different metric, heat-related deaths from 2018 to 2021, Nevada and Arizona ranked highest. And they suffer from other climate-related impacts such as drought and lack of drinking water.
“Heat has the highest mortality of all climate impacts, but their disaster declarations were so low,” Ms. Chester said. That’s because federal disaster declarations focus on property damage more than direct human consequences like illness, injury or death.
The report shows the importance of doing more to increase community resilience, said Victoria Salinas, the acting deputy administrator for resilience at the Federal Emergency Management Agency. “By better understanding risk,” she said, “we can more effectively take action together to accelerate resilience and adaptation in our nation’s most at-risk and disadvantaged communities.”
Protection of mature forests is essential to slow climate change. Trees absorb carbon and provide oxygen and are integral to a stable climate. Forest fires both destroy trees and release carbon. Research published in late March shows that carbon emissions from wildfires in boreal forests, the earth’s largest land biome and a significant carbon sink, spiked higher in 2021 than in any of the last 20 years. Usually, about 10% of CO2 emissions are released annually by wildfires, but in 2021 it accounted for nearly a quarter of those emissions.
Global warming dries vegetation making it susceptible to burning. In 2021, fires in boreal forests spewed an “abnormally vast amount of carbon,” releasing 150% of their annual average from the preceding two decades, the study reported. That’s twice what global aviation emitted that year, said author Steven Davis, a professor of earth system science at the University of California, Irvine.
Wildfire emissions are part of a positive feedback loop. The emission of carbon into the atmosphere adds to global warming which fosters conditions for more frequent and extreme wildfires.
In recent decades, boreal forests have warmed at a quickening pace, permafrost has thawed, drying vegetation and creating conditions ripe for wildfires. The advocacy group Environment America said disturbances like logging, along with the warming climate in the boreal forest, could turn the region “into a carbon bomb.”
Overall, boreal forests have “profound importance for the global climate,” said Jennifer Skene, a natural climate solutions policy manager with the Natural Resources Defense Council’s international program. “The boreal forest actually stores twice as much carbon per acre as tropical forests, locked up in its soils and in its vegetation. The Canadian boreal alone stores twice as much carbon as the world’s oil reserves. So this is an incredibly vital forest for ensuring a climate-safe future.”
Most of the carbon that boreal forests sequester is in the soil, as plants slowly decompose in cold temperatures, said Skene. As wildfires burn, they release carbon stored in the soil, peat and vegetation. In 2019, research funded in part by NASA suggested that as fires increase, boreal forests could lose their carbon sink status as they release “legacy carbon” that the forest kept stored through past fires.
“What we’re seeing in the boreal is a fire regime that is certainly becoming much, much more frequent and intense than it was before, primarily due to climate change,” said Skene. She said it’s also important to protect the boreal because “industrial disturbance” makes forests more vulnerable to wildfires. “From a climate mitigation standpoint and from a climate resilience standpoint, ensuring forest protection is more important than ever,” said Skene. “It’s much more difficult in the changing climate for forests to recover the way that they have been in the past. Once they’ve been disturbed, they are much less resilient to these kinds of impacts.”
NYC has experienced extreme weather including flooding and is likely to be flooded again. In September 2022, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers unveiled its proposal to protect the greater New York and New Jersey metro area from such an event. The plan is complicated and expensive ($52.6 billion) and includes dozens of miles of floodwalls, levees and berms along the shoreline and 12 storm surge barriers — arrays of movable gates — across entrances to waterways in the region.
The plan would reverse the region’s decades-long effort to open up the waterfront for recreation while only protecting a small fraction of the region’s most vulnerable areas from storm surge flooding.
Hurricane Sandy caused 60 deaths and more than $70 billion in damage in 2012. NYC is the most vulnerable city in the country to flooding. Other cities facing similar risks, including Rotterdam, the Netherlands, London, and St. Petersburg, Russia, have built movable gates across their harbors. So far, these gates have been effective surge barriers protecting large areas while leaving shorelines free for recreation and other uses.
In the NY/NJ region, such barriers would worsen the health of narrow waterways with very poor tidal flushing, some of them highly polluted, like Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal. Indeed, the Hudson River itself would not be flushed by tidal flow when the gates were closed which could cause all kinds of unknown disruptions to an ecosystem dependent on uninterrupted tidal flow.
The Corps’ proposal also includes 50 miles of 12-to-20-foot-high floodwalls, levees and other shoreline structures that would interfere with public access and connection to, and view of, the water on long stretches of existing developed waterfronts and parks, including Hunters Point, Greenpoint, Manhattan’s west side and downtown Jersey City.
Rohit Aggarwala, NYC’s chief climate officer, noted that floodwalls will require expensive modifications to the City’s drainage system and costly pump stations to prevent neighborhoods behind the walls from being flooded by rainwater. He stated, “The city will not accept austere floodwalls running through our neighborhoods.”
The Corps’ proposal does not protect about 40% percent of vulnerable areas at risk of coastal flooding. Due to a cost-benefit analysis that appears to conclude that low-income or communities with lower property values are expendable. Such areas include the South Bronx, Hallets Point, Queensbridge, parts of South Williamsburg, Yonkers and Ossining. Nor would the plan protect many vital regional assets, including the Hunts Point Market, LaGuardia Airport and Governors Island. Given the inequities, the proposed plan promised an endless series of fights and litigation, community by community, over shoreline floodwalls and local surge gates.
The project to devise the plan is a partnership among state and federal agencies, with the states paying 35% of the costs and the federal government paying the rest.
There are other options, including a regional storm surge barrier system instead of shoreline floodwalls and local sea gates. A regional, harbor-wide barrier system might stop the largest storm surges while maintaining normal water levels in the harbor. These gates could be mechanized and centrally controlled. All communities within the harbor area would be protected equally with no, or fewer, unsightly shoreline walls.
One such option features a barrier stretching from Breezy Point, NY to Sandy Hook, NJ at the entrance to the lower bay, which would cover 96% of the region at risk of flooding. Another plan features the barrier extending from Brooklyn to Staten Island, with supplemental gates at Arthur Kill and Jamaica Bay and would cover more than 80%. Both alternatives would have a surge barrier across the harbor entrance at Throgs Neck. These plans too would be fabulously expensive, may be detrimental to the Hudson estuary, and may only work until sea level rise exceeds their limits.
At present, the Corp prefers the plan with shoreline walls, small storm surge barriers and other shoreline barriers. A lot more discussion will follow.
Washington:
John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, traveled to China in mid-July to negotiate an emissions reductions agreement. President Xi Jinping did not meet with him and the visit did not result in an agreement. The Chinese President stated that China would pursue its goals to phase out CO2 at its own pace and in its own way. China emits 31% of global emissions and its pollution is increasing every year. China projects that it will continue to emit increasing amounts of emissions until it peaks sometime before 2030 and it will cease emissions by 2060. China emits almost a third of global emissions, more than all other developed nations combined. The US generates 14% of global carbon emissions. If the US and China do not reduce their emissions, there is little chance of keeping global temperature increase at 1.5C. The planet has already warmed 1.2C.
China’s push to build more coal-fired power plants, at a cost of up to $1 billion apiece, has alarmed Western officials. Kerry warned last year that “adding some 200-plus gigawatts of coal over the last five years, and now another 200 or so coming online in the planning stage, if it went to fruition would actually undo the ability of the rest of the world to achieve a limit of 1.5 degrees” Celsius in global temperature increases.
The talks in Beijing occurred at a time when global temperatures measured as the hottest two weeks on record including in China and the US. Part of the lack of progress was due to political and economic tensions between the two countries including Taiwan, Biden’s stated intension to restrict US investments in Chinese companies involved in quantum computing, A.I. and semiconductors, and US protection of its technological primacy in advanced computer chips. Wang Yi, a top foreign affairs official, told Kerry that China’s cooperation with the US on climate “cannot be separated from the broader environment of Chinese-U. S. relations.”
China is currently building more solar, wind and other renewable energy than all other countries combined. This summer, China experienced record-breaking heat waves and flooding consistent with the global pattern of increasingly extreme weather.
China fears that the US could again renege on its climate promises under a future administration, as it did under Trump, who pulled the US out of an international climate agreement and promoted coal growth. Kerry said that US-China talks will continue.
On Junly 11, EPA issued a final rule implementing a 40% reduction in climate super-pollutant hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), starting in 2024. HFCs are extremely potent GHGs commonly used in refrigeration, air conditioning, aerosols, and foam products. The rule furthers the bipartisan American Innovation and Manufacturing (AIM) Act’s goals of reducing the production and consumption of these climate-damaging chemicals by 85% by 2036 and help avoid up to 0.5C of global warming by 2100.
Joe Goffman, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator of EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation, said “This rulemaking is a critical next step in the Biden-Harris Administration’s ambitious plans to phase down climate super-pollutants and ensure the United States leads the way as countries around the world implement the Kigali Amendment.” “The U.S. HFC phasedown program, bolstered by domestic innovation to develop alternative chemicals and equipment, is paving the way for the United States to tackle climate change and strengthen global competitiveness.”
Ali Zaidi, White House National Climate Advisor, said “President Biden has brought together a broad coalition of American manufacturers to work on next-generation technologies across refrigeration, HVAC systems, and more – helping us cool without contributing more to global warming.” “With today’s final rule, this Administration is continuing to deliver win-wins for climate action and U.S. manufacturing competitiveness while ensuring that American workers reap the benefits of a growing global market for HFC alternatives.”
The US began this phasedown on January 1, 2022, with a reduction of HFC production and imports to 10% below historic baseline levels. Since then, allowances are required to import and produce HFCs. Starting in 2024 the phasedown will be 40% below historic levels, a significant decrease in the number of available production and consumption allowances compared to previous years. HFC allowances for calendar year 2024 will be allocated by September 29, 2023. The phasedown schedule under this program is consistent with the schedule laid out in the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which the US ratified in October 2022.
The HFC Phasedown Program has robust enforcement mechanisms to ensure a level playing field for US companies complying with the phasedown requirements. Since January 2022, the Interagency Task Force on Illegal HFC Trade, co-led by EPA and the Department of Homeland Security, has prevented illegal HFC shipments equivalent to more than 1 million metric tons of CO₂ at the border, which is equivalent to the CO2 emissions from over 206,000 homes’ electricity use for one year.
EPA also applies administrative consequences, such as revocation and retirement of allowances, for noncompliance that can be in addition to any civil or criminal enforcement action. EPA has finalized administrative consequences retiring more than 6.5 million metric tons of CO2-equivalent for calendar years 2022 and 2023 for companies that misreported data or imported HFCs without the requisite number of allowances.
In early August, the Heritage Foundation announced Project 2025, a conservative “battle plan” for the next Republican president, that would stop attempts to cut GHG emissions and encourage more emissions. The plan calls for cutting regulations that curb GHG pollution from cars, oil and gas wells and power plants, dismantling federal clean energy programs and promoting the production of fossil fuels.
Several of the architects of the plan are veterans of the Trump administration and their recommendations further Trump’s positions on energy and climate change. The $22 million project also includes personnel lists and a transition strategy in the event a Republican wins the 2024 election. Other entities involved with the plan include the Heartland Institute, which denies climate science, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, which says “climate change does not endanger the survival of civilization or the habitability of the planet.”
Mr. Paul Dans, of the Heritage Foundation, delivered the plan to every Republican presidential candidate and asserts that the plan reflects the views of most Republican party leaders.
The plan calls for the next Republican president to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, the 2022 law that has made available $370 billion for wind, solar, nuclear, green hydrogen and electric vehicle technology, with most of the new investments taking place in Republican-led states.
The plan calls for shuttering a Department of Energy office that has $400 billion in loan authority to help emerging green technologies. It would make it more difficult for solar, wind and other renewable power — the fastest growing energy source in the US — to be added to the grid. Climate change would no longer be addressed by the National Security Council and allied nations would be encouraged to buy and use more fossil fuels rather than renewable energy.
The plan welcomes more drilling for oil inside the pristine Arctic wilderness, promises legal protections for energy companies that kill birds while extracting oil and gas and declares the federal government has an “obligation to develop vast oil and gas and coal resources” on America’s public lands.
The plan encourages attempts to reverse the 2009 scientific finding by EPA that CO2 emissions are a danger to public health thereby negating the federal government’s ability to regulate GHG emissions from most sources.
The plan would stop the government from trying to make automobiles more fuel efficient and it would block states from adopting California’s stringent automobile pollution standards. I am not making this up.
In mid-August Montana District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that Montana’s continued development of fossil fuels violates a clause in its state constitution that guarantees its citizens the right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Montana is one of several states that has explicit environmental guarantees written into its state constitution. “Plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life support system,” Seeley wrote in her order.
The case was brought by Our Children’s Trust on behalf of 16 young plaintiffs. Julia Olsen, chief legal counsel and executive director or the Trust, said “Today, for the first time in US history, a court ruled on the merits of a case that the government violated the constitutional rights of children through laws and actions that promote fossil fuels, ignore climate change, and disproportionately imperil young people.” The Trust is largely funded by foundations and has sued state governments on behalf of youth in all 50 states including Juliana v. United States. That case pits young people against the federal government and is pending in district court in Oregon.
Experts noted that while Montana did not dispute the science of climate change during the trial, it argued the state’s GHG emissions were a drop in the bucket compared to global emissions. The Montana attorney general’s office will appeal the ruling to the Montana Supreme Court. Emily Flower, a spokeswoman for Attorney General Austin Knudsen, said “This ruling is absurd, but not surprising from a judge who let the plaintiffs’ attorneys put on a weeklong taxpayer-funded publicity stunt that was supposed to be a trial.”
Seeley’s decision is “dramatic,” according to Pat Parenteau, emeritus professor of law at the Environmental Law Center at Vermont Law School. “Any decision by any court recognizing a constitutional right to a safe climate would be a breakthrough in the US for sure.”
The Montana case won’t have a direct impact on Juliana v. United States which could go to trial by spring of 2024. Plaintiffs there allege the federal government’s activities allowing further fossil fuel development, including permitting and leasing for oil and gas drilling, is violating young people’s constitutional rights to life, liberty and property. The Biden administration’s Department of Justice is aggressively fighting it from getting to trial, the US constitution does not contain such explicit guarantees to a clean environment and a conservative US Supreme Court likely won’t look favorably on it given its recent opinions that have made it more difficult for federal agencies to regulate planet-warming pollution.
“We’re all operating under the shadow of a conservative Supreme Court,” Michael Gerrard, founder of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University Law School, and co-chair of the Global Climate Change Committee, Environmental & Energy Law Section, NYS Bar Association, said. “This Supreme Court has been more about taking away rights than granting new ones.” But Gerrard said the Montana case is an important step in a small but growing body of climate change law in the US.
In other climate litigation, in late March, Vanuatu, a Pacific island country, population 300,000, secured United Nations approval to ask the International Court of Justice if countries can be sued under international law for failing to slow down climate change. The measure passed by consensus, meaning none of the 193 member states requested a vote. The General Assembly Hall erupted in applause.
The UN Secretary General, António Guterres, said the move “would assist the General Assembly, the U.N. and member states to take the bolder and stronger climate action that our world so desperately needs.”
The International Court of Justice, based in The Hague, is being asked to issue an opinion on whether governments have “legal obligations” to protect people from climate hazards and whether failure to meet those obligations could bring “legal consequences.” While the international court’s opinion will not be binding, it could turn the voluntary pledges that every country has made under the Paris climate accord into legal obligations under a range of existing international statutes, such as those on the rights of children or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Additional legal claims could follow.
Over the past year, Vanuatu has been joined by other Pacific island nations, then several from Africa and Asia. The consensus measure was co-sponsored by 105 nations in the General Assembly.
Vanuatu is suffering the impacts of climate change. Six villages on four of its islands have been relocated as rising sea levels have contaminated water supplies with saltwater making them unpotable. Cyclones and warmer ocean waters have destroyed coral reefs. Its most valuable commodity is tuna, but the fish are now scarce as the ocean is warming and currents changing.
Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee
The above views are my own.
Teraine Okpoko assisted on the Facts on the Ground section.