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Climate Change Blog 57

At least one person was killed in late July by a wildfire (the Park Fire) in Colorado and within a week, the fire north of Sacramento grew into the fifth largest in California history with about 50 other large fires burning throughout the region. Normally we get to peak fire season in August but now “we’re going into August already at our full tilt”, US Forest Service said. At least one person died as wildfires burned near Denver and a historic mining town was destroyed near Bakersfield, California. Over half a million acres of the Western US burned in late July. A wet winter and spring, which allowed vegetation to grow quickly, followed by record-breaking heat across much of the West led to ideal fire-burning conditions. Climate change has been making heat waves in the region more intense and longer. July 22, two days before the Park Fire began, was Earth’s hottest day on record, and some areas burned by the blaze experienced their warmest 30-day periods just before the fire started.

Between July and August, four fires smoldered along Colorado’s Front Range, burned nearly 10,000 acres in the mountain foothills, killed one person, damaged at least 30 buildings, prompted the evacuation of thousands of people and caused Gov. Jared Polis to deploy the Colorado National Guard. All four fires, (the Quarry fire in Jefferson County, the Alexander Mountain fire in Larimer County, the Stone Canyon fire in Boulder and Larimer counties and the Lake Shore fire in Boulder County), began in late July and grew rapidly, fueled by hot, dry weather and parched conditions. The Alexander Mountain fire burned over 9,530 acres of private and national forest land. About seven million acres of the US have burned on average over the last decade. About 4.4 million acres have burned so far in 2024.

In late July, the Stone Mountain and Alexander Mountain wildfires in northern Colorado spread to within miles of each other, burning between Lyons and Loveland, north of Denver. The Alexander Mountain fire grew rapidly, burning over 5,000 acres in its first 24 hours, because of the region’s dry conditions. One person died in a home due to the Stone Mountain fire.

The Park Fire in Butte and Tehama counties in Northern California ignited in late July and burned into the Lassen foothills and Ishi Wilderness forcing thousands of people in multiple foothill communities to evacuate. The Lassen Volcanic National Park was closed and at least 640 buildings were burned. The Park Fire is the largest wildfire of California's 2024 wildfire season. The fire had grown to a staggering 120,000 acres in just 24 hours. As of early August, the fire had burned 425,724 acres, growing to a mind-boggling 348,370 acres in less than 72 hours, becoming one of the fastest-growing wildfires in California history and spreading at an average pace of over 60 football fields per minute when it began in late July.

The Pioneer fire burned more than 30,000 acres and threatened the nearby town of Stehekin in Washington State in late July, prompting the issue of an evacuation Notice. In the south, the Swawilla fire burned through almost 50,000 acres within a two-week period in late July with evacuation orders and warnings issued for more than a thousand people. In central Washington, the Retreat fire had burned more than 35,000 acres as of early August.

Heatwaves were reported in Antarctica with temperatures in some parts reaching 24C above the average at the peak of winter, the University of Maine’s Climate Change Institute said in late July.  The Earth's natural air-conditioners are at risk at both the north and south poles. The more they diminish the hotter the Earth will become. The Arctic sea ice has lost about a quarter of its colling power since 1980. The Antarctic ice sheet's mass has changed over the last decades and between 2002 and 2023 Antarctica shed an average of 150 billion metric tons of ice per year, adding to global sea level rise, with the Thwaites Glacier, (aka the “Doomday Glacier” because of the outsized danger its possible collapse poses), ‘hanging on by its fingernails’.

A major icefield spanning Alaska and Canada's British Columbia could reach an irreversible tipping point sooner than predicted, with its glaciers rapidly receding since 2005, according to a new study in early July, which focused on the Juneau Icefield. This plateau icefield comprised 1,050 glaciers in 2019, covering an area of 3,816.3 square kilometers. The study found that glacier shrinkage from 2015 to 2019 was five times faster than between 1948 and 1979. “We know that glaciers in Alaska are contributing substantially to sea level rise, the most from any glacierized region,” Bethan Davies, the lead author of the study, said. Glacier mass loss in Alaska is accelerating, she added. Around 2% of global glacier ice loss comes from Alaskan glaciers, which have lost about 66.7 billion tons of ice each year.

As societies add more and more planet-warming CO2 to the atmosphere, glaciers in many areas could pass tipping points beyond which their melting speeds up rapidly, said Dr. Davies. “If we reduce carbon, then we have more hope of retaining these wonderful ice masses.” “The more carbon we put in, the more we risk irreversible, complete removal of them.”

In late July, record high temperatures were recorded in Japan with several records broken daily. The town of Minamiise in the Mie Prefecture recorded 38C surpassing its previous record high for July of 37.8Cc set in 2018. In the port town of Hiketa in the Kagawa Prefecture 37C was recorded, breaking the previous record of 36.9C set in July 1987. The city of Hamamatsu in the  Prefecture of Shizuoka was 39C, erasing the previous record of 38.6C set in July 2001.

A wildfire in Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada in late July destroyed more than 350 structures. The rapidly moving fire, which prompted the evacuation of 25,000 people from Jasper damaged about 30% of the town. “Many homes and business have been lost,” Danielle Smith, premier of Alberta province said. As at early August the wildfire had grown rapidly and burned 96,000 acres, and a 24-year-old firefighter was killed after he was hit by a falling tree. The wildfire is the largest the park had recorded in the last 100 years.

Toxic emissions from the Canadian tar sands were grossly underestimated, according to a 2024 study. Research published in the journal Science discovered that air pollution from the huge Athabasca oil sands in Canada surpassed the industry-reported emissions across the studied facilities by a staggering 1,900% to over 6,300%.

In China in July, 57 stations recorded their hottest July day in history, 13 of which were all- time for any month including in Guilin, Mengshan, and Zhaoping with their first 40C ever. 42.8C was reported in Yuanyang, a provincial record for July.

In the city of Shenyang in China’s northeast Liaoning province, in late July torrential rainfalls turned roads into rivers, with 419mm (16.5”) of rain falling within 24 hours. Severe, widespread flooding swamped parts of central China in mid-July heavy rains and a year’s worth of rain fell in 24 hours killing at least four people. Fifteen provinces were placed under emergency alert as they were hit by record-breaking rain rainfall reaching 410 mm (16.1”) in 12 hours and 111.7 mm (4.39”) in 1 hour, flooding many rivers. In Ningqiang County, Shaanxi Province, the flood level rose over 5 meters within an hour in late July, with the fast-moving flood submerging buildings. In mid-July, the City of Baoji in Shaanxi Province, received a record 190 mm of rain within a 24-hour period.

In early July at least six tornados battered Dongming county in Heze Prefecture of China’s Shandong Province. The violent tornados tore roofs off buildings, killed 5 people and injured 84.

In late June, Zhenyuan county in the Guizhou province in southwestern China, was battered by torrential rains, recording 200mm (7.87”) of rainfall in a 12-hour period. The Wuyang River rose 11 meters within a 10-hour period, surpassing the previous record by over 3 meters.

In late July, typhoon Gaemi reached southeastern China as rescue personnel searched for six missing sailors after a cargo ship sank near Taiwan. Earlier, the tropical cyclone had struck Taiwan with wind speeds equivalent to those of a Category 3 hurricane, submerging roads, causing flight cancellations, and shutting down schools and businesses. The rainfall in 24 hours at the Kaohsiung Donalin Road Weather Station was 1412.5 mm (55.6”), and the rainfall in 72 hours was 1688.5 mm (66.47”). The storm also killed at least 15 people in the Philippines. In Taiwan, at least five people were killed and 531 were injured, with flooding reported across southern Taiwan. In the city of Kaohsiung, floodwaters submerged parked cars, and many roads were inaccessible. In nearby Tainan, residents struggled to escape from submerged houses. Also, in late July in Taiwan, local weather stations recorded more than four feet of rain from Typhoon Gaemi, and more than 783,000 electricity customers in Taiwan had power outages in late July. A tanker carrying fuel oil also sank off the coast of the Philippines in late July, as the cyclone efforts to avoid an oil spill. Sixteen of the crew were rescued, and one person died.

July 22, 2024 was likely the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, with a global average of 62.87F, or 17.15C, beating a record that had been set the previous day. July 22 was the hottest day since at least 1940, when records began. The data alarmed some experts. “What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said.

Both 2023 and 2024 have seen annual highs significantly above those recorded in previous years, the agency said. Another key sign of global warming was that the 10 years with the highest daily average temperatures are the last 10 years, 2015 to 2024. Nicholas Leach, a climate scientist at the University of Oxford, said that as more GHGs are being emitted into the atmosphere, global temperature records will continue. “What we should care more about is the potential increase in extreme weather, such as heavy rainfall events or heat waves that come along with the global warming,” Dr. Leach said.

In late July there were over 900 fires burning in Canada, mostly in the west, and evacuations were ordered throughout British Columbia interior as wildfires intensified in late July with more than 300 fires burning in B.C. amid record heat waves. By mid-August, smoke from these fires had reached Europe and brought poor air quality with it.

A dangerous heat wave, gusty winds and potential lightning strikes posed a critical fire risk for large parts of the Pacific Northwest in late July, as firefighters in Oregon and Washington battled wildfires that burned more than 621,000 acres. About 547,000 people in Oregon and Washington State were under red flag warnings, the highest National Weather Service alert for conditions that may result in extreme fire behavior. The warnings are issued when high temperatures, very low humidity and strong winds combine to produce a heightened risk. There were 22 fires burning in Oregon and 6 in Washington in late July, covering over 621,000 acres, according to the Northwest Interagency Coordination Center, which coordinates fire response for the states. More than 11 million people in parts of Arizona, California, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon and Washington State were also under excessive heat warnings in late July. Several huge fires were already burning in central and eastern Oregon. The Falls fire burned over 117,000 acres, the Cow Valley fire burned over 133,000 acres, the Lone Rock fire burned over 100,000 acres, and the Durkee fire, burned over 74,000 acres. About 3,000 people were under evacuation orders across Oregon as of late July.

In early July, Las Vegas baked in its record fifth consecutive day of temperatures hitting 115F (46.1C) or greater amid an unrelenting hot spell engulfing much of the U.S. The temperature broke the old mark of four consecutive days set in July 2005, with forecasters calling it “the most extreme heat wave” since the National Weather Service began keeping records in Las Vegas in 1937. As of early July, the city had broken 16 heat records since June 1, including a record high of 120F (48.8C) set in early July, which beat the previous 117F (47.2C) record. Overnight the temperature was 93F, the highest overnight temperature recorded in mid-July.

Egyptian summers have always been hot but never this hot, with temperatures barely falling below 100F in Cairo since May, prompting the government to impose power cuts on most of the country for more than a year, due to energy shortages, thrusting millions into sweaty, un-air-conditioned misery for hours each day. At least nine people have died. Yehiya Ezzat, 38, a poultry wholesaler in Assiut, south of Cairo said farmers were losing tens of thousands of baby chicks after less than an hour without air-conditioning. He put some dead of the chickens in a dumpster and was promptly fined more than $500.

In mid-July one of the coldest places on Earth went up in smoke. In Siberia and Russia’s Far East, 6,000 fires have burned almost 3.5 million hectares.

In mid-July, the steeple on the oldest church in Rome, NY, built in 1853, crumpled, and a mural of an American revolutionary was destroyed when the red brick building it decorated collapsed in extreme wind from a rare tornado. Shattered windows and shards of glass were strewed across downtown. The tornado was one of four that touched down in mid-July in cities and towns across upstate NY, killing at least one person. Rome had twenty-two buildings damaged. In Canastota, west of Rome, Robert Popple, 82, left his house to check on a vintage car he had parked out front, but he was swept away, and later found dead. “This is the worst event to hit the city of Rome,” Gov. Hochul said. The storms came as NY State faced a sustained period of extreme weather that included heat waves with temperatures in the high 90s, as well as storm systems that produced heavy rains and high winds. In the first half of July, there were 42 tornado warnings across the state.

Life threatening heat was reported in mid-July in Dubai with a record heat index of 144°F (62.2°C), and a heat index of 129°F (53.9°C) in mid-July. No human, nor most animals, can survive that heat for long. Outside work is impossible and life-threatening. Crops do not grow in such extreme heat.

Within a 10-day period in late June, Delhi, India, went from historic heat waves of 50C (122F) and acute water shortages to record urban flooding due to sudden heavy rainfalls. In New Delhi 228.1 mms (nearly 9”) of rain fell in a 24-hour period, the most recorded in a single June day for 88 years and surpassing the city’s average for the whole month. At least 11 people were killed. The heavy rains flooded roads, submerged cars and subways and cut power to parts of the city with residents wading through waist-deep water. The heavy rain caused a section of the roof at New Delhi’s airport to collapse, killing one man, injuring eight others and crushing several cars.

The global climate summary for June has been published and it was the warmest June on record for the globe in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) 175-year record and is the 13th month in a row of record-hot temperatures, tying the previous record. Global-average temperature for the past 12 months is the highest on record, 0.76C above the 1991-2020 average and 1.64C above the 1850-1900 pre-industrial average.

More than 60% of the world’s population endured extreme heat driven by the climate crisis over nine days in mid-June. Approximately 5 billion people lived in extreme temperatures that were made at least three times more likely due to the climate crisis. A study published by Climate Central, a scientific non-profit, covered the period from June 16 to 24. In India, which recorded its longest-ever heatwave this summer, at least 619 million people, over half of the population, experienced severe heat, with maximum temperatures approaching 50C and night-time lows of 37C (98.6F), making India the most affected country globally. The intense heatwave led to over 40,000 cases of heatstroke and over 100 deaths. In China the temperature reached 50C, the highest-ever recorded in June. In Saudi Arabia, at least 1,300 people died from heat-related illnesses during the Hajj pilgrimage, with temperatures in some cities surpassing 50C. The US faced back-to-back heatwaves with southern states experiencing temperatures of 52C. New York saw a 500-600% increase in heat-related emergency visits. In the Mediterranean, Greece’s Acropolis was shut after temperatures hit 43C and six tourists died. The extreme heat extended to the Southern Hemisphere, breaking records in Paraguay and Peru. Extreme heatwaves that occurred once every 50 years now arrive nearly five times more often and are 1.5C warmer, according to the IPCC, the UN’s panel of top climate scientists.

The entire Northeast US and parts of the Southwest had their warmest January to June on record in 2024. The average temperature of the contiguous US in June was 71.8F, 3.4F above average, making it the second warmest in the 130-year record. About 24 million people across portions of the West, South and Northeast experienced their warmest June for overnight temperatures. Heat waves impacted the Southwest, Great Lakes, Northeast and Puerto Rico in June, breaking temperature records and creating life-threatening conditions. The South Fork fire, one of the most devastating fires in New Mexico history, burned over 17,000 acres, destroyed around 1400 structures and claimed two lives. Devastating flooding occurred in parts of the Midwest after days of heavy rains causing rivers and streams to overflow their banks, forcing residents to evacuate as water destroyed roads and bridges and led to the partial failure of the Rapidan Dam in Minnesota.

In mid-July, Washington, D.C. residents endured the most sweltering heat wave in nearly a century as extreme temperatures continued to bake the Northeast. Triple digit highs over a 4-day period were reported, with temperatures hitting 101F, exceeding the 100F set in 1954, followed by highs of 102F, breaking the 100F mark set in 1988, then reaching 101F on the third consecutive day, rising further to 104F later in the day, equaling the record set in 1988, making it the hottest day since July 7, 2012. On the fourth consecutive day, a triple digit high of 100F was recorded, equaling the record for the longest such streak.

Records of the hottest night in history at Budapest, Hungary with a temperature minimum of 26.6C, 30.2C in Komiza, Croatia, 28.0C Odessa, Ukraine, 27.3C Chisinau, Moldovai, 27.4C Gradacac, Bosnia. Hundreds of records all over central-eastern Europe and north Africa. Historic heat in the Mediterranean: 50C in Algeria and throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe: Kherson, Ukraine 40.5C (a monthly record), 40.2 Mohyliv-Podil'S'Kyi (an all-time record), 38.1 Kirovohrad (a monthly record), Croatia, 39.6 Split Airport.

In South Africa, temperatures in mid-July rose to 36.3C even in the highlands in an unusual winter heat wave, a day after breaking cold records.

In mid-July, hundreds of millions of people across the globe suffered through a heatwave without air conditioning as power grids collapsed due a surge in electricity demand, with blackouts affecting many countries including: India, Egypt, Turkey, Kuwait , Saudi Arabia, Montenegro and Bosnia.

The National Weather Service in Chicago issued over 16 tornado warnings in one day in mid-July, the highest in a single day since April 20th, 2004, and the third most ever in one day in the history of the NWS Chicago Office.

Floods in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, in mid-July killed at least four people and flooded hundreds of houses, with the Ak-Buura river bursting its banks and flooded the streets and damaging homes, schools, hospitals and recreational facilities. A woman and her three daughters were swept away by the floods in the Mol Buloq recreation area. A state of emergency was declared in Osh and residents were without power.

Heavy winds and lightning strikes in mid-July caused the growth of wildfires in Southern California to more than 30,000 acres. Several fires that broke out in Kern and San Luis Obispo Counties were blamed on extreme weather conditions and dry lightning. In Kern County, the Lost Hills fire had quickly grown from about 500 acres to more than 2,800 acres. One fire started in mid-July in Tejon Ranch, a popular 270,000-acre private property in Kern County and burned about 9,950 acres within a 3-day period. The blaze, known as the Rancho fire, forced the evacuation of more than 1,000 people from the nearby Stallion Springs and Bear Valley Springs communities. The White fire, which also began in mid-July near the community of Twin Lakes, burned over 5,500 acres. An evacuation order was in place for Twin Lakes. In neighboring San Luis Obispo County, the Hurricane fire burned about 12,700 acres.

In mid-July hundreds of wildfires, caused by rising temperatures, devastated Brazil’s Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetlands, and parts of the Amazon rainforest. Scientists said the burning of such vast swaths of land may represent a new normal under rising global temperatures and uneven rain, making efforts to save some of the world’s most important ecosystems much harder. There were more wildfires in Brazil’s share of the Pantanal, an enormous trove of biodiversity stretching across three countries, between January and June of this year than during the same period in any other year, according to the National Institute for Space Research, which tracks fires in Brazil. The highest number of fires in at least two decades was also recorded in the Amazon and in the Cerrado savanna encompassing 1.2 million square miles. In 2020, huge fires burned a third of the Pantanal and killed about 17 million animals. In May alone, flames engulfed nearly 500,000 acres of the Amazon. Scientists say the extreme conditions fueling the fires are the result of rising temperature due to climate change. In parts of the Amazon, the dry season is now a month longer than in the 1970s. Rising deforestation in the neighboring Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse savannas, is another emerging climate threat, as parts of the savanna give way to pastures.

In southeast Texas, where Hurricane Beryl left millions of residents without power, people sweltered without air-conditioning and hospitals were “backed up” because doctors were wary of discharging patients to homes without power as more than 1.1 million people were without electricity. Seven people were killed in the storm in Texas. On June 30, hurricane Beryl became the earliest Category 4 hurricane and the only Category 4 on record during the month of June in the Atlantic Ocean. Beryl killed 11 people in the Caribbean before reaching Texas. Across the West, large parts of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah were under excessive heat warnings, indicating “extremely dangerous heat conditions.” Officials believe heat was to blame for more than 90 deaths reported in the West in July. About 128 million people across the US were under heat advisories in early July. A national high of 129F (54C) was recorded near Tecopa, California.

A rare event in early July saw competing heat domes in the Southeast and Southwest US which produced two massive all-time record highs, with Palm Springs, California, recording 124F and Raleigh-Durham, NC recording 106F with a heat index of 118F.  The hottest day in climatic history was set in early July for Palm Springs, CA at 124F (51.1C) and 123F for Blythe, CA tying its monthly record.

In early July in Karachi, Pakistan, a heatwave scorched the city, with hundreds of people suffering from heat-related illnesses filling hospitals daily, pushing them well beyond their capacity. Morgues were overwhelmed by a rise in corpses with usually busy markets and streets left empty as people restricted their movement due to the heat, with lows of 32C, a record low. In a particularly harrowing eight-day stretch in late June, temperatures reached 104F (40C), with high humidity adding to the misery. That was the hottest since 2015, a year when officials reported that more than 1,200 people died from heat-related causes in Karachi. “It feels like living in a furnace,” Akbar Ali, 52, a rickshaw driver who has transported many heat-struck people to the hospital, said. “It’s terrible seeing people collapse on the street”, he added. Power outages in the slums have become frequent and prolonged, lasting from six to 16 hours a day exacerbating the impact of the heat waves. Water has also become scarce. Hospitals were overrun with patients suffering from heatstroke and severe dehydration.

The death toll from floods in Bangladesh in early July rose to eight, with over two million people affected after heavy rains caused major rivers to burst their banks. Three people were killed in two separate electrocution incidents after their boats became entangled with live electric wires in flood water. Another three died in separate flood-related incidents. In the worst-hit Kurigram district, the Brahmaputra River rose by 6-8 feet within a 3-day period.

In early July, fast-moving flames engulfed several homes and vehicles in Northern California as 26,000 people evacuated their homes in Oroville in Butte County, as the fire burned more than 3,000 acres in early July. In 2018, 85 people were killed in Butte County and almost an entire town (Paradise) was destroyed in one of the worst wildfires in American history. Multiple evacuation orders and red flag fire warnings (meaning that the risk for wildfires is heightened by weather conditions) were issued in more than a dozen counties. The National Weather Service issued an excessive heat warning for most of Northern California. In late June, residents of the town of Palermo were ordered to evacuate because of the Apache fire, which burned 691 acres. Power was shut off to nearly 2,000 homes and businesses in eight counties.

People all over the world are facing severe heat, floods and fire, aggravated by the use of fossil fuels. Many died in scorching heat in June, with nearly 100 million Americans affected by heat waves in mid-June. Dozens of cities in Mexico broke heat records in May and June, with more than 100 people killed. India has been under a persistent heat wave that killed several election workers, and in June, in the capital, Delhi, overnight temperatures remained in the mid-90sF (30sC). In Bamako, the capital of Mali, hospitals reported more than 100 excess deaths on the first four days of April. Between May 2023 and May 2024, an estimated 6.3 billion people, or roughly 4 out of 5 people in the world, lived through at least a month of what in their areas were considered abnormally high temperatures, according to a recent analysis by Climate Central, a scientific nonprofit.

Extreme heat killed an estimated 489,000 people annually between 2000 and 2019, according to the World Meteorological Organization, making heat the deadliest of all extreme weather events. The world’s two rival economic powers, China and the US, both face a common peril in summer. As one-fifth of all Americans were under an extreme-heat alert in June, several areas in China’s north broke maximum temperature records, and Beijing was under a heat alert as temperatures reached 99F (37C) in June. Both countries are also the two biggest producers of GHGs warming the planet. China’s current emissions are by far the highest in the world, and the US’ cumulative emissions over the past 150 years of industrialization are the highest in the world. Global temperatures in the first five months of the year have been the highest since modern record-keeping began. That puts 2024 on course to be the hottest year in recorded history, eclipsing last year’s record.

Saudi Arabia, experienced a tragic event in mid-June when over 1,000 people died from extreme heat while on the hajj pilgrimage. The hottest recorded temperature reported in the Grand Mosque of Mecca was 51.8C (125.2F), that is 16.8C degrees above the safe human temperatures. The pilgrimage now one of the world’s largest Muslim gatherings has been blighted in recent years by such tragic incidents, with many pilgrims, who are often older, experiencing heat stress with fatalities. In central Algeria, riots erupted over water in mid-June as rising temperatures and a lack of rain dried up drinking-water supplies. Doctors around the world have increasingly pointed to heat’s often underappreciated effect on health with no adequate means of measuring heat illnesses or deaths because heat can aggravate a host of underlying health conditions.

High temperatures dried out soils in China’s northern agricultural provinces, prompting emergency-response measures against an expanding drought, including cloud-seeding operations to cause rain, while heavy rains drenched the country’s south, causing landslides and power outages affecting 100,000 households and blocking roads.

In the US, New Mexico’s weather went from fires to floods within a one-week period in mid-June. Roughly 23,000 acres were burned in southern New Mexico since two rapid-moving wildfires were detected. At least two people were killed by the fires.

Hurricane Beryl rapidly intensified to a powerful category 4 hurricane in early July and established the following records: The farthest-east hurricane that has formed in June, first ever Category 4 hurricane on record for June, earliest Category 4 hurricane on record for the Atlantic, earliest Category 5 hurricane on record for the Atlantic, beating the previous record by two weeks (Emily 2005), strongest hurricane crossing the Windward Islands, the fastest rapid intensification of any hurricane before September 1.

Hurricane Beryl moved west toward Jamaica as a Category 4 storm in early July leaving a trail of devastation across the southeast Caribbean with four fatalities. It strengthened into a Category 5 storm with a maximum sustained winds of at least 157 mph. Major Atlantic hurricanes have maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or higher on a five-tier scale. In early July, Beryl had sustained winds of almost 165 mph. The storm was also historic for the short time it took to strengthen from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in 42 hours, a direct result of above-average sea surface temperatures.

The storm made landfall on Carriacou, a small island north of Grenada, in early July and smothered it in just 30 minutes, Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell of Grenada said. About 95% of roofs and housing on Carriacou and Petite Martinique were damaged. Both Islands lost power. Beryl caused significant damage on the two small islands in Grenada, which Grenada’s Prime Minister called “unimaginable” and “total.” About 98% of the buildings on the islands were destroyed. Three deaths were reported in Grenada, two in Carriacou and another death in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Three deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro said. North of Carriacou, several islands in St. Vincent and the Grenadines suffered “immense destruction,” Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves said. About 90% of houses on Union Island were destroyed, Mr. Gonsalves said. A recent study found that with ocean temperatures rising, hurricanes in the Atlantic have become more likely to grow from a weak storm to a major Category 3 storm or higher within 24 hours.

In early July, severe turbulence on an Air Europa flight to Uruguay from Spain injured more than two dozen passengers, leaving passengers with neck and skull fractures, and a man and a baby embedded in the plane’s ceiling. There have been numerous cases of severe injuries from turbulence worldwide which have been attributed to climate change.

Severe thunderstorms and fast-moving flash floods pummeled Austria in late June possibly the worst weather event in Austria for 40 years.

A staggering 80% of marginal farmers in India have suffered crop losses due to adverse climatic events over the past five years. Marginal farmers own less than 1 hector of land and are the largest segment of India's farm sector, at 68.5% of all farmers and 24% of crop area. A new report in Nature warns that a global food collapse is not far away, a serious threat to the future of human civilization as we know it. The study focuses on the impacts of heat and water stress but does not include other impacts such as soil loss or toxicity (i.e., chemicals, pesticides, herbicides, etc.). Similarly, the director of the World Food Programme’s global office has said that "droughts and flooding have become so common in some of the poorest places on Earth that the land can no longer sustain crops." Above 30C, wheat yield begins to drop by as much as 44%. This means that much of India, China and the US will suffer huge losses as farmers go broke and crop yield plummets.

In early June, a fast-moving wildfire (the Corral fire) east of San Francisco burned about 14,000 acres, prompting an evacuation order. Smoke from the fire shut down parts of Interstate 580.

Parts of the Upper Midwest were under flood warnings in late June after days of torrential rains caused major flooding, leaving at least one person dead in South Dakota and forcing evacuations and water rescues across the region. Flood warnings were in place for rivers in parts of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wisconsin. South Dakota’s torrential rains fell across the central and eastern parts of the state for three days, killing one person. Several rivers in the state broke water-level records, and the Big Sioux River rose to a record 45 feet surpassing its previous record by over 7 feet.

In Iowa, river levels rose several feet above levels reported during a 1993 flood that left 50 dead across the Midwest, Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa said, declaring a disaster for more than 20 counties, and described the damage as “staggering.” In a single day in late June, emergency responders had conducted 250 water rescues, evacuating and sheltering more than 1,000 people, and more than 1,900 properties were damaged. Some cities were without power, others were without potable water. Hospitals and nursing homes were evacuated.

In late June, flooding in southern Minnesota left “entire communities under feet of water,” Gov. Tim Walz said, declaring an emergency. The city of Waterville received up to 18 inches of rain. In Sioux Falls, South Dakota, emergency services rescued nine people from floodwaters.

In late June a tornado with a record-breaking wind speed of over 300mph, was confirmed in Greenfield, Iowa. It shredded wind turbines, ripped homes from their foundations and killed 5.

In June, temperatures in Mexico hit a record high of 52C (125.6F), equaling the highest temperature ever recorded in Mexico, and an all-time hottest temperature on record in the State of Sonora. This is in addition to the hottest and driest Spring on record in Mexico.

In New Mexico in mid-June, torrential rains complicated efforts by firefighters to contain two fast-moving wildfires that killed two people and prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents. Parts of New Mexico, including Mora County and San Miguel County, were under flood warnings in mid-June. The South Fork and Salt fires began amid soaring temperatures burning over 23,000 acres and prompting the evacuation of about 8,000 residents from the mountain resort community of Ruidoso. The South Fork fire, the larger of the two, burned over 16,000 acres and destroyed 1,400 structures. The damage made the fires among the most devastating in New Mexico’s history.

Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season, made landfall on the northeastern coast of Mexico in mid-June. At least three people were killed in storm-related events in the state of Nuevo León in Mexico. One teenager was trapped by currents in a river and drowned, and two other minors were electrocuted crossing a pond that was in contact with a live cable. For some states in Mexico, the storm’s arrival in mid-June was a welcome respite amid a water crisis and scorching heat waves.

In Texas, tides surged beneath elevated houses in some coastal cities, including Surfside Beach, in mid-June prompting the city to close its beach and warned visitors to stay away. Alberto was a large storm, with tropical-force winds extending about 250 miles from its center. A tropical storm warning in Texas for more than two million people from San Luis Pass southward to the mouth of the Rio Grande was in place. Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas made a severe-weather disaster declaration for 51 counties. Property damage on North Padre Island was reported after coastal bulkheads collapsed from the storm surge. Officials were distributing free sandbags to businesses and residents on South Padre Island. In Corpus Christi, at least two people were rescued after their cars became submerged in floodwaters.

At least six people were killed in mid-June and about 2,000 tourists were stranded in India's Himalayan state of Sikkim after landslides and flooding caused by persistent torrential rains. The Sangkalang bridge collapsed, and landslides swept away homes and roads.

In mid-June, heavy rains pummeled southern and central Chile, killing one person in the southern city of Linares, and causing damage to hundreds of homes as authorities declared a state of catastrophe in several regions. Chile’s weather service issued the highest level of alarm, covering about 14 million of the 20 million people living in six of the country’s 16 regions. The city of Curanilahue, was hard hit as the Curanilahue and Las Ranas rivers overflowed after 350mm (13.8”) of rain fell in a few hours, exceeding the total rainfall for 2023. A state of “catastrophe” was declared in five regions due to the floods. In the city of Vina del Mar, experts worked to save a 12-storey apartment building at risk of collapse after the rains caused a massive sinkhole underneath it. An atmospheric river (a strip of air carrying huge amounts of moisture) accompanied a cold front over Chile was the probable cause of the heavy rainfall.

Several successive thunderstorms spanning 3 consecutive days, swept across the east and west coast of a waterlogged South Florida in mid-June, causing major travel disruptions, and flooded roads and homes. The torrential rains prompted temporary ground stops at Florida’s airports, with over 1,200 flights either canceled or delayed. The heavy rainfall caused the Weather Prediction Center to elevate the risk for excessive rain to “high,” the top level on a four-category scale. The Weather Service issued its highest level of warning, a flash flood emergency, for North Miami to Dania Beach.

Prior to the rainfall in mid-June, the city of Miami Beach declared a state of emergency with sandbags distributed to residents, and public garages in Miami Beach were opened for residents to move their vehicles to higher ground. The heavy rainfall caused flash flooding from Fort Lauderdale to downtown Miami, flooding homes, stranding vehicles and closing roads, including part of the Interstate 95. Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in five Counties. Two people were killed, and three others were injured in a car crash in Collier County after a driver lost control in the wet weather conditions. A daily record of 9.5” of rainfall was set in Fort Lauderdale breaking a previous record of almost 5.5” set in 1978. Within a two-day period, more than a foot of rain fell on Miami Beach, with 13.64” and elsewhere 48-hour rain totals have almost doubled that amount, with North Miami unofficially receiving 20” and Hallandale and Hollywood each receiving 19”. All recorded rainfalls erased the average rainfall of 10.5” for June in the Miami area. In June, Sarasota, Florida, received 3.93” recorded at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport, the highest ever received within a one-hour period and a once in 1,000 years occurrence.

Repeatedly, the world’s leading climatologists and scientists have been stating the simple truth that unless global emissions of CO2e are drastically curtailed, there will continue to be extreme weather events including heat, drought, wildfire, famine, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, environmental refugees and political unrest.  And yet, the world’s consumption of fossil fuels reached a record high in 2023 with emissions of more than 40 gigatonnes of CO2 for the first time, according to a recent global energy report. From January through April 2024, NOAA and Scripps scientists said CO2 concentrations increased more rapidly than they have in the first four months of any other year. Atmospheric levels of CO2 have reached a record high of 426.69 parts per million as of June 20 up from a pre-industrial level around 280 ppm or less.

In June 2024, 102 countries/territories broke heat records. Scientists state that there has never been anything remotely like it. This happened despite enormous gains in sustainable energy. Renewable energy is now cheaper than fossil fuel-generated energy. Specifically, solar and wind power are less expensive than oil, gas and coal in many places and are saving the US economy billions of dollars. These and other renewable energy sources produced 30% of the world’s electricity in 2023, which may also have been the year that GHG emissions in the power sector peaked. In the US alone, the amount of solar and wind energy capacity waiting to be built and connected to the grid is 18 times the amount of natural gas power capacity in the queue.

And yet, fossil fuel interests, including think tanks, trade associations and dark money groups, are working to prevent the market from shifting to the lowest cost energy. Via lobbying and misinformation fossil fuel interests try to convince the public that their products do not cause climate change, following the script used by the tobacco industry that its products didn’t harm people’s health.

Fossil fuel interests (FFI) are also undertaking a large-scale misinformation campaign to deceive the public into thinking that the alternative products are harmful, unreliable and worse for consumers. They spread falsehoods including the claim that offshore wind turbines kill whales or that renewable energy is prohibitively expensive, in an effort to stop projects from getting built. FFI fund misleading grass roots campaigns opposing wind farms off New Jersey, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. FFI make major donations to politicians who then make false claims about renewable energy and push oil and gas on their constituents even when renewable energy is cheaper. After the Texas blackout in 2021, which was largely due to the failure of the Texas natural gas system, politicians blamed renewable energy, and have since argued that more natural gas is needed to strengthen the state electrical grid. Building backup natural gas plants that would be idle 90% of the time would be the most expensive way to address their problem compared with paying consumers to cut their energy use when the electrical grid is near its limit.

FFI falsely claim that the US cannot depend on renewable energy. In fact, during the times of insufficient sun/wind clean energy can be moved from regions with excess energy. Batteries and hydroelectricity can be quickly turned on and off to meet demand. Currently, the US grid is backed by natural gas for intermittent wind and solar, and that can continue, in very limited quantities. A study published in 2020 showed that we could operate a grid that is 90% clean energy and 10% natural gas by 2035, which would cost about the same as it currently does.

In Texas, FFI have succeeded in getting the State Board of Education to reject textbooks that accurately depict the effects of climate change and extreme weather. Fossil fuels not only are changing the climate they also generate air pollution that kills millions of people each year. They also support autocratic petrostates, generate conflicts over energy resources and add to geopolitical instability. FFI lies harm consumer health as well as their monetary and physical security. As has been proven, we have the technology to phase out oil, gas and coal. Even the last 5-10% likely will not exceed the historical range of energy costs. A sustainable future depends on politics, not technology or science.

On May 30, 2024, Vermont became the first state in the country to pass a law that will charge fossil fuel companies for damages caused by climate change. Vermont will charge companies according to their share of emissions produced between 1995 and 2024. The legislation was inspired by the 1980 federal superfund law under which polluters are liable for cleanup costs from disposals that were legal at the time. Funds generated by the new law will pay for climate adaptation and resilience projects in the state.

The American Petroleum Institute, the industry’s biggest lobbying group, said that it was “extremely concerned” about the legislation and argued the measure imposes costs on legal activities that stretch back decades and holds companies responsible for “actions of society at large.” The law “is bad public policy and may be unconstitutional.” “Singling out fuel extraction and refinement for potentially exorbitant and disproportionate penalties while ignoring the economy-sustaining use of that energy is misguided.”

Vermont officials set a January 2027 deadline to create a methodology to charge fossil fuel companies for damages caused by their products. The companies may participate in the rulemaking.

The NY Senate passed a similar bill for the second time in June, but Gov. Kathy Hochul omitted it from the budget. Similar bills have been introduced in Massachusetts, California and Maryland. Payout from the VT law could raise $500 billion over 10 years. NY officials said a statewide measure would collect $75 billion/year.

In June, the Supreme Court over-turned a longstanding legal precedent, reducing the power of executive agencies and endangering countless regulations by transferring power from the executive branch to Congress and the courts. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., writing for the majority, said that “agencies have no special competence” and that judges should determine the meaning of federal laws.

Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council was one of the most cited cases in US law, underpinning 70 Supreme Court decisions and roughly 17,000 in the lower courts. In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan said the ruling amounted to the Court’s latest judicial power grab. “A rule of judicial humility,” she wrote, “gives way to a rule of judicial hubris.”

Chevron deference had been the principle from the Supreme Court’s 1984 ruling that gave regulatory agencies leeway to interpret laws that Congress had left vague. When Congress passes a law, it tends to do so in broad strokes as it cannot anticipate all the ways that the economy, the nation and the world will change. If regulators had only the powers that Congress explicitly gave them, many regulations would be vulnerable to legal challenges due to changes occuring after the passage of the law.

The ruling undoes a precedent that empowered executive branch agencies, which many conservatives believe are dominated by liberals, also referred to as “the deep state.” Elizabeth Murrill, the Republican attorney general of Louisiana who has taken a leading role in lawsuits against the Biden administration’s environmental regulations, said Chevron deference had been “wildly abused by this administration more than any other.”

Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said the decision was the latest example of the Supreme Court siding with Republican-backed special interests to block “common-sense rules that keep us safe, protect our health and environment, safeguard our financial system, and support American consumers and workers.”

In another matter, Securities and Exchange Commission v Jarkesy, with enormous potential impact, the majority struck down the ability of agencies to enforce their rules via in-house administrative tribunals before technical-expert judges. Instead, it ruled, agencies must sue accused malefactors in federal court before juries. The vast majority of enforcement actions taken by agencies such as EPA are done administratively.

In recent years, the Republican majority has also made it easier to sue agencies and strike regulations, including by advancing the “major questions doctrine.” Under that idea, courts should nullify economically significant regulations if judges decide Congress was not clear enough in authorizing them. With that in mind, the court struck an EPA rule limiting carbon pollution from power plants.

The loss of Chevron deference may impede the ability of the Treasury Department and the IRS to draft federal regulations in furtherance of Biden’s economic and environmental agendas. The Treasury Department is responsible for implementing the Inflation Reduction Act, including determining who qualifies for billions of dollars of tax credits. The IRS administers the tax code. “Taxpayers are likely to challenge the validity of dozens of tax regulations and those challenges are much more likely to prevail,” said Robert J. Kovacev, a lawyer with the firm Miller & Chevalier who specializes in tax litigation and represents businesses in disputes with the IRS.

The ruling may complicate the Biden administration’s alternative energy credit regulations, Mr. Kovacev said, because the IRS will not be afforded deference regarding its regulations. “Today’s decision will level the playing field for taxpayers and government agencies,” said Joe Bishop-Henchman, executive vice president at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation. “Unreasonable I.R.S. interpretations will no longer automatically win in court, which is as it should be, and reasonable interpretations will still have the force of law.”

The Biden administration anticipated the overturn of Chevron. Two years ago, the White House worked with congressional Democrats to pass legislation protecting EPA’s authority to craft climate change regulations, even without Chevron deference.

Climate change rules are particularly vulnerable to legal attack in a post-Chevron world because EPA wrote them pursuant to the 1970 Clean Air Act, a sweeping law that directs the agency to regulate all pollutants that endanger human health. The legislation did not specifically include CO2. Nor does it mention climate change.

Democrats addressed that in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act which focused on spending billions of dollars on clean energy technology to fight climate change. The IRA amends the Clean Air Act to define the CO2 produced by the burning of fossil fuels as an “air pollutant” regulated by the CAA. That language explicitly gives EPA the authority to regulate GHGs and to use its power to push the adoption of wind, solar and other renewable energy sources. The fossil fuel industry is still expected to use the demise of the Chevron doctrine to attempt to weaken the specifics of those rules.

Chevron deference meant that courts must defer to agencies’ reasonable interpretations of ambiguous statutes. The theory was that agency personnel had more expertise than judges, are more accountable to voters and are better able to establish uniform national policies. “Judges are not experts in the field and are not part of either political branch of the government,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in 1984 for a unanimous court (with three justices recused). Justice Stevens later said of the opinion that it was “simply a restatement of existing law.”

“If Americans are worried about their drinking water, their health, their retirement account, discrimination on the job, if they fly on a plane, drive a car, if they go outside and breathe the air — all of these day-to-day activities are run through a massive universe of federal agency regulations,” said Lisa Heinzerling, an expert in administrative law at Georgetown University. “And this decision now means that more of those regulations could be struck down by the courts.”

“Overturning Chevron was a shared goal of the conservative movement and the Trump administration. It was expressed constantly,” said Mandy Gunasekara, who served as chief of staff at the EPA under Trump and has helped write Project 2025, a policy blueprint for a next Republican administration. “It creates a massive opportunity for these regulations to be challenged. And it could galvanize additional momentum toward reining in the administrative state writ large if the administration changes in November.”

Still, Jonathan Berry, who served as a senior Labor Department official under Trump, noted that overturning the Chevron doctrine itself “doesn’t immediately blow anything up.” Rather, Mr. Berry said, the fate of the regulations will be determined by how the courts act without the precedence of Chevron.

The Biden administration has issued the most ambitious rules in the country’s history to cut climate-warming pollution from cars, trucks, power plants and oil and gas wells. Such rules are essential for Biden to achieve his goal of cutting GHG emissions in half by the end of the decade, which all major economies must do to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of global warming. Challenged to these rules are making their way through the courts. Legal experts say that the reversal of Chevron does not remove EPA’s legal authority to regulate climate-warming pollution, but the Supreme Court has rendered the regulations legally vulnerable.

More than 90% of all the excess heat trapped in the atmosphere by the greenhouse effect goes into the oceans. The oceans, home to a majority of life on earth, has absorbed nine times as much warming as the land. The problem is that the ocean drives and distributes immense amounts of heat and energy, life and nutrients, around the globe, while also keeping the whole climate system (upon which human civilization depends) relatively stable.

The oceans occupy 70% of the earth’s surface and is growing. In part because of melting Arctic and Antarctic ice, which could raise global sea levels by several feet this century and many more in the millenniums to come, but also because of “thermal expansion.” Heat expands the volume of water and is responsible for at least one-third of all SLR.

Last January, more than 40% of the planet’s oceans were experiencing marine heat waves, and by the end of the century, if current trends continue, those heat waves could be permanent in much of the world’s seas. In shallow waters, coral reefs endured water so warm it led to the creation of three new levels of risk above what had been the highest level on the coral-bleaching scale. In the next few decades, even if humanity rapidly decarbonizes, it is likely that bleaching will kill nearly all the ocean’s coral reefs and with it a quarter of all marine life that provide food and other benefits to a billion people.

Pacific sea-surface temperatures have exceeded previous records for more than a year with temperatures in the waters of the northern hemisphere so high they have been described as nine-standard-deviation anomalies. Scientists have expressed alarmed confusion about recent records in global surface temperatures, and even more so about conditions in the Atlantic, where hurricane activity is expected to reach historic levels. Many ocean scientists now speak of “regime shifts” and to “expect chaos.” Some have said, the oceans we knew are gone.

Several studies have focussed on the risk of the collapse of the large ocean system that transfers heat from the tropics toward Europe and Greenland called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This conveyor keeps Western Europe comfortably warm, among other planet-stabilizing effects. Were AMOC to stop, average temperatures in parts of the continent might drop 15C. One paper projected the system would reach a tipping point between 2025 and 2095, with a central estimate of midcentury, a few decades from now.

“This is not about being 100 percent or even just 50 percent sure that the A.M.O.C. will pass its tipping point this century,” the scientist Stefan Rahmstorf wrote in April in the journal Oceanography. “The issue is that we’d like to be 100 percent sure that it won’t.”

In February, another paper suggested that the AMOC was on a “tipping course,” and ongoing research suggests other ocean-circulation systems may be facing a one-in-three risk of collapse this century — perhaps higher.

Up to two-thirds of the planet’s oceans are not governed by any sovereign system of law. Even after the landmark U.N. treaty signed last year, barely 1% of the world’s oceans is protected, a share the U.N. hopes to raise to 30%.

The Antarctic ice sheet is melting in a new, worrying way that scientific models used to project SLR have not taken into account, suggesting current projections could be significantly underestimating the problem, according to scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. They found that warm ocean water is seeping beneath the ice sheet at its “grounding line” — the point at which the ice rises from the seabed and starts to float — causing accelerated melting which could lead to a tipping point (the threshold at which a series of small changes accumulate to push a system beyond a point of no return).

The Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica is melting from below as warm water flows underneath it according to new research. Ocean water is rushing miles underneath the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ with potentially dire impacts on SLR. A small increase in ocean temperature can have a very big impact on the amount of melting, the study found. As climate change heats up the oceans, the process speeds up. “You get this kind of runaway feedback,” said Alex Bradley, an ice dynamics researcher at BAS and lead author of the paper. It behaves like a tipping point, “where you can have a very sudden shift in how much melting is happening in these places.”

 This tipping point would play out through a faster flow of ice into the oceans, in a process not currently included in models of future SLR, Bradley said, suggesting “our projections of sea level rise might be significant underestimates.” The higher rise in sea levels would accumulate over tens and hundreds of years, threatening coastal communities globally. Sea level is now 10cm higher than in 1993, and the rise-rate is accelerating.

The Antarctic ice sheet sheds an average of 150 billion metric tons of ice every year and, in its entirety, it holds enough water to raise global sea levels by around 190 feet. Some of the most vulnerable glaciers are in East Antarctica. In West Antarctica, recent studies found melting at the base of glaciers was lower than expected, because it was being suppressed by a layer of colder, fresher water, although scientists still found a rapid retreat. “The Arctic is currently warming at four times the rate experienced by the rest of the planet. But the Antarctic has started to catch up, so that it is already warming twice as quickly as the planet overall.”

A.I. consumes an immense amount of energy and is increasing global energy demand as well as planet-warming emissions, and growing, rapidly. A.I. data centers, including their graphic processing units are energy hogs. GPUs train large language models and respond to ChatGPT queries. They require more energy than most microchips and emit more heat. New data centers come online almost weekly. Studies project that US electricity demand could increase 20% by 2030, driven in part by A.I. Data centers could account for 8% of US energy usage in 2030, up from just 3% today. “It’s truly astronomical potential load growth,” said Ben Inskeep, the program director at Citizens Action Coalition tracking the energy impact of data centers.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta all intend to build data centers in Indiana, developments that Inskeep said would strain the grid. “We don’t have enough power to meet the projected needs of data centers over the next five to 10 years,” he said. “We would need a massive build-out of additional resources.”

Google’s emissions last year were 48% higher than in 2019, largely due to its data centers. A.I. Microsoft’s emissions also jumped for the same reasons, up 29% last year from 2020. And Meta’s emissions jumped 66% from 2021 to 2023.

Google and Microsoft claim that A.I. will prove crucial to addressing the climate crisis, and that they are working to reduce their carbon footprints and bring more clean energy online. To meet demand, tech companies can either tap the existing grid, or build new power plants. In West Virginia, coal-fired power plants scheduled to retire are instead being utilized to meet the energy needs of new data centers across the border in Virginia. Across the country, utilities are building new natural-gas infrastructure to support data centers. Goldman Sachs anticipates that “data center power consumption in the U.S. will drive around 3.3 billion cubic feet per day of new natural gas demand by 2030, which will require new pipeline capacity to be built.”

Microsoft and OpenAI are planning to build a $100 billion data center which could require five gigawatts of power, or roughly the equivalent of five nuclear reactors. Many of the chips driving the A.I. revolution are more power hungry than older chips. Nvidia, the leader in A.I. chips, unveiled products that would draw exponentially more energy from the grid.

A.I. may deliver breakthroughs that help reduce emissions. But, for now, data centers are doing more harm than good for the climate. “It’s definitely very concerning as we’re trying to transition our current grid to renewable energy,” Inskeep said. “Adding a massive amount of new load on top of that poses a grave threat to that transition.”

In order to stay under 2C, annual emissions reductions of at least 9% are required. But, global energy-related CO2 emissions grew by 1.1% in 2023, increasing 410 million tons to reach a new record high of 37.4 billion tons.

The good news is that vast amounts of renewable, carbon-free energy is being produced and it is less expensive in most instances than fossil fuels. Over the last decade, the costs of solar energy have fallen 89% and wind energy has dropped by 60%. As a result, renewables are significantly cheaper than fossil fuels – last summer they were nine times cheaper. Even red states can see the economic logic even if they aren’t Going Green. Over the next 18 months, Texas is expected to build more clean energy than any other state, perhaps twice as much as the next two states—California and Arizona—combined. Some studies find that zero-emitting sources like wind, solar and nuclear could account for 62 - 88% of total electricity generation in 2035 in the US and that power sector emissions reductions between 2023 - 2035 could range from 42% to 83%. This is based on the fact that global solar deployment was 239 Gigawatts in 2022 and 447 GW in 2024. Other studies predict 585 GW in 2024 and 641 GW in 2025. That's ~140% more in 2024 than in 2022. Total solar will be ~2.2 Terawatts in 2024. After a record amount (~550 GW) of wind and solar was added in 2023, wind and solar supplied a record 16.64% of global electricity in March 2024. That’s up from 14.68% in March 2023, and up from 13.05% in March 2022. Wind and solar will be 30% of the world’s electricity, possibly more, by 2030.

In 2004, it took one year to install a gigawatt of solar, in 2010, it took a month, in 2016, a week, in 2023, a day and in 2024, 12 hours. A year to half a day in 20 years and accelerating.

Generating renewable energy is one crucial step, storing it and using it when needed is another. California is providing more good news on this front. It draws more electricity from the sun than any other state but until recently had trouble utilizing it at night.  Since 2020, California has installed more giant batteries than anywhere in the world apart from China. Those batteries have begun to partially replace fossil fuels in the evening. For example, between 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. on April 30, batteries supplied more than 20% of California’s electricity and, for a few minutes, supplied 7,046 MWs of electricity, about the output of seven large nuclear reactors.

“What’s happening in California is a glimpse of what could happen to other grids in the future,” said Helen Kou, head of U.S. power analysis at BloombergNEF, a research firm. “Batteries are quickly moving from these niche applications to shifting large amounts of renewable energy toward peak demand periods.”

Over the past three years, battery storage capacity on the nation’s grids has grown tenfold, to 16,000 MWs. This year, it is expected to nearly double again, with the biggest growth in Texas, California and Arizona. As the electric vehicle industry has expanded over the past decade, battery costs have fallen 80%, making them competitive for large-scale power storage. Federal subsidies have helped.

Power companies use batteries to handle big swings in electricity generation from solar and wind farms, reduce congestion on transmission lines and help prevent blackouts during heat waves.

California policymakers hope grid batteries can help the state get 100% of its electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045. The state is heavily dependent on natural gas, which contributes to global warming, but batteries are reducing that dependency. State regulators plan to nearly triple battery capacity by 2035. “The future is bright for energy storage,” said Andrés Gluski, chief executive of AES Corporation, one of the world’s largest power companies. “If you want more renewables on the grid, you need more batteries. It’s not going to work otherwise.”

California now has 10,000 MWs of battery power on the grid, enough to power 10 million homes for a few hours. Those batteries are “able to very effectively manage that evening ramp where solar is going down and customer demand is increasing,” said John Phipps, executive director of grid operations for the California Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s grid.

Batteries can also help California’s grid handle stresses from heat waves and wildfires, Mr. Phipps said. “It made some differences last summer,” he said. “We were able to meet high load days and wildfire days when we might lose some power lines.”

In Texas, market forces dominate. The state’s deregulated electricity system allows prices to fluctuate sharply, rising as high as $5,000 per megawatt-hour during acute shortages. But a state fund to subsidize gas plants could undercut the battery boom. In Arizona and Georgia, utilities plan to install thousands of MWs of battery capacity to help manage rising demand from data centers and factories.

Most batteries still come from China, making them vulnerable to trade disputes. In some states, complex regulations sometimes prevent utilities from adding energy storage. “Because these storage resources are so new, the rules are still catching up,” said Natalie McIntire, who works on grid issues for the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.

In Texas, many batteries today are actually increasing CO2 emissions because operators focus on maximizing revenue and sometimes charge batteries using coal or gas power. “These batteries have an immense capability to abate carbon, but they need the right incentives to do so,” said Emma Konet, co-founder of Tierra Climate, a startup working to help batteries earn money for reducing emissions.

In California,gas use in April fell to a seven-year low. “We have reached the conclusion that batteries are displacing natural gas when solar generation is ramping up and down each day,” said Max Kanter, chief executive of Grid Status, an electricity data tracking firm.

Yet California still gets roughly 40% of its electricity from natural gas, current battery technology cannot replace all of it. An analysis by BloombergNEF found that solar and batteries are a cost-effective alternative to smaller gas “peaker” plants that only switch on when demand spikes. But batteries are too costly to replace larger gas-burning plants that provide power day and night. “You don’t want to necessarily build a system where you’ve got batteries to suck up every last megawatt-hour, because that’s a pretty expensive system,” said Meredith Fowlie, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.

Today’s lithium-ion batteries typically only deliver power for two to four hours before needing to recharge. If costs keep falling, battery companies might be able to extend that to eight or ten hours (by adding more battery packs) but it may not be economical beyond that, said Nate Blair, an energy storage expert at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

That means additional long-duration storage technology is needed. If California wants to rely largely on renewable energy, it will have to handle weeklong periods where there’s limited wind and sun. Also, there’s far more solar power available in summer than in winter, and no existing battery can store electricity for months to manage seasonal disparities.

In Sacramento, the start-up ESS is building “flow” batteries that store energy in liquid electrolytes and can last 12 hours or longer. Another start-up, Form Energy, is building a 100-hour iron-air battery. We’ll see if these batteries can be developed to compete with nuclear power, advanced geothermal or even using green hydrogen to store electricity.

California could need five times as much storage capacity by midcentury, even if it’s unclear which technologies will suffice. “We’re just at the beginning of this,” said Mr. Phipps of the California Independent System Operator.

As intended, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has set off a boom in renewable energy. Large tax breaks have made solar and wind power cheaper than fossil fuels. But only solar panel installations are growing to record highs in the US (as are batteries that can store energy for later use), while wind power is struggling, both on land and at sea. The US is now adding less wind capacity each year than before the law was passed.

Early predictions that the IRA would enable the US to slash GHG emissions 40% below 2005 levels by 2030 depended on a rapid acceleration of both solar and wind power this decade. The necessary rapid shift away from fossil fuels requires both solar and wind because wind can generate electricity at night.

The major snags for wind energy are the lack of transmission lines, the lengthy permitting process, objections to new projects in many communities and the relatively few locations where wind can profitably be located.  In the US, the best places for land-based wind are in the Midwest and Great Plains. But desirable locations are crowded with turbines and existing electric grids are clogged, making it difficult to add more projects. Expanding the grid’s capacity to transport more wind power to population centers is essential but getting permits for transmission lines and building them can take more than a decade.

Wind turbines are enormous and more noticeable than solar farms, thus they often attract more intense opposition from local communities. In Idaho, the State Legislature opposed a new wind farm. Hundreds of residents were arrested on Oahu, Hawaii, for blocking the construction of a relatively small wind project. “We have not seen examples of people being willing to risk arrest to stop solar projects,” said Matthew Eisenson, who tracks opposition to renewable energy for the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University.

The Covid pandemic caused equipment costs to greatly increase and disrupted supply chains. These cost increases and disruptions have caused developers in the Northeast to cancel more than half the wind projects they planned to build this decade.

China is largely responsible for the record 117 GWs of new wind capacity that came online last year globally. Elsewhere, developers weren’t installing wind turbines any faster than they were in 2020. Only about 10% of US energy comes from wind but to meet Biden’s goal, we need to derive closer to 33% along with a mix of solar, batteries, nuclear power, hydrogen and gas plants that can capture and bury their carbon.

Given the tax incentives of the IRA, “There are signs that wind is starting to turn the corner,” said John Hensley, a VP at the American Clean Power Association, a renewable industry trade group. Costs are coming down and last year orders for new turbines increased by 130% with delivery expected in 2025 or later.

Some states are facilitating the building of renewable energy and the federal government has issued new rules to accelerate the planning of transmission lines. Illinois, Michigan and Minnesota have each passed laws making it harder for local governments to restrict wind and solar projects. To meet California’s climate goals, it is counting on several giant new transmission lines that will import electricity from wind farms in New Mexico and Wyoming.

Federal legislation is needed to expedite the permitting and building of high-voltage transmission lines. That’s unlikely to happen absent a change in Congress. And if Trump is elected, he has promised to obstruct offshore wind farms. Unless the US can derive maximum benefits from wind energy, “getting to zero emissions is pretty darn challenging”, says Ryan Jones, a co-founder of Evolved Energy Research.

Washington

The Environmental Protection Agency announced $4.3 billion in funding in late July for 25 new projects proposed by states, tribes, local governments and territories to tackle climate change. The funding could reduce GHG emissions by as much as 971 million metric tons by 2050, roughly the emissions of five million homes over 25 years, according to the agency. The money is part of the Climate Pollution Reduction Grants program, a $5 billion fund included in the Inflation Reduction Act which provides $396 billion in climate and clean energy funding.

Nebraska will receive $307 million to reduce agricultural waste and enhance energy efficiency in homes and buildings. Pennsylvania will get $396 million to reduce industrial pollution and create about 6,000 jobs. Other funds will go to: Southern California to decarbonize freight vehicles; Michigan and tribal partners to adopt new renewable energy projects; Atlantic coastal states to sequester carbon through wetland preservation; Alaska to replace residential oil-burning systems with heat pumps; and the Nez Percé Tribe to retrofit homes.

States, plus Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, were each eligible to receive $3 million to create climate action plans in 2023 during the program’s first phase. All but five states — Florida, Kentucky, Iowa, South Dakota and Wyoming — submitted outlines in March.

Also, the 67 most populous metro areas got $1 million each to create climate action plans in Phase One. $25 million went to tribes and tribal consortia, and $2 million went to other US territories. When a state chose not to apply, the funding defaulted to its three largest metro areas, providing $1 million to develop a plan. The funds should be delivered in early fall.

If states do everything their climate action plans contemplate, it could result in a 7% reduction in GHG emissions nationwide by 2030, the equivalent of taking almost one-third of gasoline cars off the road or decommissioning half the nation’s methane plants, according to the Rocky Mountain Institute.

As president, Trump’s sweeping attempts to roll back federal environmental regulations were often stymied, by the courts, by a lack of experience, and by internal resistance from government employees. But should he take back the White House in November, he will be better positioned to dismantle environmental and climate rules, aided by more sympathetic judges and conservative allies who are planning to bend federal agencies to Trump’s will.

“It’s going to be easier,” said Myron Ebell, who led the transition at the EPA after Trump won in 2016. “They’re going to have better people, more committed people, more experienced people. They will be able to move more quickly, and more successfully, in my view.”

Candidate Trump has promised to repeal federal regulations designed to cut GHG pollution that is rapidly heating the planet. His allies are drafting plans to slash budgets, oust career staffers, embed loyalists in key offices and scale back the government’s powers to tackle climate change, regulate industries and restrict hazardous chemicals. As noted above, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority has curbed the legal authority of the government to impose environmental rules on businesses and rendered existing rules vulnerable.

Trump has proposed reclassifying tens of thousands of career civil servants, making it easier to fire them. He has said that move, which he tried to implement at the end of his first term, is necessary to “destroy the deep state” that he says secretly worked against his presidency. A second Trump administration might not face as many legal or bureaucratic guardrails as the first. “Because of the Supreme Court in particular, he’ll be able to get away with a lot more than anyone ever suspected,” said Christine Todd Whitman, who led the EPA under President George W. Bush. She said the courts have effectively given a second Trump administration a “free hand” to slash regulations.

That could mean a drastic transformation of the EPA, which for five decades has played a powerful role in American society, from reducing smog to regulating industrial emissions. Businesses and conservative groups have long said that excessive regulation increases costs for industries from electric utilities to home building. Environmentalists say that handcuffing the EPA now, when time is of the essence to contain global warming, is dangerous.

Trump’s spokeswoman, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that if elected, he would “cancel Joe Biden’s radical mandates, terminate the Green New Scam, and make America energy independent again.” In 2023, the US pumped more crude oil than any other nation in history and it is the world’s leading exporter of liquefied natural gas.

Trump stated that he intends to scrap two major Biden administration regulations designed to reduce GHGs from power plants and cars. His allies have laid out specific proposals as part of a transition plan known as Project 2025, spearheaded by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Trump has sought to distance himself from Project 2025, but much of the plan was written by his former top advisers and could serve in prominent roles if he returns.

In a 32-page section on the EPA, the plan focuses on the agency’s authority to address global warming, including revisiting a 2009 scientific finding that CO2 emissions endanger public health. The blueprint also calls for repealing regulations governing air pollution from factories that crosses state borders and for reconsidering limits on PFAS, toxic compounds known as “forever chemicals” that have been detected in nearly half the nation’s tap water. Project 2025 also proposes to eliminate EPA’s office of environmental justice, which focuses on environmental burdens in low-income and minority areas; breaking up an office focused on children’s health; adjusting scientific advisory boards “to expand opportunities for a diversity of scientific viewpoints”; and appointing a political loyalist as the agency’s science adviser to “reform” the agency’s research. “To implement policies that are consistent with a conservative EPA, the agency will have to undergo a major reorganization,” wrote Mandy Gunasekara, former EPA chief of staff under Trump.

Project 2025 also recommends installing political appointees in parts of the EPA that have been dedicated to nonpartisan technical and scientific research, like the National Vehicle and Fuel Emissions Laboratory in Ann Arbor, Mich. That laboratory, where about 140 engineers, chemists, toxicologists, lawyers and economists study vehicle performance and emissions standards, is “the last word on automobile pollution,” said William K. Reilly, who led the agency under President George H.W. Bush. “If political people are put in there, we will find we have destroyed one of the greatest achievements we have in the government.”

During his term in office, Trump tried to roll back or weaken nearly 100 environmental rules, including Obama-era limits on GHGs from power plants and cars and wetlands protections.

Should VP Kamala Harris prevail, her views on the environment are well known. She has for years made the environment a top concern, from prosecuting polluters as California’s attorney general to sponsoring the Green New Deal as a senator to casting the tiebreaking vote as vice president for the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the largest climate investment in US history.

Ms. Harris is expected to protect the climate achievements of the Biden administration, a position that could resonate with voters during a summer of record heat. A clear majority of Americans, 65%, wants the country to focus on increasing solar, wind and other renewables and not fossil fuels, according to the Pew Research Center.

Last year, Ms. Harris attended the UN global climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, where she told world leaders that “the urgency of this moment is clear. The clock is no longer just ticking, it is banging. And we must make up for lost time.” That was a reference to Trump, who made the US the first and only country to withdraw from the global Paris Agreement to limit GHG emissions. (The US subsequently rejoined under Biden.) Trump stated that he would again pull back from the global fight against climate change if he is elected in November. “Around the world, there are those who seek to slow or stop our progress, leaders who deny climate science, delay climate action, and spread misinformation,” Ms. Harris said at the summit. “In the face of their resistance and in the context of this moment, we must do more.”

The vice president incorporated climate change into foreign relations, holding a round table in Bangkok to connect environmental activists with clean energy experts and starting a partnership with Caribbean countries to address climate change.

As a senator from California, the state that is at the forefront of climate policy, Ms. Harris promoted electrifying school buses to reduce GHGs and to cut children's exposure to diesel exhaust. She also supported efforts to replace lead water pipes.

She was an original co-sponsor of the Green New Deal, a nonbinding resolution supported by liberal Democrats that called for the US to transition to 100% clean energy within a decade. The measure died in committee.

When Ms. Harris ran for president in 2020, her climate plan called for a $10 trillion increase in spending over a decade as well as a price on carbon, with a dividend to be returned directly to households. Economists say that a carbon tax is the most effective way to reduce GHGs  She once favored a ban on hydraulic fracturing (fracking). As a condidate for the presidency, she has retracked that stance.

As California’s attorney general, she prosecuted oil and gas companies, including Chevron and BP, for allegedly violating pollution laws. In 2019, Ms. Harris joined Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), introducing legislation that would require the government to consider the impact of environmental regulations or laws on low-income communities, which tend to be disproportionately vulnerable to climate disruption.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency will take new steps to ensure that the structures it funds, including schools, hospitals, libraries, sewage treatment plants and bridges, are protected from flooding. The agency said that projects constructed with FEMA money must be built in a way that prevents flood damage, whether by elevating them above the expected height of a flood or, if that’s not feasible, by building in a safer location. The rule also makes it clear that building decisions must reflect current and future risks, as climate change makes flooding more frequent and severe. “We are going to be able to put a stop to the cycle of response and recovery, and rinse and repeat,” said FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell.

Flood damage is likely to reach $40 billion in average annual losses this decade, according to Chad Berginnis, executive director of the Association of State Floodplain Managers. “We’re on this trajectory of losses doubling every decade, which should be scary as hell,” Mr. Berginnis said. “We can't ignore this problem anymore.”

FEMA first proposed the rule, the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard, in 2016 by the Obama administration. It generated intense opposition, particularly from homebuilders who claimed it would increase construction costs. Trump withdrew the proposal. Biden directed federal agencies to once again set rules to protect the projects they funded in flood zones.

The new rule follows the Supreme Court’s Chevron decision that is expected to make it easier to challenge federal regulations. Asked about the risk that the rule could be overturned, Ms. Criswell said that she believed her agency has the legal authority to impose the new standards.

Only one other agency has issued a final rule on flood risks, the Department of Housing and Urban Development. “We are spending a lot of money to build stuff that’s washing away,” said Rob Moore, director of the flooding solutions team at the Natural Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit organization “We have to build for the world we’re going to live in 50 or 60 years from tomorrow.”

The views expressed above are my own.

Teraine Okpoko assisted with Facts on the Ground

Follow me on X: @HowardCarl

Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee