Climate Change Blog 60
Facts on the Ground
In Tennessee in mid-August, a family of three was killed outside Chattanooga and emergency crews conducted water rescues as a deluge engulfed the state. Six inches of rain fell within a few hours at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport, prompting flash flood warnings for Hamilton County and Bradley County.
In Juneau, Alaska, an overflowing glacial lake caused the Mendenhall River to rise to a record height in mid-August, inundating homes and streets in parts of the state capital. Flooding has been an intermittent problem in Juneau since 2011, but recent years have seen historic upsurges as rising temperatures caused glaciers in the area to melt more rapidly. Alaska has warmed faster than the global average, and the fastest of any state. The Mendenhall River peaked at a height of 16.65 feet, exceeding the record set in 2024.
The glaciers in the region are part of the Juneau Ice Field, a sprawling area of interconnected ice that is melting twice as quickly as it did before 2010. The world’s high mountains are warming more quickly than Earth as a whole. That is causing thousands of glaciers to shrink and new lakes to form beneath them.
In mid-August, firefighters spent days combating wildfires in Greece, Portugal, Spain and elsewhere. Southern Europe was scorched by life-threatening heat which caused deadly wildfires and forced thousands to evacuate. Analyses have shown that climate change has increased the likelihood of such extreme heat. The abnormally high temperatures this summer are contributing to the intensity of the wildfires by making vegetation drier and more likely to ignite. About 1.1 million acres have burned in the European Union since the beginning of 2025, compared with about 466,000 acres over the same period in 2024. Spain: Thousands of soldiers were deployed to fight about 11 wildfires with at least three deaths caused by the flames, prompting the evacuation of over 9,000 people. An “extreme risk” red alert warning, its highest level, was issued for the Badajoz region in the west of the country and Orange alerts, a step below the highest alert, were in place for several other regions; Greece, the authorities deployed about 5,000 firefighters, 62 aircrafts and several Coast Guard vessels to contain 109 wildfires, and dozens of people were hospitalized; France: After several days of unrelenting intense heat, much of France was under an alert for high temperatures. In the Aude region of southwestern France, one person died, and several others were injured, including firefighters. Over 2,250 firefighters and rescuers were deployed to combat fires which burned more about 40,000 acres; Portugal: Several wildfires were burning prompting the Portuguese weather service to issue Orange-level heat alerts for much of the country; Italy: 10 cities, including Florence, Rome and Venice, were under the highest-level heat alert indicating conditions dangerous even for healthy individuals.
Historic rainfall in early August brought chaos to parts of Hong Kong, submerging streets, while residents were advised to stay indoors. The torrential rain pounded the island for over a week, turning stairways into waterfalls. The relentless deluge swept away cars in its fast-moving currents, inundated a hospital emergencyward, caused landslides, stranded buses and turned roads around the city’s steep hills into rivers. The record-breaking deluge prompted the authorities to issue their highest rain alert, the “black Rainstorm” warning, for the fourth time in eight days. Between late July and early August, parts of East Asia have also been drenched by heavy rains, which caused 5 fatalities with 3 people missing in Taiwan.
Canadian wildfires burning across northern Manitoba and Saskatchewan in early August sent smoke through central Canada, the Great Lakes region and the northeastern US. Air quality alerts across the Upper Great Lakes and the northeastern US were in effect. Air quality readings exceeded 150 in many cities which is unhealthy and can create ill effects even for people not in sensitive groups. Cities along the East Coast, including NYC, experienced poor air quality.
In early August, the Gifford fire burned 65,000 acres including part of Los Padres National Forest in south-central California. Three people were injured, and 460 structures were threatened, with 975 people under either evacuation orders or warnings. Firefighters battled the flames in Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo Counties. Hot and dry conditions along with winds of up to 20 mph helped fuel the fire’s growth and one person sustained serious burns. Over 1,000 personnel and 50 fire engines and aircraft were engaged.
Widespread storms moving through the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast US in late July brought torrential rain and flash flooding, inundating streets and subways in NYC and disrupting air travel across the East Coast. New Jersey was under a state of emergency as was NYC and surrounding counties. In NYC, the deluge flooded the Clearview Expressway in Queens. The highest flooding recorded at the corner of Catherine Court and Jewett Avenue on Staten Island, where the water reached a depth of 21.3 inches according to the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay, which tracks real-time flooding information. The floodwaters were 9.3 inches deep at the corner of Ditmas Avenue and Westminster Road in Brooklyn, and 8.1 inches deep in the Wingate neighborhood of Brooklyn.
The city of Baltimore’s city-sponsored outdoor activities was canceled, and In Baltimore’s Harford County, a major highway was submerged in floodwater with first responders rescuing two people whose car had been partially submerged. The Weather Prediction Center issued a Level 3 out of 4 risk for excessive rainfall for areas at risk of flooding including Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia and NYC, while central Virginia to southern Massachusetts, including Richmond and Long Island, were under flood warnings.
In late July, an all-time heat index record was set at Tampa Airport in Florida with a record high of 120F reported, and a daytime record high temperature of 97F was also recorded, which tied the existing record.
Beijing and its surrounding areas were inundated in late July, after days of heavy rain killed at least 38 people. The severe downpours triggered flooding and landslides that trapped residents in their villages, prompting authorities to order “all-out” rescue efforts. In Miyun, a mountainous district of northeastern Beijing, China’s capital, 28 people were killed when over 21 inches of rain fell. In the town of Beizhuang, residents said there had been no warning of the flooding, and they only became aware of the danger when they woke up to the knee-high floodwater. The deluge turned roads into mud, collapsed houses and a dam, swept away bridges and trees, buried livestock in mud, flooded homes and stranded villages. Over 80,000 people on the outskirts of Beijing were evacuated and 136 villages in broader Beijing lost electricity.
China’s leader, Xi Jinping, said the torrential rains had caused “major casualties and property losses” in Beijing, as well as in Hebei, Shandong and Jilin provinces. Beijing also issued its highest-level flood alert. Extreme flooding has intensified in China in recent years, a phenomenon experts have linked to global warming. In2025, the rainy season in northern China began “abnormally early” with the average rainfall almost 30% higher than the same period in previous years. Deaths caused by the deluge were reported in other parts of northern China, including in Shanxi Province, where a bus carrying 14 people went missing.
In late July, wildfires were burning across Greece and Turkey, as southern Europe battled a series of heat waves that scorched parts of the continent. In Greece, evacuation orders were issued for several towns with temperatures rising close to 111F (44C) on parts of mainland. Wildfires across Greece forced people in several towns and villages to evacuate from their homes, including in Kryoneri, a town near Athens. Greek Authorities say there has been a rise in both the number and the intensity of the fires in recent years, which many experts attribute to climate change. In July, wildfires forced 1,500 people to evacuate from homes and hotels on the tourist island of . About 500 firefighters battled five major blazes across Greece. In Turkey, firefighters were fighting 84 wildfires in late July, and the country was placed on high alert until October.
In late July much of the US endured extreme heat. The National Weather Service issued a Level 4 out of 5 risk for severe weather for central and eastern South Dakota, southwestern Minnesota and northern Iowa. Extreme heat scorched the central and eastern US for days, especially across areas from the Carolinas and Georgia down to Florida. Over 11 million people across southern Georgia and most of Florida were under a rare “extreme” heat warning (the NWS’s label for a Level 4 out of 4 risk) and over 130 million people around the country were also under a “major” risk, level 3 out of 4 risk.
Overnight temperatures were at record high in Florida with temperatures in Naples remaining at 80F or higher, setting a record high minimum for the area, surpassing the previous record of 79F set in 2005. Other parts of the country also experienced hazardous heat and humidity in late July, with heat advisories in effect for the Northeast from central Pennsylvania through New England, including NY and NJ. Parts of the Midwest had extreme heat including southeast Missouri and across much of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama.
Officials warned in late July that smoke-filled air would cover the NYC area producing unhealthy conditions for some, as soot and ash from Canada’s wildfires drifted across the border. Parts of NYC reached 136 on the Air Quality Index making it one of the cities in the US with the worst air quality. An air quality health advisory was in place in NYC and parts of Massachusetts and NJ. The NWS advised vulnerable groups, which include young children and people with respiratory ailments, to take precautions including avoiding strenuous outdoor activity. Experts have warned that climate change was turning environments like Canada’s forests into a tinderbox.
In late July heavy rain in southern New Mexico caused flash flooding and led to water rescues, less than a month after severe flooding in the area killed three people and damaged several homes. Emergency workers in Lincoln County, NM, rescued five people from the floods and evacuated over a dozen people from Ruidoso, southeast of Albuquerque. In early July, the Rio Ruidoso River rose to 20 feet killing three people and damaging and sweeping dozens of homes downriver in the ensuing deluge.
Firefighters in Cyprus battled sprawling wildfires in late July. The blaze killed at least two people and forced evacuations on the island. The wildfires quickly spread through a mountainous region near the southern city of Limassol. The fire burned homes and trees and over 24,000 acres. Two people were found dead inside a charred vehicle, and several others were treated for respiratory problems with over 100 people evacuated. Eastern Europe had been sweltering under extreme heat and dry conditions in July, with heat alerts issued from northern Scandinavia to Cyprus. At least 14 aircraft were involved in battling the flames.
At least 18 people were killed in South Korea as landslides and floods set off by heavy rain submerged homes and swept away people, cars and livestock, and caused power outages in mid-July. Up to 31 inches of torrential rain fell on South Korea’s southern and western provinces. Sancheong was hit the hardest with 10 fatalities and four people reported missing. Almost 12 inches of rain fell with authorities issuing warnings for floods and landslides. In Gapyeong County, northeast of Seoul, a family of four was camping near a stream when a landslide and flood hit their tent. The son was rescued, but the father was found dead four miles downstream with the mother and her 11-year-old daughter still missing. 14,000 people were evacuated, with their homes and farms lost or damaged, with almost 1.5 million heads of livestock, including 1.4 million chickens, destroyed.
A slow-moving storm battered large parts of the Mid-Atlantic in mid-July, inundating parts of the NYC subway system, swamping major roads and causing long-flight delays. The torrential rains that inundated the NYC area killed at least two people. A record 2.07 inches of rain fell on Central Park within a one-hour period making it the second-wettest hour ever recorded in the city behind the remnants of hurricane Ida in early September 2021 which dumped 3.51 inches of rain in an hour. NYC also recorded a historic one-day total of 2.64 inches in Central Park on July 14, shattering the previous July 14 record of 1.47 inches set in 1908. Newark Airport received 2.13 inches and LaGuardia Airport recorded 1.66 inches, both setting new records for mid-July. The storms sent water gushing into NYC subway stations and rising through sewer drains and in one station, shot up from a manhole like a geyser underscoring the inability of the region’s infrastructure to handle increasingly extreme weather.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, Metro-North Railroad and Amtrac all suspended service on some lines with several bus lines and at least one train line experiencing delays or detours. Flash flood warnings were issued for all five NYC boroughs. The M.T.A. has said its infrastructure is not built to handle increasingly extreme weather, especially flash floods. NYC’s sewer system can handle only about 1.75 inches of rain per hour. It will cost $30 billion to address the most crucial sewar projects over decades. The annual budget for sewer projects is $1 billion per year.
Gov. Phil Murphy declared a state of emergency in NJ where flooding in the suburb of Plainfield swept a vehicle into Cedar Brook, killing its two occupants. “I’m shocked because that brook is normally just a trickle of water,” Laura Lewis, a local resident who lives nearby. Route 22 and Route 28 were closed in both directions in Somerset and Middlesex Counties to clear debris and make emergency road repairs. Parts of NJ central and southeastern Pennsylvania were under a flash flood warning. The train station in Plainfield, N.J. serving Manhattan-bound lines was completely flooded and impassable.
In Prince George County, Va., where a flash flood warning was in effect in mid-July, there were at least six areas with high water, and Emergency workers rescued several people and pulled multiple cars stranded in the floodwaters. Two cities in Virginia, Colonial Heights and Petersburg, were at risk of “catastrophic” damage from flash floods and flash flood warnings were issued. In Lancaster County, Penn., over seven inches of rain fell in less than five hours. The NWS issued one of its highest flash flood warnings for parts of Virginia, including Charles City County, Dinwiddie County and Prince George County.
Between late June and early July, temperatures across the European continent soared past 100F, Spain and France were hit the hardest. Nuclear reactors shut down, construction workers were told to stay home, schools canceled whole days of classes, and the Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors. By initial estimates, the 10-day heat wave left about 2,300 people dead. Europe is heating faster than other regions, and yet Europe’s leaders are pulling back from climate measures they agreed to in years past. Faced with economic challenges and geopolitical challenges, an emboldened right-wing chorus is claiming that the European Union is doing too much already. Selected in 2019 to be president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen promised to make the European Green Deal the centerpiece of her agenda. The plan centered on some 1 trillion euros in public and private investment, tied to achieving net zero emissions by 2050. Yet the political coalition on which that deal rested is now unstable due to the rise of the right-wing alliance, which can block legislation.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary was quick to dismiss the Green Deal as “utopian fantasy”, with others calling for it to be scrapped. In Rome, Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy is resisting plans for industrial adaptation. The Green Deal is unlikely to be jettisoned but the combined forces of right-wing ideologues, corporate lobbyists and backsliding governments are impeding progress. Even existing agreements are at risk like the union’s pledge to phase out internal-combustion engines in new cars by 2035, which is fiercely opposed by many car-reliant Europeans and the auto industry. In Germany, auto companies are pressuring Chancellor Friedrich Merz to honor his pre-election promise to halt the phaseout, with France’s interior minister, Bruno Retailleau, deriding the phaseout plan as not feasible.. In June, France pushed for a delay in setting the E.U.’s 2040 climate targets, although the EU maintained its overall goal of reducing emissions by 90% by 2040, President Emmanuel Macron’s government (which has collapsed) secured loopholes that critics say defeats the plan.
In what appears to be a ‘self-defeating’ effort to reduce emissions, a legislative proposal was finalized in July, in which EU officials suggested that 3% of emissions reductions by 2036 can be purchased from non-European states. Hard-right forces may ‘warm up’ to increased defense spending by NATO members to address the Ukraine-Russia conflict by diverting funds earmarked for the Green Deal to remilitarization. The commission announced that some of the E.U.’s unspent post-pandemic funds, earlier earmarked for the green transition, may now instead be used for defense. Poland has reportedly received permission to redirect over 6 billion euros to infrastructure, cybersecurity, and steel and arms production.
In early July, torrential rainfalls, swelled rivers and produced deadly floods that engulfed the Texas Hill Country killing at least 135 people, at least 117 of them in Kerr County, 28 of them children. The deluge caused rivers in the region to rise to major flood levels, with the Guadalupe River reaching 29.45 feet, its second highest level on record. We think that may have been a record,” Jason Runyen, a meteorologist at the NWS, said, but the river gauge was “washed out” during the storm. In Kerr County, the region hit the hardest by the floods, a Christian girls’ summer camp was the scene of utter devastation.
Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas visited Camp Mystic, where about two dozen girls staying near the Guadalupe River were reported missing. He said the all-girls camp and the river had been “horrendously ravaged in ways unlike I’ve seen in any natural disaster,” and that rushing waters had reached the tops of cabins. Trump granted Gov. Abbott’s request for a federal disaster declaration, directing federal assistance to the affected areas. Residential Property damage from the floods is estimated to be over $1 Billion according to industry analysts but almost all the cost will be borne by owners, since an estimated 98% of properties in the area known as “Flash Flood Alley” lack flood insurance.
In mid-June, extreme heatwaves and record high temperatures were reported around the world with 52.6 C recorded in Kuwait, and widespread 50C in a dozen countries. 44C was recorded in Kazakhstan, with nighttime temperature minimums up to 29C.
In mid-June, flash flooding in Querétaro Mexico, turned roads into fast raging rivers inundating buildings, stranding residents and tossing trucks like empty shoe boxes into the strong current.
In San Antonio, Tx., flash flooding engulfed the San Antonio region in mid-June killing 13 people after torrential rains inundated the area. About 20 roads were closed due to the flooding. The gauge at the San Antonio International Airport measured 6.11 inches making it the second-highest one-day rainfall total for June at that site and the 10th wettest day ever.
Temperatures rose perilously high across south and central Texas in mid-May, which the NWS called “one of the hottest May heat waves of all time.” Austin reached 101F on May 14, exceeding its same-day record of 97F set in 2022. The average high for Austin for mid-May is 87F. Heat waves around the world are becoming hotter, more frequent and longer lasting according to scientists. 2024 was Earth’s hottest year in recorded history, and the last 10 years have been the 10 warmest years in 175 years of accurate record-keeping.
In Texas, Energy use rose due to increased use of air-conditioners, with Texas’ electrical grid under increased pressure as new manufacturing plants and data centers for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrencies opened for business in the state. The demand for energy reached over 78,000 megawatts exceeding the previous May record of 77,000 mws set in 2024.
Three people were trapped in the Centennial Christian Church in St. Louis in mid- May, after a tornado toppled part of its steeple, leaving it in dusty piles of bricks and stones. A cellphone signal from one of the trapped people helped emergency workers locate and rescue them. The storm was “one of the worst” in the city’s history. More devastation from several tornadoes were reported across the US in mid-May with at least 27 people killed in Missouri, Kentucky and Virginia, and dozens injured. In Kentucky, at least 18 people were killed by the storm, and at least 26 tornadoes were confirmed, with most occurring in Indiana and Kentucky. The mid-May storm came at a precarious moment for disaster relief efforts, due to sweeping staffing and funding cuts which have impeded getting assistance from the federal government. The deadly tornadoes in mid-May killed at least seven people in Missouri and in southeastern Missouri about 5,000 buildings were damaged. In Virginia, two people were killed.
At least two tornadoes spun through eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas in early June, part of a system of severe weather that moved from the southern Plains to the Southeast. One tornado was confirmed in Vian, Okla., and the other swept near the cities of Alma and Van Buren in western Arkansas. In Van Buren, Ark., about 46 homes were severely damaged as the tornado downed trees and power lines causing power outages from Vian to Muldrow in Sequoyah County, Oklahoma. Tornadoes also damaged homes in northwest Texas, with the city of Lubbock under a severe thunderstorm and flash flood warning.
In the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick the amount of forest land burned this year has made it the second-worst year on record for wildfire, with 707 active wildfires in Canada and roughly 19 million acres, an area about the size of South Carolina, burned. This spring, intense, above-average heat came to Canada’s prairie region, which includes the provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and much of Alberta. In Manitoba, the season started off with intense heat and the province declaring a state of emergency in July for the second time, while wildfires burned about 4.3 million acres, the second highest in Canada. In Saskatchewan, Wildfires prompted the evacuation of about 3,200 residents, predominantly across rural and Indigenous communities with the province having the most land burned in Canada this year, a staggering 6.7 million acres. Alberta and British Columbia, the two Western provinces that were hit the hardest by wildfires in 2023, Canada’s record year, issued several evacuation orders.
In early June, over two million people in Kansas and Missouri were under a flash flood warning as storms threatened the Kansas City metropolitan area with tornadoes and dropped several inches of rain with floodwater stranding people in their cars in Wichita. In Kansas City, Mo., a tornado warning was in place for almost 350,000 people. Several people were trapped in their cars after driving into floodwaters including a woman in her 80s.
In early July, wildfires raged in Spain and France hitting both nation the hardest and causing the closure of an international airport, after sweltering heat scorched swaths of land in the region and turned woodlands into tinderboxes. At least five people and five firefighters were injured in southern France in a blaze near the city of Narbonne, with over 1,000 firefighters battling the fire. In Marseille, a separate fire fueled by strong winds ravaged 1,700 acres of dry vegetation, shutting down the local airport and disrupting travel by train and roads as thick clouds of acrid smoke hovered over the city. In Spain, the Catalonia regional authorities ordered residents in several towns and neighborhoods to remain in-doors as firefighters battled a fire that had burned nearly 6,000 acres within a 24-hour period. In Greece, temperatures rose above 104F (40C) prompting authorities in Athens to restrict visiting hours to the Acropolis. The Greek Civil Protection Ministry issued a warning for “extremely high” risk of wildfires in Athens. Greek authorities ordered businesses to pause working hours when temperatures peak in the afternoon or face fines of 2,000 Euros (about $2,300). Romania’s weather agency issued a red warning, its highest due to the threat of extreme heat. In Serbia, the weather agency warned of “very dangerous” conditions, where temperatures were set to exceed 100.4F (38C).
Wildfires ravaged Syria’s coastal region in early July, the latest fires in a string of over 3,500 that have burned in recent months across the country, during one of Syria’s worst droughts in decades. Firefighting efforts had been hampered by the rugged landscape and the presence of mines and unexploded ordnance leftover from Syria’s 13-year civil war, with strong winds causing the fires to spread. The coastal provinces of Latakia and Tartus, where dense forests were rendered tinder-dry by months of heat and insufficient rain were hit the hardest. This year’s drought is regarded by meteorologists and aid organizations as the worst to hit Syria in decades. Rainfall in the just-finished wet season was roughly 40% below average, and the UN warned that the drought this year could plunge the country into crisis. More than a decade of conflict has destroyed the country’s water and electricity infrastructure, with years of devastating international sanctions.
In early July a wildfire in California’s San Luis Obispo County spread and burned about 80,000 acres prompting evacuation orders and sending thick smoke into neighboring counties. As of early July, the fire was the largest California wildfire in 2025. The blaze, called the Madre fire, started in the Los Padres National Forest. Fifty structures were threatened, 213 people were evacuated, and 15 evacuation orders and 13 warnings for zones near the fire were in place. The fire burned the western side of the Carrizo Plain National Monument and at least 11,500 acres of the natural preserve, home to rare plant species and drawing visitors to its wildfire blooms.
About 1,500 people, mostly tourists, were evacuated from hotels and homes on the Greek island of Crete in early July as firefighters battled to contain a wildfire in arid conditions. The fire began in villages outside Ierapetra, on the island’s southeastern coast, prompting the evacuation of about 1,200 tourists. Greece, like much of southern Europe, had been experiencing a heat wave that had created the hot and dry conditions that intensified the wildfires. Greece’s meteorological service issued an alert for extremely high temperatures in early July, with an orange alert indicating a “very high” risk of fires issued in the Athens area, the southern Peloponnese peninsula and several Aegean Islands.
Historic heat waves in Europe in early July warmed river water some nuclear power plants use for cooling, causing operators to shut down. In late June, operators shut down one of two reactors at the Golfech Nuclear Power Plant in southern France after forecasts that the Garonne River, from which it draws water, could top 82F (28C). The Beznau Nuclear Power Plant in Switzerland, built along the Aare River near the country’s northern border, shut down two of its reactors in early July. Both plants required that their reactors to be kept at safe temperatures by cooling them with river water, which is then pumped back out at higher temperatures. Regulations in both countries require operators to reduce energy production when the rivers get too hot, to protect downstream environments. Other river-cooled nuclear reactors, including one at the Bugey plant in southeastern France, have reduced their power generation.
Temperatures across Europe have regularly exceeded 100F in early July, with the amount of electricity lost in France due to climate-related shutdowns expected to triple or quadruple by 2050. Nuclear power is France’s top source of energy, supplying two-thirds of its electricity.
In early July, the heat wave that had smothered Europe raced eastward, straining nerves at growing street protests in Serbia and leaving a river in the Czech Republic clogged with dead fish. In Albania, a fire at a municipal dump in the central town of Elbasan became an out-of-control blaze with firefighters struggling to combat the blaze in temperatures of 106F (41C) amid clouds of toxic smoke. Outside the Ministry of Tourism and Environment in Tirana, the capital, people protested the inferno.
South of the Balkans, a region reputed for its hot summers, the authorities issued red-alert heat warnings as parts of Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Serbia sizzled in abnormally high temperatures. In Belgrade, the Serbian capital, which had seen months of anti-government protests, the heat reached 99F (37C) exacerbating the tense atmosphere with police officers battling to clear streets blocked by protesters. More severe heat was reported in neighboring Bosnia, with temperatures reaching 105.8F (41C) in the city of Mostar.
In early July, there were at least four 1-in-1,000-year rainfall events across the US, all occurring in less than one-week, severe rainfalls considered to have about a 0.1% chance of happening in any given year. “Any one of these intense rainfall events has a low chance of occurring in a given year,” Kristina Dahl, vice president for science at the nonprofit organization Climate Central, said, “so to see events that are historic and record-breaking in multiple parts of the country over the course of one week is even more alarming.” At least 120 fatalities were reported across six counties in central Texas’ Hill Country region in the early July flooding. A couple of days later, Tropical Storm Chantal inundated parts of North Carolina, with extensive flooding across the central portion of the state, and some areas received almost 12 inches of rain in just 24 hours. In New Mexico, a day or two after the North Carolina deluge, at least three people were killed by deadly flash floods which swept through the remote village of Ruidoso, south of Albuquerque, and on the same day in Chicago, 5 inches of rain fell in just 90 minutes over Garfield Park, causing multiple rescues on the west side of the city. Climate change is likely to make these kinds of extreme flooding events more common, Russ Schumacher, director of the Colorado Climate Center at Colorado State University, said.
Unrelenting heat waves swept through much of Europe in late June with temperatures exceeding 100F in large parts of southern Europe. Italy issued heat warnings for 17 cities. Rome is one of the 17 cities that had a “level 3 warning” with possible negative effects on healthy and active persons, not only those at risk. In France, suffocating heat gripped most of the country with the government advising employers of its new law compelling companies to change employees’ working conditions to enable them to start work earlier in the day when it is cooler. Cities around the country extended opening hours for parks and made entry to swimming pools and museums free. The top of the Eiffel Tower was closed in late June due to intense heat. “In some places in Europe we are experiencing temperatures that have never been recorded before, so it is really unusual,” Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service, said, “not surprising, because with climate change, we’re bound to see more intense, longer, and more frequent heat waves, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing.” Portugal’s provisional record high for the month of June was set in Mora, with temperatures hitting 115.9°F (46.6°C), forcing farm workers to alter their shifts so they could stop working by 2 pm. A provisional national record for the highest June temperature ever recorded in Spain, 114.8F (46C), was reported in late June in El Granado, the 45th record to be broken this year.
Spain’s Carlos III Health Institute estimates that approximately 1,300 people die each year in Spain due to high temperatures. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, was in Seville, when the temperature rose to 108.7F (42.6C) in late June. “Extreme heat is no longer a rare event, it has become the new normal,” he said. “The planet is getting hotter & more dangerous, no country is immune. We need more ambitious Climate Action now.”
In early July, the heat wave, which began in June, produced record temperatures and severe hardship for Europeans, especially for outdoor workers. Between late June and early July seven people were killed in Spain due to the extreme heat with two of the deaths attributed to wildfires. A child died after his father left him in a car in the city of Valls with temperatures rising to 98.6 F (37C). Firefighters battled several wildfires in Spain with one fire known as the “mega-fire” spewing 8-mile-high columns of smoke and prompting the evacuation of a nearby nursing home. Weather warnings remained in place for 10 of Spain’s regions. In Italy, 20 cities, including Rome and Milan, were placed under the highest-level for heat alert. Temperatures in Tor Vergata, a southeastern suburb of Rome, rose above 106F. The typical summer high temperature in Rome is 86F. In Central Europe, Serbia issued red warnings for extreme heat for two of its eastern regions. In Austria, parts of the south was under an orange warning for intense heat and Bosnia and Herzegovina was also under an alert for extreme temperatures. Wildfires in five districts in Turkey prompted the evacuation over 50,000 residents.
At least six people, including a 3-year-old, were killed in West Virginia, and two people were missing, after flash floods destroyed homes and swept away roads in mid-June. A mid-July rainstorm in Ohio County suddenly turned deadly when 2.5 to 4 inches of rain fell within a 30-minute period.
In early June, Canada’s wildfires, some of which started burning in 2023, continued to burn after two winters and grew in 2024 and then survived the winter in 2025, a phenomenon not seen in at least the last 55 years.
In late May, in Mae Sai of Chiang Rai province, Thailand, huge fast-moving flood waters swept away cars in its powerful current and stranded residents.
Argentina’s agricultural heartland was battered by heavy rains in mid-May, flooding some soy fields after up to 15.75 inches of rain fell causing widespread flooding. “Everywhere you looked was like a sea of water” Martin Vivanco, a farmer said. Argentina is the world’s top exporter of soybean oil and soybean meal, and the number 3 exporter of corn. “Everything is affected. This is unlike anything we’ve seen before” Mr. Vivanco said. The rainfall was three to four times more than normal levels for May. In Salto, another agricultural area north of Buenos Aires, 422,550 acres of land were submerged in 13 inches of floodwater.
Iran reached a searing 125.8°F (52.1°C) in mid-May, the earliest 52°C ever recorded on Earth.
In mid-May, a supercell storm produced multiple tornadoes and destructive hail, including in southeastern Missouri and later in Somerset and London, Ky., travelling a staggering distance of almost 500 miles and lasting almost 10 hours.
In mid-May, a Level 3 out of 4 risk for flash flooding was issued for the Maimi metro area, and from Virginia to the Florida Peninsula, and flood watches were also issued for central and western North Carolina and for portions of western and southeastern Virginia.
In early May, Las Vegas recorded its wettest May on record after a storm system brought rain to the city for four days consecutive days. In the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson, a man was swept away by floodwaters. The rains were a rare event for May which is normally the second-driest month in the Mojave. But in early May, it had unrelenting rainfall, thunderstorms and heavy downpours, strong winds and hail, the size of quarters. The NWS issued multiple warnings for severe thunderstorms from east San Bernardino County in California into the Las Vegas area, stretching east into Bullhead City, Ariz. At Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, four consecutive days of rain was recorded in May for the first time ever since records began in 1937, with 1.44 inches of rainfall reported, making it the wettest May ever, surpassing the previous record of 0.96 inches set in 1969. In a typical year, Las Vegas receives about 4.18 inches of rain. It received more than a third of that in just four days. Las Vegas typical rainfall for May is 0.07 inches. Nevada is the driest state in the nation.
In late April, at least four people were killed in Pennsylvania and over 400,000 people were without power after extreme weather that had ravaged the High Plains and Upper Midwest in moved into the Northeast and Canada. The heavy winds knocked down trees, broke utility poles and prompted more than 20,000 separate reports of hazards. The same storm system moved through southern Quebec, where a teenage boy was in critical condition after he was struck by a falling tree.
In late April, record high temperatures were reported from North Africa to the Middle East and all over Asia, with daytime high of 46C recorded in Aswan, Egypt. Sudan had a scorching 45C daytime high temperature and a high low of 30C nighttime temperature adding to its struggles with a civil war and famine. Chad and Niger had a daytime high of 45.7C and 45.5C respectively, and in Madinah, Saudi Arabia, the April record of 43C was tied in late April.
Record high nighttime temperatures were reported across Europe in mid-April with over 2,000 records of April’s highest nighttime temperatures and 100 record daytime highs surpassed in the month of April, a national record of highest nighttime temperatures. In Russia, nighttime high temperatures of 28 C (82.4F) was recorded in Opochka, with 27.8C recorded in Puskinskie Gori.
In Australia in mid-April, historically high nighttime temperatures were reported with autumn nighttime temperatures higher than minimum nighttime temperatures for mid-summer. In Southern Australia, Cape Willoughby had a minimum temperature of 22.6C (72.7F), its hottest night ever recorded in April.
In early April, temperatures in Phoenix rose to 100F, the city’s first triple-digit temperature for 2025, almost one month before it typically reaches that high. On average, Phoenix has its first 100F in early May, but it had a warm spring with its record-breaking 99F in late March.
In early April, rivers rose swiftly across large swaths of the Midwest and the South, prompting water rescues, evacuation orders and road closures as an unrelenting storm dumped rain on the region. The flooding, which stretched from Texas to Ohio, came after days of heavy rains and tornadoes which killed at least 16 people including a 5-year-old in Arkansas. The flooding prompted water rescues in Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri and Texas. Flash flood emergency warnings for Memphis and the Little Rock area, and for the region stretching from Louisiana to Indiana were in place, with up to 15 inches of rain having fallen in the worst hit areas. The deadly storm killed people across four states, including a 9-year-old boy who was swept away by floodwaters in Frankfort, Ky., and a firefighter in Missouri, who died in a crash while driving to rescue people. At least nine weather-related deaths were reported in Tennessee. Over 100,000 customers were without power in Arkansas. The deluge also caused the Black River near Poplar Bluff, Mo., to surge from four feet to a flood stage of almost 17 feet in one night.
Renewable energy, primarily solar, wind, hydro, bio, geothermal, and marine, grew substantially from 2000 to 2023. Global renewables increased from 0.8 to 3.9 Terawatts. China led with an 1,817% increase—more than Africa, Europe, and North America combined. US (+322%) and India (+604%) had major growth.
In NY, Gov. Kathy Hochul was able to get the Trump administration to reverse course and allow construction to restart on the Empire Wind project off the coast of Long Island. The administration had issued a highly unusual stop-work order in April that had threatened the $5 billion project. It is expected to deliver enough electricity to power 500,000 NY homes by 2027.
“I am not aware of any instance where a project of this sort that has gotten all its permitting has been legally halted,” said Joel Eisen, a law professor at the University of Richmond. “The lack of evidence to support the decision is a strong signal that a federal court would probably find this to be an arbitrary and capricious decision.” The Trump administration declined to share its findings with Equinor according to Senator Chuck Schumer who assailed the administration’s actions. “It’s a rare moment when the Trump administration reverses itself, but what they did here was so egregious I think they had no choice.”
To fight global warming, NY has set aggressive targets ramping up the use renewable energy but is not on track to meet those goals. NY only has one operating offshore wind farm, South Fork, which produces 132 megawatts of electricity, roughly enough for 70,000 homes. Empire Wind is expected to produce 816 mws. Another project, Sunrise Wind, is under construction off Montauk, and could produce 924 mws. NY and LI are counting on these wind farms to avoid electricity shortages in the near future, with few ready alternatives.
In August, the administration indicated its intention to rescind federal approval for the Maryland Offshore Wind Project, which plans to construct up to 114 wind turbines off Ocean City, Md. The administration also said it would reconsider the Biden approvals for the SouthCoast Wind project, about 20 miles south of Nantucket, Mass. And that it intended to reconsider federal approvals for the New England Wind project, about 20 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass where plans for the largest offshore wind project in the country are contemplated.
Interior Secretary Douglas Bergum said, in reference to security issues and the Revolution Wind project, “In particular there are concerns about radar relative to undersea, and it doesn’t have to be a large Russian sub, but undersea drones.” “People with bad ulterior motives to the United States could launch a swarm drone attack through a wind farm. The radar gets very distorted if you’re trying to detect and avoid if you’ve got drones coming.”
By law, the Revolution Wind project, like all offshore wind projects, must undergo an extensive review process by the Defense Department. The Pentagon had reviewed Revolution Wind and, in 2023, approved it. Since 2006 the US military has studied the potential for offshore wind turbines to disrupt radar and has concluded that the risk can be offset with planning and technological fixes.
Secretary of Health & Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. raised concerns about electromagnetic fields emitted by the undersea cables that connect wind farms to land. But the Interior Department had previously reviewed the issue and had issued a 102-page report in 2024 concluding that while there could be some effect on certain species in the immediate vicinity of the cables, the broader environmental effects were “nonsignificant.”
“It’s a false narrative” to say that offshore wind turbines threaten national security, said Kirk Lippold, a retired Navy commander who writes about energy. “There are a lot of options, including operator training, that can mitigate many of those issues.” Mr. Lippold dismissed Mr. Burgum’s fear that drones could attack the US by going through wind farms, “If we’re at a point where undersea drones are operating within U.S. territorial waters, that would be an incredible intelligence and military failure.” “They’re making some very specious arguments to try to justify shutting these wind projects down.”
In late August, the Transportation Department announced that it was terminating or withdrawing $679 million in federal funding for 12 offshore wind projects. The funds had been approved by the Biden administration, including $427 million for a marine terminal in Humboldt County, Calif.
Other wind energy projects to lose funding include $48 million for an offshore wind port on Staten Island, $39 million to upgrade a port near Norfolk, Va. and $20 million for a marine terminal in Paulsboro, N.J. “Wasteful wind projects are using resources that could otherwise go toward revitalizing America’s maritime industry,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said.
One of the federal grants targeted for cancellation would have provided $47 million for a manufacturing hub in Baltimore County, Md., that was intended for an offshore wind farm. The Interior Department is now requiring dozens of formerly routine consultations and approvals for wind and solar projects to undergo new layers of political review by the interior secretary’s office which is causing significant permitting delays. The agency is also opening investigations into bird deaths that may be caused by wind farms.
The Biden administration had sought to encourage the nascent offshore wind industry as part of its strategy to combat climate change, and in 2021 set a goal of deploying 30,000 megawatts of offshore wind by 2030, which would generate enough electricity to power 10 million homes.
Energy experts had predicted that off-shore wind projects could have created more than 55,000 jobs by 2030, and enough electricity to inexpensively power 22 million homes. Energy Secretary Chris Wright is a former fracking executive. He said the transition away from fossil fuels had hurt the country. He then embarked on a European tour to encourage countries to buy more American gas. Under Biden, the US became the world’s biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas as well as the largest producer of oil. Mr. Wright called the 2015 Paris agreement, in which the US and nearly every other country pledged to reduce GHGs, “silly” and said climate change is “not incredibly important.”
According to America’s Clean Power, a renewable energy group, the offshore wind sector supports 25,000 jobs in the US. Eric Hines, director of the offshore wind energy graduate program at Tufts University, said “There’s an opportunity for an enormous number of jobs that are sustainable, and an opportunity to build this infrastructure that can last for generations, at which point electricity will be far less expensive than anybody can imagine,” referring to wind power.
Climate change poses many dangers, one of which is heat, global warming. On land, increasing heat has led to many problems including decreased crop yields. In the sea, warming water has produced more powerful storms which have caused increasing amounts of damage and death as well as harm to coral reefs, marine productivity and disruption to global weather systems. The International Panel on Climate Change 6thAssessment report, notes conservatively that the planet has heated up 1.1C (other reports note that the planet has exceeded 1.5C (2.7F) for the past year). It projects that at 2C (which we are likely to reach by 2030) heat increase, globel crop productivity of wheat will decline 46%, rice will decline 19%, maize 31% with about 40% over-all yield loss across all regions. Agricultural pests likely will increase and are not accounted for in these projections.
Scientists are using a new term, “super marine heat waves” as every major ocean basin on earth has experienced unusual heat waves in recent years. “The marine ecosystems where the super marine heat waves occur have never experienced such a high sea surface temperature in the past,” said Boyin Huang, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The nearly unanimous view of scientists is that climate change is fundamentally altering the oceans due to their absorption of excess heat from the atmosphere relating to GHGs emitted from burning fossil fuels. Hotter oceans are rapidly altering marine life, sea levels and weather patterns. About 84% of the planet’s coral reefs experienced bleaching due to heat stress between January 2023 and March 2025, according to a recent report.
Last year was the warmest on record which led to SLR beyond what scientists expected. SLR in the past was mostly due melting glaciers and ice sheets, but the warming water produced thermal expansion as the main cause of the more recent SLR. But all such drivers of SLR will continue to push seas higher in a warming world. Warming seas also affect global weather patterns, increasingly the likelihood of the rapid intensification of hurricanes and rendering them more powerful and destructive. In 2024 the warmer SW Pacific produced a record-breaking streak of tropical cyclones hitting the Philippines. Heat waves also produce mass die-offs of marine life. The Mediterranean Sea has warmed 3-5 times faster than the ocean at large and has suffered a mass die-off of sponges and coral.
Warming water disrupts the movement of marine life which harms sea life and fisheries dependent on it. A marine heat wave in 2012 in the Gulf of Maine caused the Northern shrimp population to shrink from about 27.25 billion in 2010 to 2.8 billion two years later, due to the movement of their predators. By 2023, this shrimp population had plunged to about 200 million and the shrimp fishery was closed.
Rising ocean temperatures adversely affects the base of the marine food web, plankton, and reverberates to the top, humpback whales. In the 1970s and ’80s humpback whales were recovering from the end of commercial whaling and numbered around 33,000 in 2012. But warming seas produced “the Blob” a mass of warm water that persisted from 2014 to 2017. The Blob suppressed nutrients which meant fewer phytoplankton, fewer zooplankton, less krill, fewer fish and their predators including whales. The North Pacific humpback whale population fell by 20%. An autopsy in 2016 revealed numerous health conditions, including poor nutrition and elevated levels of harmful algal toxins which thrive in warmer seas.
Disease thrives in warming seas. In 2015, about five billion sea stars died from a disease outbreak and hundreds of thousands of birds died of starvation including Cassin’s auklets along an Oregon beach.
A recent UN Report: Nature's Dangerous Decline 'Unprecedented" noted that species extinction rates were accelerating. “We are eroding the very foundations of our economies, livelihoods, food security, health & quality of life worldwide.” One million species are at risk of near-term extinction. Loss of biodiversity may be the largest threat to the future of human civilization, even greater than climate change which is accelerating the loss.
Warming seas continue to melt Arctic and Antarctic ice. On March 1, Antarctic sea ice reached its smallest coverage of the year. This year’s minimum extent tied 2022 and 2024 for the second-lowest summer sea ice area observed since satellite records began in 1979. The Greenland ice cap is losing around 30 million tons of ice an hour due to warming. This is 20% more than scientists originally thought. The earth has lost 28 trillion tons of ice in just 23 years due to warming seas and a warming planet. March 2025 was Earth's 3rd warmest March on record.
The last 100 years have had a massive impact on the cryosphere—glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking fast. The next 100 years will decide how much coastline disappears. Globally, 2 billion people live in near-coastal zones, with 900 million in low-elevation zones. The social, economic and political impacts of a billion displaced people is incalculable. The trillions of dollars in destroyed infrastructure along the planet’s coastlines is also incalculable. But the likely impact on the future of human civilization could be staggering.
The unprecedented ocean surface heat led to bleaching which started in 2023 and shows no sign of abating. This is the most intense bleaching period in recorded history according to the International Coral Reef Initiative. It's the fourth mass global bleaching event since 1998, and has now surpassed the bleaching event from 2014-17 that hit two-thirds of global reefs. Sea surface temperatures are slightly higher today than in 2023.
The oceans are also acidifying due to their absorption of carbon. This is a ticking timebomb as sea acidity has reached critical levels threatening entire marine ecosystems. Scientists say that ocean acidification has already crossed a crucial threshold for planetary health as so much of humanity depends of protein from the sea as well as jobs related to the ocean.
Another dangerous impact of a warming world is the increase in extreme weather events. Warm air holds more moisture than cool air and as temperatures rise so too does evaporation from both vegetation and water bodies. The result is more powerful precipitation events, both rain and snow. In fact, colossal bursts of rain like the deadly July storm in Texas are becoming more frequent and intense globally as the burning of fossil fuels continues to heat the planet.
The quantity of rain that fell in Texas in a six-hour stretch was so great that it had less than a tenth of 1% chance of falling there in any given year, according to professor Schumacher of Colorado State University. The extremes are extraordinary: Guadalupe River rose from three feet to 34 feet in about 90 minutes, according to data from a river gauge near the town of Comfort, Texas. The volume of water exploded from 95 cubic feet per second to 166,000 cfps.
Based on the National Climate Assessment, the federal government’s premier report on how global warming is affecting the US, the number of days per year in eastern Texas with at least 2” of rain or snow has increased by 20% since 1900. Across Texas, the intensity of extreme rain could increase another 10% by 2036, according to a 2024 report by John Nielsen-Gammon, the Texas state climatologist.
To survive such extreme events, it is essential to have early warning systems in place and experts standing by 24/7. That is why the data from and experts with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are essential. The agency has for decades published nationwide estimates of the probabilities of various precipitation events.
Engineers use NOAA’s estimates to design storm drains and culverts. City planners use them to guide development and regulations in flood-prone areas. NOAA’s next updates are due in 2026 and should, for the first time, include projections of how extreme precipitation will evolve as the climate changes, to help officials plan.
But the Trump administration has cut staff at the agency and at the National Weather Service, which is a part of NOAA. And it is proposing deep cuts to NOAA’s 2026 budget, including eliminating the office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, which conducts and coordinates climate research (see below).
In early May, Trump dismissed 100s of scientists who had been working on country’s flagship report on climate change, the US Climate Assessment. The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society said they would publish work originally meant for the assessment in their journals. “It’s incumbent on us to ensure our communities, our neighbors, our children are all protected and prepared for the mounting risks of climate change,” Brandon Jones, the president of the union and a program director with the National Science Foundation, said. “This collaboration provides a critical pathway for a wide range of researchers to come together and provide the science needed to support the global enterprise pursuing solutions to climate change.”
The National Climate Assessment is a comprehensive review of the latest climate science of the impacts of climate change on the country and possible adaptation and mitigation measures. Five Assessments have been published since 2000, with the 6th edition scheduled for early 2028. Scientists highlighted that the Assessment is unique in its breadth, depth and rigor, and that the government’s participation has provided weight and credibility to the report.
Congress requires the issuance of a National Climate Assessment. Since 2000, the federal government has regularly published a comprehensive analysis every few years at how rising temperatures will affect human health, agriculture, fisheries, water supplies, transportation, energy production and other aspects of the US economy. The last report was issued in 2023. It is used by state and local governments as well as private companies to help prepare for the effects of heat waves, floods, droughts and other climate-related calamities. But, in early July, the Trump administration dismissed the hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the report.
The climate assessment is typically written by scientists and experts around the country who volunteer their time. It then goes through several rounds of review by 14 federal agencies, as well as a public comment period. The entire process is overseen by the Global Change Research Program, a federal group established by Congress in 1990 that is supported by NASA.
In July, NASA canceled a key contract with ICF International, a consulting firm that had been supplying most of the technical support and staffing for the Global Change Research Program, which coordinates the work.
Trump is dismissive of the risks of global warming. Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, wrote that the next president should “reshape” the Global Change Research Program because its scientific reports on climate change were the basis for environmental lawsuits that constrained federal government actions. Mr. Vought has called the government’s largest climate research unit within NOAA a source of “climate alarmism.”
Scientists involved in earlier climate assessments have said the report is invaluable for understanding how climate change would affect daily life in the US. “It takes that global issue and brings it closer to us,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University, said. “If I care about food or water or transportation or insurance or my health, this is what climate change means to me if I live in the Southwest or the Great Plains. That’s the value.”
Many state and local policymakers, as well as private businesses, rely on the assessment to understand how climate change is affecting different regions of the US and how they can try to adapt. Decision makers forced to refer to the last assessment would be relying on outdated information on what adaptation and mitigation measures really work, scientists said. “We’d be losing the cornerstone report that is supposed to communicate to the public the risks we face with climate change and how we can move forward,” said Dustin Mulvaney, a professor of environmental studies at San Jose State University who was an author on the southwest regional chapter. “It’s pretty devastating.”
On July 29, 2025, the Department of Energy published a report entitled A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate. The report concludes that CO2 -induced warming appears to be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and that aggressive mitigation strategies could be more harmful than beneficial. The report was developed by the 2025 Climate Working Group, a group of five scientists assembled by Energy Secretary Wright.
The Report was condemned by more than 85 US and international scientists during the public comment period. Their criticisms state that the report is full of errors, misrepresentations and cherry-picked data to fit the president’s political agenda.
The five researchers who wrote the Report were selected because they all reject the established scientific consensus that the burning of oil, gas and coal is dangerously heating the planet. The administration is using the report in support of its effort to repeal the Endangerment Finding and limits on GHG emissions. The Trump administration is pursuing an aggressive agenda to increase the production and use of coal, oil and gas.
The average global temperature has risen by between 1.25C and 1.41C (2.25F to 2.53F), compared with preindustrial times. This small rise has affected every region of the planet with more frequent and intense heat waves, floods, wildfires, droughts and other disasters.
Ross McKitrick, one of the report’s authors, defended the Report’s lack of peer review, saying that it underwent an initial review within the Energy Department. The comments from the 85 scientists is a chapter-by-chapter rebuttal that essentially serves as a peer review. “Their goal was to muddy the waters, to put out a plausible-sounding argument that people can use in the public debate to make it sound like we don’t know whether climate change is bad or not,” said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, who led the rebuttal.
Over 2,300 comments were promptly submitted including a submission from the American Meteorological Society, a premier climate science organization, which noted “foundational flaws” in the Report and called on the government to correct the findings. The Report states that CO2 helps plants grow and therefore more gas would improve agricultural yields. The scientific consensus is that global warming has a negative impact on plant life and crop yield including damage, often catastrophic, from extreme heat, drought, wildfires and floods.
Pamela D. McElwee, a professor of human ecology at Rutgers University, called the report “absolute sloppiness.” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, called the document a “scattershot collection of oft-debunked skeptic claims” that “are not representative of broader climate science research findings.” “It is a coordinated, full-scale attack on the science,” said Dave White, who directs the Global Institute of Sustainability and Innovation at Arizona State University.
The Energy Department commissioned the report from five climate skeptics: Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a best-selling book that calls climate science “unsettled”; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who questions the extent to which human activity causes global warming; and Judith Curry, a climatologist who says there is excessive “alarmism” about warming; Roy Spencer, a meteorologist at the University of Alabama, Huntsville; and Ross McKitrick, an economics professor at the University of Guelph in Canada.
Experts said they were struck by how quickly the Energy Department’s report was put together. When the federal government has previously compiled National Climate Assessments, it has convened hundreds of scientists who spend years gathering research and go through several rounds of peer review. In contrast, the five scientists assembled by the Energy Department began work in early April and finished by a May 28 deadline. “The short timeline and the technical nature of the material meant that we could not comprehensively review all topics,” the authors wrote.
A lawsuit was filed in mid-August in federal court alleging that the Trump administration violated the law by secretly recruiting a group of people who reject the scientific consensus on climate change to write a report downplaying global warming. The Environmental Defense Fund and the Union of Concerned Scientists, both environmental groups, accused DOE and EPA of “flagrant violations” of a law that governs advisory committees.
The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. It alleges that in March, Secretary Wright, “quietly arranged for five handpicked skeptics of the effects of climate change” to form a committee called the Climate Working Group that then wrote a report downplaying the threat of rising GHG emissions. But the Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972 bars federal agencies from recruiting or relying on secret groups when engaging in policymaking, according to the lawsuit. The law requires that any such groups advising on federal policy must be disclosed and that meetings, emails and other records be made public. “This is one of the most brazen violations of federal law on one of the single most consequential issues to the lives of millions of Americans,” said Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund.
The environmental groups filed a separate motion asking the court to block EPA from moving forward with a plan to repeal the scientific determination made by the government in 2009 that climate pollution harms public health and welfare. That assessment, the endangerment finding, is the basis for regulating GHG emissions under the Clean Air Act.
In early April, Administrator Zeldin, said that the agency intended to repeal the endangerment finding which enables the federal government to regulate the GHGs that are warming the planet. This would eliminate EPA’s authority to combat climate change. The Trump administration is abandoning this principle, claiming that the costs of addressing climate change outweigh the benefits. This will shift more of the risk and responsibility onto states and individual Americans as rising temperatures fuel more extreme and costly weather disasters nationwide. He said the agency would also rescind Biden-era regulations intended to reduce planet-warming emissions from automobiles.
“It’s a radical transformation of government’s role, in terms of its intervention into the economy to try to promote the health and safety of citizens,” said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy.
Without the US commitment to reduce emissions, it becomes far tougher for the world to collectively prevent average global temperatures from rising by more than 1.5 C above preindustrial levels. That is the threshold beyond which climate scientists say there is significantly greater risk from increasingly destructive storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, as well as from species extinction and biodiversity loss.
The endangerment finding has had a profound effect on society. It enabled the Obama administration to set the country’s first limits on GHGs from cars and power plants, with the goal of putting more EVs on the roads and adding more renewable energy to the electric grid.
In support of its proposal, EPA argued that GHGs gases from cars on US roads do not contribute significantly to climate change because they are a small share of global emissions. Reducing these emissions to zero “would not have a scientifically measurable impact” on global climate trends or on public health and welfare, the agency said. Instead, the agency claimed that climate regulations are the true threat to public health and welfare as they increase the price of new vehicles and leave fewer choices for car buyers.
Environmentalists criticized those arguments, noting that transportation is the largest source of GHGs in the US. If the US motor vehicle sector were a country, it would be the fourth-largest emitter of GHGs in the world, according to EPA’s own data. “If vehicle emissions don’t pass muster as a contribution to climate change, it’s hard to imagine what would,” said Dena Adler, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.
Dan Becker, who leads transportation policy for the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group, called the EPA proposal a “cynical one-two punch” that will lead to more gasoline-burning vehicles on the road and fewer tools to reduce tailpipe pollution. He said that the auto-emissions rules being rescinded would have prevented 7 billion metric tons of emissions from entering the atmosphere while saving the average American driver about $6,000 in fuel and maintenance over the lifetime of vehicles built under the standards.
“The E.P.A. is revoking the biggest single step any nation has taken to save oil, save consumers money at the pump and combat global warming,” Mr. Becker said. Zeldon said the agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” He said the endangerment finding has led to costly regulations that burdened households and businesses. “We’re strangulating our own economy.”
The Supreme Court issued a landmark 2007 decision affirming EPA’s authority to regulate GHGs. The justices ruled that the agency needed to demonstrate that those emissions threatened public health and welfare. That led to the endangerment finding which concluded that, based on the scientific evidence, GHGs do, in fact, endanger public health and welfare. In more than 200 pages, the agency outlined the science and detailed how increasingly severe heat waves, storms and droughts would lead to higher rates of death and disease.
After the proposal to repeal the endangerment finding is published in the Federal Register, EPA will solicit public comments for 45 days. The agency will then finalize the rule, most likely within the next year.
I will briefly note the numerous other stated intentions of the Trump administration relating to climate change: EPA plans to eliminate Energy Star, the popular energy efficiency certification for dishwashers, refrigerators, dryers and other home appliances; termination of EPA’s work on climate economics, climate science, climate policy, GHG reporting, and a voluntary program in which industries work with the agency to slash emissions of methane, a potent GHG; Trump proposed to stop collecting key measurements of GHGs in the atmosphere as part of his 2026 budget plan; The Trump administration is attempting to claw back $27 billion in grants for clean energy and efficiency projects through the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund; EPA intends to eliminate its scientific research arm, the Office of Research and Development, and fire hundreds of chemists, biologists, toxicologists and other scientists, after denying for months that it intended to do so; The administration is slashing the federal work force and dismantling federal agencies after the Supreme Court allowed these plans to proceed while legal challenges unfold. The EPA’s science office provides the independent research that supports nearly all of the agency’s policies and regulations. When Trump took office, EPA had 16,155 employees. More than 3,700 have left the agency or intend to, reducing the work force to 12,448, a level last seen during the Reagan administration; EPA’s budget could be reduced 54.5% or $5 billion; EPA’s work in poor and vulnerable communities may be terminated as Environment Justice programs “gave taxpayer dollars to political cronies who exploited the program’s racial preferencing policies to advance an anti-oil and gas crusade”; similarly, cuts have been made to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and to the National Weather Service and to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and more are proposed in Trump’s budget, dramatically adversely affecting US preparedness for natural disasters and our ability to respond to them; programs dealing with climate change at the Department of Energy are slated for termination as part of the DOE’s budget cut of 9.4% or $4.7 billion.
The views expressed above are my own.
Teraine Okpoko assisted with the Facts on the Ground
Carl Howard, Co-chair, Global Climate Change Committee