New York Times (June 29)
The twin threats of “dangerous heat baking…the Southeast” and “the wildfire smoke filling the skies” in the Midwest “aren’t connected directly. But a common factor is adding to their capacity to cause misery. Human-caused climate change is turning high temperatures that would once have been considered improbable into more commonplace occurrences. And it is intensifying the heat and dryness that fuel catastrophic wildfires, allowing them to burn longer and more ferociously, and to churn out more smoke.”
Tags: Catastrophic, Climate change, Dangerous, Dryness, Heat, Human-caused, Improbable, Intensifying, Misery, Smoke, Temperatures, Wildfire, Wildfires
Chicago Tribune (June 29)
“As Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed Chicago on Tuesday and Wednesday, the Windy City earned the unwelcome distinction of having the ‘worst air quality of any major city in the world.’” North American wildfires are proliferating and “today consume twice as much land… than they did in the 1990s.” This is clearly “a climate issue. But if we fail to take action on forest management, the impacts of climate change—drier, hotter, longer fire seasons—will only further contribute to the flammability of our overly dense forests.”
Tags: Air quality, Canada, Chicago, Climate change, Drier, Fire seasons, Flammability, Forest management, Hotter, Impacts, Smoke, Wildfires
San Francisco Chronical (May 27)
“State Farm, California’s largest property and casualty insurer as of 2021, stopped issuing home, business and casualty insurance policies in the state Saturday, citing wildfire risks and rising construction costs…. The state has suffered increasingly massive and destructive wildfires in recent years, leading to scarcer and more expensive insurance policies in wildfire-prone zones.”
Tags: Business, California, Casualty, Construction costs, Destructive, Home, Insurer, Massive, Policies, Property, Rising, Risks, State Farm, Wildfires
BBC (July 20)
“Heat records tumbled and firefighters faced new blazes as much of Western Europe baked in a gruelling heatwave.” The UK “saw temperatures of more than 40C (104F) for the first time.” Germany had “its hottest day of the year,” as did the Netherlands, while in France “37,000 people had to be evacuated from their homes” due to wildfires. In the past week, Portugal alone has recorded “more than 1,000 heatwave-related deaths.”
Tags: Blazes, Deaths, Firefighters, France, Germany, Gruelling, Heat, Heatwave, Netherlands, Portugal, Records, Temperatures, UK, Western Europe, Wildfires
Moscow Times (August 9)
“Smoke from wildfires burning across Russia’s largest and coldest region has reached the North Pole for what is believed to be the first time in known history.” The forest fires have been “fueled by hot weather and a 150-year record drought” and “already emitted a record 505 megatons of carbon dioxide.”
Tags: Burning, CO2, Drought, First time, Forest fires, Fueled, History, Hot, North Pole, Record, Russia, Smoke, Weather, Wildfires
World Economic Forum (December 10)
“Greenhouse gas emissions reached a new high last year, putting the world on track for an average temperature rise of 3 degrees Celsius.” The UNEP report is only “the latest to suggest the world is hurtling toward extreme climate change” and comes on the heels “of sobering weather extremes, including rapid ice loss in the Arctic as well as record heat waves and wildfires in Siberia and the U.S. West.”
Tags: 3°C, Arctic, Climate change, Emissions, GHG, Heat waves, Hurtling, Ice loss, Record, Rise, Siberia, Sobering, Temperature, UNEP, Weather extremes, Wildfires
Houston Chronicle (December 3)
“With record wildfires burning across the West Coast and a record Atlantic hurricane season that pummeled the Gulf Coast, climate change is gaining importance within the Democratic Party…. That leaves Texas Democrats with the unenviable position of having to choose between one of their state’s largest employers and their party’s newly elected leader.” They are “caught in the middle of a climate catastrophe.”
Tags: Atlantic, Burning, Climate change, Democrats, Gulf Coast, Hurricane season, Record, Texas, West Coast, Wildfires
The Science Times (September 21)
“The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitory Service in Europe has monitored over 100 wildfires in the Arctic” since June. “The ‘zombie fires’ have been the worst this year since reliable monitoring began in 2003.” In June alone, the Arctic fires had already released an amount of carbon comparable “to how much the greenhouse gas is emitted in an entire year from smaller nations like Cuba and Tunisia.”
Tags: Arctic, Carbon, Copernicus, Cuba, Emitted, Europe, GHG, Monitoring, Wildfires
Washington Post (September 15)
President Trump claims “America’s cities are in flames” and a Biden election would leave the suburbs engulfed in flames. Meanwhile, wildfires have refocused attention on the issue of climate change. Speaking to the real “fires of the present and future” which are “raging across much of the Western states, devouring towns and turning the sky red,” Joe Biden is now “going further than any party nominee has before and talking like someone with a genuine commitment to strong action on climate.”
Tags: Biden, Climate change, Commitment, Election, Flames, Genuine, Strong action, Suburbs, Trump, U.S., Wildfires
Reuters (September 10)
“Wildfires across the U.S. West are among the sparks from climate change that could ignite a U.S. financial crisis by damaging home values, state tourism and local government budgets.” This was just one of the findings of an advisory panel to the Commodities Futures Trading Commission.
Tags: Budgets, CFTC, Climate change, Financial Crisis, Findings, Home values, MRAC, Sparks, Tourism, U.S., Wildfires
