Her hunch was right. In the twilight hours of Jan. 7, 2020, a magnitude 6.4 earthquake struck the U.S. territory, with its epicenter near the city of Ponce on the south coast, a few miles from Hernández's hometown. Buildings trembled throughout the territory, but the southwest took the brunt of the quake, with dozens of partially or completely collapsed dwellings, including a school and a church, according to a report from El Nuevo Día. The island's primary power generation plants in the southern area of Puerto Rico failed, immediately plunging the territory into darkness.
As a survivor of Hurricane Maria's devastation in 2017, Hernández was consumed with anxiety and desperation at the prospect of having to live through another natural disaster, and watching the government mismanage the recovery again. "My father's Alzheimer's progressed since the storm, and dealing with an equal emergency was unthinkable," she said, before bursting into tears. She doubted she could maintain her economic stability after the earthquake damaged her nail business in the urban center of Yauco.
A view of a washed out road near Utuado, Puerto Rico, after a Coast Guard Air Station Borinquen MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew dropped relief supplies to residents Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017. The locals were stranded after Hurricane Maria by washed out roads and mudslides. U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Eric D. Woodall / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Help did arrive, although it didn't come from the government initially. Instead, a hyperlocal response made up of disparate nonprofits and volunteers arrived and provided much needed aid, even during continuing aftershocks. Hernández said she was especially thankful for the response from one community organization, Tabernacle Followers of Jesus Christ.
Those volunteer initiatives sparked a feeling of trust in refugee camps, said Víctor Amauri, a social worker and one of the help coordinators with Solidarity Brigade of the West, which is made up of people from many organizations who provided direct response to help communities after Hurricane Maria.
"Strategizing after the hurricane and developing short- and long-term plans was our strong suit," Amauri said. "Now, it isn't straightforward to plan something for tomorrow, because everything changed. Misinformation and lack of transparency from the federal and local governments are preventing us from helping our people as they deserve."
The group leaders of the Solidarity Brigade used to meet in Mayagüez to organize community building projects. They would teach about composting and orchard keeping, and promote grassroots efforts to enhance food security and local agriculture as tools of self-sustainability.
"But in this context, we cannot think ahead," Amauri said. "We are still handling dozens of cases of families that are sleeping on the floor because, even though we are a country prone to hurricanes and, thanks to our location in between fault lines, earthquakes, the authorities never developed an emergency plan response."
A report by the Center of Investigative Journalism of Puerto Rico, the Climate Change Series Project — the culmination of years of requesting public documents — found that despite Puerto Rico's vulnerability, the territorial government had taken limited measures to tackle natural disasters. Even though investigative work in 2017 uncovered evidence that the death toll of Hurricanes Maria and Irma was much higher than the 64 victims claimed by the former governor Ricardo Rosselló — nearly 3,000 people are estimated to have died, a little less than twice as many as in Hurricane Katrina — and the territory's ability to respond to emergencies has not improved much.
The government's inefficient response has led to the formation of several citizen coalitions that know the needs of their communities. The Single Voice Movement is a conglomerate of local nonprofit and community-based organizations that already developed a two-year response plan for earthquake-affected communities. The projects developed by these entities have a vision that looks inward toward active communities capable of supporting themselves and their neighbors, said Cora Arce Rivera, executive director of Aspira de Puerto Rico.
A group of students from Aspira's Inc. Alternative School in the municipality of Mayaguez ready to go to the town of Cabo Rojo and receive farming instruction. Francisco Acevedo.
Aspira's alternative school in the western town of Mayagüez allows teenagers, most of them school dropouts, to explore the significance of agriculture. The students are learning to cultivate tropical root and tuber crops that can germinate in unfavorable conditions. They are particularly resistant to damage by high wind hurricanes and typhoons, Aspira's agronomist Francisco Acevedo said.
José Esteban López Maldonado, a student at the elite Residential Center of Educational Opportunities in Mayagüez, runs a similar project in the small mountainside municipality of Adjuntas. In 2016, he managed to acquire one of the hundreds of schools closed by the local Department of Education and transformed it into a coworking space where people can learn about hydroponic cultivation, coffee planting, and greenhouses. USDA Rural Development, which offers loans and grants to economic development projects, has offered López help to improve the infrastructure of the school, but local authorities have not been able to provide him a proof of ownership so he can take advantage of the program, he said.
José Esteban in Ponce, Puerto Rico, presenting his new initiative to distribute coffee Caturra, produced in his farm Lírica. Coral Negrón
The island also faces a bankruptcy crisis and austerity measures imposed by the federal Financial Oversight and Management Board. José Caraballo-Cueto, an economist and assistant professor at the University of Puerto Rico, said the bureaucracy around government processes exemplifies how the island is the perfect prey for disaster capitalism. "Restoration doesn't have the impact it deserves on the local economy because the biggest beneficiaries are not locals," Caraballo said. "A private law firm is even handling the cases of lack of proof of ownership post-Hurricane María."
In Puerto Rico, almost 92 percent of houses were damaged by the hurricane, according to a report from the American Bar Association. More than 95 percent of those tenants, about 1.1 million people, applied for the Federal Emergency Management Agency's Individuals and Households Program in 2018, but a FEMA spokesman told NBC News that 335,748 claims were denied because they couldn't provide a deed proving ownership of their homes.
Situations such as this one eroded Puerto Ricans' belief in local and federal institutions, which have promoted new governance models, said Arturo Massol Deyá, the executive director of 40-year-old environmental nonprofit Casa Pueblo.
In 150 locations across the island territory, Casa Pueblo ensured that, after Maria, those with the most urgent need for electricity received solar panels, including hospitals, small bodegas, and the homes of aging residents who required dialysis. In the recent earthquakes, the solar power systems proved to be more resilient than the Puerto Rican Electric Power Authority's electricity grid, which failed again.
In the wake of Hurricane Maria, Massol Deyá acknowledges that people wanted to be helped by their fellow townspeople. "They discovered soon that the true meaning of 'just recovery' is that the resources end up providing services that change the reality of constant vulnerability," he said.
"Energy is the ability to do work," Massol Deyá said. "We are putting the opportunity in the hands of the people; we want them to acquire the power to govern themselves and enjoy their production. It is the maximum self-decolonization scenario because the top-down model has collapsed. … it is not effective."
An upcoming Casa Pueblo project, in collaboration with professors at the University of Michigan, will be to use biomass from coffee production to generate energy. The energy produced will be used to power the coffee plantation to improve the harvest. The technique, Massol said, helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Meanwhile, it will generate employment and provide a more sustainable life for the residents of Adjuntas.
Arturo Massol, executive director of Casa Pueblo de Adjuntas. Omar Alfonso
All these grassroots actions are becoming the backbone of survival in Puerto Rico. For the time being, however, the lives of those residing in earthquake zones are stagnant, said Edward Santiago-Pacheco, a U.S. Army veteran and father of a newborn girl.
He lost his newly purchased house in Yauco in the 6.4 magnitude earthquake and has not heard back from the insurance company, the bank, or any local government agency.
"It is hard to overcome this when you just brought a new life into this world," Santiago-Pacheco said. "FEMA only provided money for two months of rent for temporary housing, but I still must pay my house mortgage. The worst part is that the local government is using our pain in favor of their political propaganda."
On Feb. 10, the Solidarity Brigade learned about Hernández's and Santiago-Pacheco's cases and reached out to them, Amauri said. However, thousands need similar help.
"Two of our members are sociologists (Roberto Vélez and Jacqueline Villegas), and they developed a census to identify all necessities and help people the best possible way. But we need the government to publish relevant information that can help us organize our strategy," he added.
Casa Pueblo's installation of solar panels in a hardware store in Adjuntas. Arturo Massol
Coral Natalie Negrón Almodóvar is a Puerto Rican data journalist, a current grantee of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University, and Patti Birch for Data Journalism Fellow at the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Reposted with permission from YES! Magazine.
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Eye-Catching Designs Made from Recycled Plastic Bottles
waterlust.com / @abamabam
The company sells a range of eco-friendly items like leggings, rash guards, and board shorts that are made using recycled post-consumer plastic bottles. There are currently 16 causes represented by distinct marine-life patterns, from whale shark research and invasive lionfish removal to sockeye salmon monitoring and abalone restoration.
One such organization is Get Inspired, a nonprofit that specializes in ocean restoration and environmental education. Get Inspired founder, marine biologist Nancy Caruso, says supporting on-the-ground efforts is one thing that sets Waterlust apart, like their apparel line that supports Get Inspired abalone restoration programs.
"All of us [conservation partners] are doing something," Caruso said. "We're not putting up exhibits and talking about it — although that is important — we're in the field."
Waterlust not only helps its conservation partners financially so they can continue their important work. It also helps them get the word out about what they're doing, whether that's through social media spotlights, photo and video projects, or the informative note card that comes with each piece of apparel.
"They're doing their part for sure, pushing the information out across all of their channels, and I think that's what makes them so interesting," Caruso said.
And then there are the clothes, which speak for themselves.
Advocate Apparel to Start Conversations About Conservation
waterlust.com / @oceanraysphotography
Waterlust's concept of "advocate apparel" encourages people to see getting dressed every day as an opportunity to not only express their individuality and style, but also to advance the conversation around marine science. By infusing science into clothing, people can visually represent species and ecosystems in need of advocacy — something that, more often than not, leads to a teaching moment.
"When people wear Waterlust gear, it's just a matter of time before somebody asks them about the bright, funky designs," said Waterlust's CEO, Patrick Rynne. "That moment is incredibly special, because it creates an intimate opportunity for the wearer to share what they've learned with another."
The idea for the company came to Rynne when he was a Ph.D. student in marine science.
"I was surrounded by incredible people that were discovering fascinating things but noticed that often their work wasn't reaching the general public in creative and engaging ways," he said. "That seemed like a missed opportunity with big implications."
Waterlust initially focused on conventional media, like film and photography, to promote ocean science, but the team quickly realized engagement on social media didn't translate to action or even knowledge sharing offscreen.
Rynne also saw the "in one ear, out the other" issue in the classroom — if students didn't repeatedly engage with the topics they learned, they'd quickly forget them.
"We decided that if we truly wanted to achieve our goal of bringing science into people's lives and have it stick, it would need to be through a process that is frequently repeated, fun, and functional," Rynne said. "That's when we thought about clothing."
Support Marine Research and Sustainability in Style
To date, Waterlust has sold tens of thousands of pieces of apparel in over 100 countries, and the interactions its products have sparked have had clear implications for furthering science communication.
For Caruso alone, it's led to opportunities to share her abalone restoration methods with communities far and wide.
"It moves my small little world of what I'm doing here in Orange County, California, across the entire globe," she said. "That's one of the beautiful things about our partnership."
Check out all of the different eco-conscious apparel options available from Waterlust to help promote ocean conservation.
Melissa Smith is an avid writer, scuba diver, backpacker, and all-around outdoor enthusiast. She graduated from the University of Florida with degrees in journalism and sustainable studies. Before joining EcoWatch, Melissa worked as the managing editor of Scuba Diving magazine and the communications manager of The Ocean Agency, a non-profit that's featured in the Emmy award-winning documentary Chasing Coral.
Something caught my eye when I read that: the number five. That's because, according to NASA, 2018 was the fourth warmest year in a continued warming trend since record keeping began in the 1880's, with temperatures 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit (0.83 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean. And with it, a string of five consecutive years have been recorded as the five warmest on record. I will say this again: the last five years have been the five warmest years on record.
Is climate change having an effect on hurricane season, or on hurricanes themselves? Hurricane season starts on June 1st. Let's take a look at the latest forecasts and science.
Hurricane Forecasts and Their Messages
On April 16, Colorado State University (CSU) released its hurricane outlook for the 2019 season, forecasting 13 named storms with 5 of them turning into hurricanes, of which 2 would classify as major (categories 3 and above).
On May 23, the National Hurricane Center, part of the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration (NOAA) released their forecast, predicting a "near-normal" season with 9 to 15 named storms and 4 to 8 hurricanes, with 2 to 4 being major ones. An average season has 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three major hurricanes. The numbers are very similar to the ones from CSU.
The odds for that near-normal season are 40%. Odds for above-normal or below-normal activity are both at 30%. But, as I mentioned last year, odds are not certain predictions. They are just that: odds (see below for more on that). And the last couple of years certainly reminded us of that.
Years to Remember – in More Than One Way
NOAA's forecast for the 2018 season also had a near-normal probability of 40%, with 35% odds of it being above normal, and 25% odds of being below-normal. It forecast 10 to 16 named storms and 5 to 9 hurricanes, with 1 to 4 being major. What we saw was a season tilted toward the higher side of the predictions — there were 15 named storms and eight hurricanes. Two of those were major, and two hurricanes — Michael and Florence, the latter not a major hurricane but a category 1 — caused roughly $50 billion in estimated damage.
While the probabilistic predictions may not have raised any eyebrows, when a record four hurricanes were active at the same time, that caught my eye.
If we look further back, at 2017, the probability of an above-normal season was at 45%, and below-normal activity was at 20%. The forecast called for 5 to 9 hurricanes, with 2 to 5 being major — and the reality blew the predictions: we had 10 hurricanes with 6 major ones. Three of these major ones hit the U.S., and nobody will forget the string of names Harvey, Irma and Maria anytime soon. That also caught my eye.
However, I was not surprised when the numbers fell outside of the given range.
Understanding the Forecast
That is because the range in numbers given in NOAA's forecast has a 70% probability, meaning that "The seasonal activity is expected to fall within these ranges in 7 out of 10 seasons with similar climate conditions and uncertainties to those expected this year. They do not represent the total possible ranges of activity seen in past similar years." So, there you have it, in plain language, that the actual numbers for 2019 (as in any season) may be different from the ones in the forecast.
What Do These Seasons Tell Us?
Forecasts are based on probabilities calculated from conditions at the time of the forecast, and as such, there is ample room for conditions to change and actual facts to fall outside the probabilistic calculations, as the numbers for 2017 show. At the time of the 2018 forecast, sea surface temperatures were running below average in the area where tropical storms form, and the forecast was based on those conditions. For this year, NOAA stated that there are competing signals affecting the forecast: an ongoing weak El Niño is expected to suppress intensity of Atlantic hurricane activity, while warmer-than-average surface waters and an enhanced African monsoon are forces that could lead to increased activity. Will these conditions change and affect hurricane activity? Probably. That is also why NOAA releases an updated forecast later in the season, usually in early August. Mind you, the updated forecast is based on the same probabilistic calculations, only using updated conditions.
Most importantly, it only takes one hurricane to hit to cause possible devastation. Nobody can tell ahead of time how many hurricanes in a season will strike land. One should always remember that, and be prepared, such as by following the NOAA/NWS storm tracking page and FEMA hurricane preparation guidance. And with the last couple of seasons seeing major hurricanes (some making landfall), preparedness takes on a new urgency.
But are we really seeing more of these major hurricanes, or is it just an impression — or coincidence?
Hurricanes Are Getting Stronger
The fact is that global warming is loading the dice when it comes to hurricane strength, with abnormally warm water being one of the culprits because it has the potential to increase hurricane power. Two of the most powerful hurricanes in recent history, Harvey and Florence, gained immense strength in very little time, and one of the reasons was that the sea surface temperature of the water in its path was running well above normal. In the case of Harvey, Gulf waters were warmer than any time on record, and temperatures along Florence's path were 3.6°F (2°C) hotter than normal. That warmer water is linked to human-caused warming due to emissions from burning coal, oil and gas. And it is worth noting that, after further analysis, hurricane Michael was upgraded to a category 5 in April 2019, months after it hit in 2018.
But it is not just the wind and strength of a hurricane that are amplified by climate change: global warming can also increase the amount of rain that hurricanes bring. Warmer air holds more moisture (read: more water to fall when it rains), and global average temperature is currently about 1.8°F (1°C) warmer than it was in the late 1800s. In fact, a study found that the record rainfall from Harvey was roughly three times more likely and 15% more intense than in a world without global warming. Another study found that higher ocean heat content and sea surface temperatures make hurricanes such as Harvey "more intense, bigger, and longer lasting and greatly increase their flooding rains."
Furthermore, research suggests that there has been an increase in intense hurricane activity over the past 40 years, and since the mid-1970s the number of strong hurricanes reaching categories 3 and above has roughly doubled.
So, while we wait for this hurricane season to develop, let's be mindful of probabilities, a changing climate, changing conditions, and most of all, preparedness. It reduces risks, helps ensure communities withstand the next storm, and can save lives.
#ClimateChange Is Already Making #Hurricanes Wetter, Study Confirms https://t.co/ngztLITdyC @ClimateCentral @ClimateNexus
— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) November 16, 2018
Astrid Caldas is a climate scientist with the Climate & Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
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After the hurricane, she recalls thinking, "I have everything here — water, lights, a roof over my head — and they're over there without any lights." Hernandez said she could not sit down to a hot meal in a cool home while her brothers and nieces and nephews on the island languished without food or air conditioning. Worried about her family, she took it upon herself to deliver the relief the federal government had failed to provide.
In the aftermath of the storm, Hernandez said, she spent around $8,000 to send aid to family back home, in addition to another $2,000 donated by her clients. "I swear to God, I have the best clients," she said. The money paid for canned beef and chicken, coffee, peanut butter, batteries, solar-powered radios and lamps, as well as generators needed to operate fans, refrigerators and medical equipment, such as her brother's dialysis machine.
"I don't think I did anything so heroic. I did what I had to do," she said. "I took care of whoever needed the most." She only wishes the government had done the same.
Luz Hernandez has spent $8,000 sending canned food, batteries and power generators to her family in Puerto Rico.
Source: Nexus Media
Hernandez is remarkable, though not unusual, among members of the Puerto Rican diaspora — many of whom devoted hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars to helping victims of Hurricane Maria. Those interviewed for this story said they were angry that the government had failed to provide relief, particularly to rural areas, and they remain baffled that President Trump continues to oppose additional disaster aid for the island, which is still recovering from the storm.
Fernando "Ponce" Laspina, who runs El Maestro Inc., a boxing gym and Puerto Rican cultural center in the Bronx, recalled the lack of aid after Maria. "The federal government really didn't do the job," he said. "We know a lot of older people who died because they didn't get help on time." Like Hernandez, he made it his mission to help those who were left behind.
Fernando Laspina at El Maestro, Inc.
Source: Eddie Aguiar, Hunter College
Laspina said that after the hurricane, El Maestro Inc. filled three 40,000-pound shipping containers with food, water and medical supplies — wheelchairs, walkers, diapers and medicine — and paid around $5,500 to ship each one to a different town desperate for aid. The organization relied on donations and volunteer labor. Dozens of people showed up from around New York City and as far afield as Connecticut and Ohio to contribute goods and help fill the containers.
"We had all kinds of people here," he said. "There were no barriers, you know — black people, white people, Chinese people, young, old, female, male, gay people — it didn't matter. It was just one big family in New York City coming together for Puerto Rico." Meanwhile, he added, "No help from the elected officials."
Edna Benitez took a similar tack, working with Proyecto Matria, a human rights group, to bring relief to a community overlooked for disaster aid. She focused her efforts on Miraflores, a small, mountain town in central Puerto Rico. "This is a community that was marginalized prior to the hurricane," she said. "After the hurricane, they were just devastated, and they spent several weeks without food and just drinking water from the falls."
Edna Benitez, rebuilding a home in Miraflores
Source: Edna Benitez
Benitez was aghast at the dearth of federal aid after the storm. "I said to myself, 'Where is FEMA? Where is the help that we're supposed to get? Are we a part of the United States?'" she said. On Trump, she said, "We know what his agenda is. He wants to build a wall, and he needs funding for that, and I think that that's more important [to him] than people's lives and people's homes and people's dignity." Trump has pushed Congress to include $4 billion in border wall funding in its disaster relief package, all while fighting against additional aid for Puerto Rico.
Frustrated by the government's response to Maria, Benitez partnered with Middle Collegiate Church in Manhattan to raise money for her work in Puerto Rico. Donations paid for her and other volunteers to travel to Miraflores to rebuild homes, set up cisterns, and help community members develop small businesses selling locally grown foods and knitted goods. Benitez, 61, has been to Puerto Rico eight times since Hurricane Maria. She has painted houses, sealed roofs and cleared land for farming, dipping into her savings to help fund her efforts. In July, she will be taking a group of teenagers to Miraflores to do farm work.
Contemplating the work of people like Benitez, lifelong New Yorker Elena Martinez said, "The communities in the diaspora in Florida, in Chicago, in New York and Connecticut, they just came through." She added, "I guess it's more real when you know people who were literally affected by it."
Bobby Sanabria, on drums, and his Multiverse Big Band playing a benefit concert for Puerto Rico musicians, October 2017
Source: Bob Ramos
Martinez, who runs the Bronx Music Heritage Center with Puerto Rican jazz drummer Bobby Sanabria, raised money to help musicians on the island pay for housing, food and gas after Maria shut down theaters, restaurants and hotels, making it difficult for them to find work. Sanabria put together a benefit concert after Maria, raising $10,000 for the Jazz Foundation of America's Puerto Rico Relief Fund. He subsequently produced a record of the music of West Side Story, devoting a portion of the proceeds to the effort.
Elsewhere in the city, Surey Miranda and her husband, Victor Martinez, helped families fleeing the hurricane resettle in New York. She and her husband run a Spanish-language website with resources for newcomers, and work closely with displaced families to help them secure housing and apply for food stamps. Miranda said chats about how best to navigate the government bureaucracy can turn into long conversations about the trauma of living through a natural disaster. She said that, in the first few months after the hurricane, she spent around 30 hours a week helping people, sometimes staying up until 3 a.m. consoling survivors, all while working a full-time job.
Surey Miranda (left) with her husband Victor Martinez (right)
Source: Victor Martinez
Miranda believes Trump has neglected Puerto Rico because people living on the island, while citizens, cannot vote for president and have no representation in Congress. However, she said, millions of people of Puerto Rican descent living on the mainland can vote, and they do have some measure of political power. "If you see the numbers, there are more Puerto Ricans stateside than on the island," she said.
Martinez believes the Puerto Rican diaspora, which proved critical in providing relief after the storm, could take Trump to task at the ballot box. "The people here on the mainland who can vote will hopefully take this into account when elections come up," she said.
Moreover, because Maria spurred so many families to migrate to the mainland, where they can vote, the diaspora is gaining power in states like Florida and Pennsylvania. Puerto Ricans displaced by Hurricane Maria now have the chance to oust a president who refuses to provide the aid the island needs.
Hernandez took some comfort in this. "It's really sad that he's such a racist," she said. "The thing is, the people who moved to … Florida or wherever, they could now go register and vote, maybe change the color of the state."
A group of Democratic Senators are again pushing to have Puerto Rico's debt forgiven in the wake of hurricanes that hit the island in 2017. @SenWarren https://t.co/RVqkWJvpvD
— EcoWatch (@EcoWatch) May 6, 2019
Reposted with permission from our media associate Nexus Media.
2018 also brought the world's highest-ever low temperature, as nighttime temperatures fell to a sizzling 109°F in Quiryat, Oman, on June 28, smashing a 2011 record-high low.
A startling 95 percent of the oldest and thickest Arctic sea ice is now gone—and we're losing Arctic ice at a rate of 14,000 tons per second, according to recent research, three times as fast as roughly three decades ago.
It was a year notable both for its overwhelming, climate-fueled impacts as well as its gut-wrenching predictions for what climate change still has in store for us if we fail to act. So much happened, frankly, that it's been hard to keep it all straight.
Stark Warnings
Actively eroding coastal permafrost bluff on Barter Island, located on the northern coast of Alaska, July 3, 2018 Shawn Harrison, U.S. Geological Survey
The year delivered increasingly powerful warnings from scientists and international agencies about the need to shift away from fossil fuels and slash greenhouse gas emissions. In the U.S., 2018 saw a presidential administration and Republican-controlled Congress packed with politicians and administrators who refuse to recognize the scientific consensus that the climate is changing because of fossil fuel pollution and other human activities.
(How strong is that consensus? We've known for years that the probability that greenhouse gas pollution is causing climate change is more than 95 percent—and that's according to a panel of 1,300 scientific experts from all over the world who were brought together by the United Nations.)
In fact, in 2018, the Trump administration's own U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a 1,656 page National Climate Assessment, which warns of hundreds of billions of dollars in damage on the horizon from climate change.
The Trump administration sought to bury that report—but it couldn't bury a UN report, published in October, which warned that we have 12 years to slash greenhouse gas emissions worldwide if we're to stave off the worst impacts of a changing climate.
"This report by the world's leading climate scientists is an ear-splitting wake-up call to the world," UN Secretary-General António Guterres wrote in a statement. "It confirms that climate change is running faster than we are—and we are running out of time."
The new @IPCC_ch report is a wake-up call to the world: it confirms that climate change is running faster than we a… https://t.co/FRjtlAsCmv— António Guterres (@António Guterres)1539041730.0
Greenhouse gas emissions had climbed to a record high in 2017, after a three-year period where carbon emissions held relatively steady. Levels of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas, also broke records in 2017, following a relatively steady period of recorded global levels from 1999 to 2006.
"We are already seeing the consequences of 1°C of global warming through more extreme weather, rising sea levels and diminishing Arctic sea ice, among other changes," added Panmao Zhai, who helped prepare the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report for the UN.
Indeed, 2018 brought some of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history—many of them linked to climate change, scientists have said.
California Wildfires
In November, Paradise, California suffered a horrific wildfire that killed at least 85, destroyed 14,000 homes and seared images of traffic jams on roads surrounded by walls of fire into the minds of millions, as those fleeing posted terrifying videos of their escapes online.
The fire was hot enough to melt the wheels of cars left behind—and the cars of some who escaped emerged from the inferno with melted headlights and rear bumpers.
Escaping the 'Camp Fire' in Butte County youtu.be
In southern California, the Woolsey Fire near Malibu killed three and burned 1,600 buildings, including homes belonging to Neil Young, Miley Cyrus and other celebrities, and leaving a dark scar visible from outer space in NASA images.
"California is vulnerable—not because of poor forest management as DT (our so-called president) would have us think," Neil Young wrote in a statement calling for action on climate change after his home was destroyed. "We are vulnerable because of Climate Change; the extreme weather events and our extended drought is part of it."
The Camp Fire was the most deadly wildfire in the U.S. in a century, spurred by a long-running drought and the spread of tree-killing bark beetles into newly warming regions—which together left 129 million dead trees in the parched state.
Dead trees along a mountain road in the Sequoia National Forest in November 2016U.S. Forest Service
But while some in Paradise plan to rebuild, to literally raise their town from ashes, a less-noticed piece of the U.S. was more permanently wiped off the map. An 11-acre Hawaiian island virtually disappeared below the waves, the victim of sea level rise and Hurricane Walaka.
California was hardly the only place to experience extraordinary wildfires in 2018. The Mallard Fire in Texas in May grew so hot that it formed its own pyrocumulous clouds, or fire clouds, which caused a supercell thunderstorm and one-inch hail north of Wheeler, Texas.
And in July, wildfires burned inside the Arctic Circle following an unprecedented drought, with locals in Sweden comparing the glow from the blaze to the Northern Lights. Horrific wildfires also burned across Greece in July, killing 100 people and forcing hundreds more to flee into the sea to escape the fire.
A #firenado came dangerously close to these emergency vehicles as they battle the Carr fire near Redding, Californi… https://t.co/Ldkky1Sh3a— CNN Weather Center (@CNN Weather Center)1532695429.0
The year began with the Montecito mudslides on Jan. 9, which killed 27 Californians and destroyed 130 homes, after a 200-year rainstorm dumped a half inch of rain in just five minutes onto steep slopes which were stripped barren of vegetation by the Thomas wildfire, which in early January became—at the time—the largest wildfire in California's history. That one-two punch bore the fingerprints of a changing climate.
"It wasn't just the drought; it wasn't just the fire; it wasn't just the rain. It was the compound effect," Leah Stokes, a climate policy researcher at UC Santa Barbara, told The Independent in January, discussing the Montecito disaster. "Climate change causes all kinds of abnormal events—you can really think of it as 'climate disruption' or 'global weirding.'"
Flooding and Hurricanes
2018 saw an unusually high number of violent storms, particularly in the Pacific, which saw "the most intense hurricane season ever recorded," according to Popular Science, including 10 storms that reached Category 4 or 5.
Climate scientists proposed the creation of a "Category 6" for hurricanes more powerful than any yet seen. "Scientifically, [six] would be a better description of the strength of 200 mph (320km/h) storms, and it would also better communicate the well-established finding now that climate change is making the strongest storms even stronger," climatologist Michael Mann told CBS News.
The Atlantic coast was hit by two of the most devastating storms to hit the continental U.S., following a 2017 in whic three Category Four storms, Harvey, Irma and Maria, smashed all records for hurricane damage and did over $300 billion in damage.
A year after Maria, Puerto Rico was still recovering, and the official death toll was recognized this year as 3,057 people—after Governor Ricardo Rossello accepted a report raising the number of recognized deaths from 64.
This year's worst Atlantic hurricanes, Michael and Florence, left much of the southern U.S. underwater at points.
Michael, America's strongest-ever October hurricane, carried sustained winds of 155 miles an hour and struck the Florida panhandle, flattening towns like Mexico Beach.
HURRICANE MICHAEL'S WRATH: Stunning drone footage shows the cleanup in Mexico Beach, Florida, after the storm ravag… https://t.co/uoPGUCly1d— CBS News (@CBS News)1539551429.0
Florence, meanwhile, spurred officials to call for the evacuation of more than 1 million people, then left parts of the Carolinas flooded for weeks, after it slowed to a crawl and deluged more than 8 trillion gallons of water into the region.
"When people say the wildfires, hurricanes and heatwaves they're experiencing are unlike anything they've seen before," Brenda Ekwurzel, director of climate science at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement in November, "there's a reason for that and it's called climate change."
Even before Florence hit, one study found that the storm would be 50 miles wider, and dump 50 percent more rain, because of the impacts of burning fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas pollution.
Heatwaves and Noreasters
The year started with a prolonged run of winter storms in the Northeastern U.S., including winter storms dubbed Riley, Quinn, Skylar and Toby, which some researchers warned may have been tied to climate change—showing just how inapt the term "global warming" can be. When the jet stream began to wobble, it allowed cold air that would normally be trapped over the Arctic to make its way down to the continental U.S.—making the weather warmer up north and colder farther south.
The cold spell was so pronounced in New York and southern Canada that Niagara Falls froze on New Year's Day.
That freezing weather was followed by a summer heatwave that prompted heat warnings for 100 million Americans in the summer, and caused 93 deaths in Montreal.
More than 30,000 people were hospitalized in Japan for heatstroke as summer temps soared there as well.
And while droughts hit hard in Germany, drying up the Rhine river, Baltimore, Maryland has seen nearly 70 inches of rain. A flash flood in Ellicott City, Maryland, swept away cars as roadways abruptly became rivers.
Flash flooding hits Ellicott City, Maryland youtu.be
"The evidence, if we needed any more, continues to stack up. The record-high heatwaves, record-low Arctic sea ice, above average tropical cyclones and deadly wildfires are an alarm bell impossible to ignore," Jens Mattias Clausen, who represented Greenpeace at the UN COP24 climate talks in Poland, told The Guardian this month. "It's no longer our future that is in peril; our today is at risk."
9 #Renewable Energy Highlights of 2018 https://t.co/roGl0U14Jq https://t.co/RfjHi9UkmK— Clean Coalition (@Clean Coalition)1545966304.0
Reposted with permission from our media associate DeSmogBlog.