Quick Key Facts What Is Indoor Air Quality? Maybe you have a habit of checking the air quality in your area before you head out for your morning walk, but how much do you know about indoor air quality? From firing up your gas stove to cook dinner to lighting candles while you read, a […]
Even as miners, loggers and ranchers fell them at record rates, scientists are still learning about all the things that forests do to keep the local and global climate comfortable and stable. Most recently, they have provided “compelling evidence” for the first time for a link between deforestation and rainfall decline across the tropics as […]
The Laguna Beach, California, city council has voted to ban the sale and public use of balloons — inflated with helium or not — in order to stop a major source of marine trash and reduce the risk of wildfires. Starting next year, all balloons in the community of 23,000 will be prohibited from being […]
About 3.4 million adults in the U.S. (1.4% of the adult population) were displaced from their homes by extreme weather disasters in 2022, a new survey from the U.S. Census Bureau reveals. Those findings, based on the 68,500 responses to the Bureau’s Jan. 4-16 Household Pulse Survey , are far higher than figures from the […]
It can be tempting to think that the recent wildfire disasters in communities across the West were unlucky, one-off events, but evidence is accumulating that points to a trend.
In a new study, we found a 246% increase in the number of homes and structures destroyed by wildfires in the contiguous Western U.S. between the past two decades, 1999-2009 and 2010-2020.
The Federal Reserve — the central banking system of the U.S. — has told the six largest banks in the country to put together data on the anticipated effect climate change events like wildfires, floods, heat waves, droughts and hurricanes would have on their business operations. The banks have until July 31 to provide the […]
The climate crisis has its fingerprints on several extreme weather events over the past two years, from drought in California to heavy rain in the UK. That’s the conclusion of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) special report Explaining Extreme Events in 2021 and 2022 from a Climate Perspective, presented by the National […]
In 2022, there were 10 climate-fueled extreme weather events that caused more than $3 billion worth of damage each. That’s the disturbing conclusion of UK charity Christian Aid’s annual review of the year’s costliest and most destructive climate disasters, released December 27. “Having ten separate climate disasters in the last year that each cost more […]
In September of 2020, the smoke from major wildfires in California made the skies so dark that the state’s solar power production was reduced by 10 to 30 percent during peak hours, according to a National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) study. For several days during the wildfires, solar energy forecasts significantly overestimated the amount […]