U.S. National Parks Most Vulnerable to Rising Heat, Study Shows

Unchecked climate change will rapidly change the United States’ national park system, which has warmed twice as fast on average as the rest of the country between 1895 and 2010, new research shows.

A study published this week in the journal Environmental Research Letters finds that under a business-as-usual emissions scenario, temperatures at the most sensitive national parks could rise as much as 16 degrees by 2100.

Impacts in specific parks could be dire: the research finds that Joshua Tree National Park could become inhospitable to Joshua Trees and the amount of area burned by wildfire could increase three to ten times.

For a deeper dive:

Washington Post, The Guardian, Curbed, USA Today, Mother Jones, Earther, NBC

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