Flooding, Melting And On Fire: 6 Stories That Show The Dramatic Impact Of Climate Change Now

It’s no secret that worldwide, weather is becoming more extreme. The last several years have seen more extreme heat waves, storms, wildfires, droughts, erosion, floods and other alarming weather changes than ever before. And a changing climate is not just an environmental issue — it affects national and global security, immigration, the economy, infrastructure and, indeed, the very survival of life as we know it. The World Health Organization has declared climate change the biggest threat to global health this century.

But climate change is also hard to process and keep track of on a global scale, especially when nearly each day, a new headline seems to pop up bringing us news about the tenuous state of our planet. Here are some of the biggest climate-related news events that have unfolded just in the month of August:

Miami Is Flooding – The Washington Post, Aug. 8, 2019
This summer has set daily high tide records for more than a week straight in Miami, according to the Washington Post. There has been a nearly 6-inch sea level rise in the city since 1996, and Miami Beach has already lost hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate. Flooding on sunny days have become a regular occurrence. Recently, higher than normal tides, called King Tides, have caused water level rises akin to those of hurricanes.

The 85,000 Miami residents who live less than three feet above sea level may want to “start thinking about their futures,” the article says. Parts of Miami are no longer offering long-term mortgages, and one meteorologist even warned against buying any real estate in South Florida.

Rhode Island (And The Rest Of The Northeast) Is Heating Up – The Washington Post, Aug. 13, 2019
If you’re thinking about moving north to avoid flooding in Florida, you might want to think again. The northeast is warming quickly, according to a Washington Post analysis. Because there is now less snow and ice, the region absorbs more heat, leading to hotter summers.

Rhode Island is the first state in the lower 48 whose average temperature rise has surpassed 2 degrees Celsius. The water in Narragansett Bay is 1.6 degrees Celsius warmer than it was 50 years ago, and lobster yield in the state has declined by 75 percent in the last 20 years. The tiny state’s famed beaches are retreating fast. Part of one beach is eroding an average of more than 3 feet per year.

The Rhode Island Coastal Resources Management Council says by 2030, sea level rise will flood more than 600 buildings 6 times per year.

Siberia Is On Fire – Vox, Aug. 14, 2019
Large areas of Siberia have been burning for several months now in the wake of a particularly hot and dry summer. As a result, smoke is now covering an area of Siberia larger than the size of the European Union, according to Vox.

Though Siberia is perhaps best known for being cold and sparsely populated, recent average temperatures have been 14 degrees higher than the long-term average, and the fires’ effect is widespread. The blazes are close to cities and affecting residents’ health. Smoke is also crossing the ocean and moving into the Arctic, and scientists worry that soot landing in the Arctic will speed up ice melt.

Greenland Is Melting – CNN, Aug. 15, 2019
In August, Greenland’s ice sheet lost 11 billion tons of surface ice in just one day, according to CNN. In July, the island lost almost 200 billion tons of ice, and the ice loss rate today is six times higher that of the 1980s, according to a study published earlier this year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

And here’s how a melting island in the Arctic Circle could impact all of us: NASA says if all of Greenland’s ice melted, it would raise worldwide sea levels by 25 feet. A recent study found that ice melting in Greenland could cause up to 2 feet of sea level rise worldwide by the year 2100.

Alaska Is In Drought (And Also On Fire) – Reuters, Aug. 19, 2019
Anchorage is in “severe drought,” and a wildfire broke out earlier this month about 80 miles from the city. This year, the state capital has experienced the hottest — and in some places, driest — summer on record, with one early July day reaching 90 degrees. Several other fires have also broken out across the state recently, a time of year when fires usually die down or rains come to stop them. But that isn’t happening this year.

The fires have led to evacuation orders, destroyed homes, disrupted infrastructure and in some cases have severely impacted air quality.

According to the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, ice cover in the state usually sticks around until May, but this year it melted in March. And speaking of melting ice, a kayaker witnessed a glacier’s collapse earlier this month at the Kenai Peninsula.

The Amazon Is (Also) On Fire – NPR, Aug. 21, 2019
Fires in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest are burning at a record rate, the highest since 2013 when tracking began. There’s been a more than 80 percent increase in fires in Brazil this year than the same period of time last year, and about half of these fires have started in the last month.

Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, does not seem worried, according to an NPR report. He has often criticized the country’s environmental regulations and during his tenure, Brazil has cut funding and staff to environmental agencies.

The fires, though, were manmade. CNN reported that the fires were started by ranchers and loggers — inspired by Bolsonaro’s anti-environmental, pro-business rhetoric — to clear the land.

But here’s how it relates to global climate change: The Amazon produces about 20 percent of the earth’s oxygen. The World Wildlife Fund says that if the world’s largest rainforest experiences too much damage, it could start producing carbon instead.

What Has Not Made The Headlines?
August has also seen floods in Freetown, Sierra Leone, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has caused at least six deaths and 5,000 people to lose their homes. This has not made international headlines. And, also less widely reported in the news, there have also been fires in Indonesia, the Canary Islands, Greece, Turkey and France. And these are the result of a “vicious cycle,” said Diana Ruiz, senior palm oil campaigner for Greenpeace USA.

“You really start to see the consequences [of] industrial agricultural commodities, how they’re driving deforestation, and how they're driving a loss of biodiversity,” said Ruiz. “We’re not only losing forest, but we’re accelerating climate change.”

And the loss of forest, she added, heats up the earth faster and makes the planet more vulnerable to future fires, which further heats up the earth.

Ahira Sánchez-Lugo, a climatologist with the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, works with colleagues to prepare a report each month which she likens to a doctor’s report after an annual physical exam.

“On a monthly basis, we receive temperature data and precipitation data from all over the world. We analyze the data, and we place the temperature and precipitation information into a historical perspective,” she said. NOAA’s July report showed that July 2019 was the warmest July for the earth since records began in 1880. What’s more, she added, nine of the 10 warmest Julys have occurred since 2005.

“Our climate is changing, and that has consequences,” she said. “We’re all going to be affected one way or another.”

Sánchez-Lugo also emphasized that extreme weather is part of the earth's natural climate, but said because of climate change, the odds of extreme weather are increasing. And the data, she added, tell us that this more extreme and intense weather is now a global reality.

After all, if the doctor says you have the flu, Sánchez-Lugo said, and you don’t believe her, so you go to other doctors, and they all say you have the flu, “at what point are you going to stop denying, and start accepting that you have the flu?”