Wildfires have burned through a record number of acres in California this year as firefighters continue to battle several large blazes across the state. The state’s department of forestry and fire protection, Cal Fire, says more than two million acres have burned, more than the size of Delaware. One fire, El Dorado, which has spread over 7,000 acres, was started by a gender reveal party, officials say. California is currently experiencing a record heatwave. Los Angeles County reported its highest ever temperature of 49.4C (121F) on Sunday. Although temperatures are expected to drop from Tuesday onwards it may bring strong winds which could fan the flames, the National Weather Service warns.
BBC 8th Sept 2020 read more »
News outlets continue to ignore climate change in articles about California’s record-breaking weather. This long weekend was literal hell for millions in the American West. California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, and Washington are suffering from dangerous heat, wildfire and smoke unlike anything they’ve ever seen. Scientists attribute the unprecedented intensity of these events to human-caused climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions have made the atmosphere in these areas much hotter and drier than it used to be. “We’re living in a fundamentally climate-altered world,” MIT Technology Review noted last month, citing a multitude of peer-reviewed research about how climate change exacerbates extreme heat and wildfire. These so-called “compound climate events” are only predicted to get worse if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
Heated 8th Sept 2020 read more »
It was a grim record. On June 20 2020, the mercury reached 38°C in Verkhoyansk, Siberia – the hottest it’s ever been in the Arctic in recorded history. With the heatwaves came fire, and by the start of August around 600 individual fires were being detected every day. By early September, parts of the Siberian Arctic had been burning since the second week of June.
The Conversation 8th Sept 2020 read more »