bronxiteforever
bronxiteforever's JournalIn the future, only the rich will be able to escape the unbearable heat from climate change.
In Iraq, it’s already happening.Baghdad offers a troubling glimpse into a future where only the wealthy are equipped to escape the effects of climate change, Richard Hall writes
The Independent
By Richard Hall
August 10, 2019
...United Nations report released last month warned that the world is heading for a “climate apartheid” scenario, “where the wealthy pay to escape overheating, hunger and conflict while the rest of the world is left to suffer.” In Baghdad, that is already a reality. On 48C days, which are now coming earlier in the year, air conditioners are the most effective way of staying cool. But an electricity crisis in the country is putting even that essential tool out of reach to low-income families.
The crisis – caused by a combination of corruption, mismanagement and a creaking national grid – has exacerbated the country’s energy divide. The result is a huge gap between electricity supply and demand, especially in the summer. A diesel generator can be used to meet some of the shortfall, but running an air conditioner from a generator is a luxury only a few can afford.
Mahmoud Abdul Latif Hamed, a weather forecaster and manager of environment at Iraq’s Meteorological Organisation, says Iraq is experiencing extreme temperatures earlier in the year.
“In 2011, the temperature in Baghdad reached 50 degrees in August. Now it’s June and the temperature in Baghdad is already 49 degrees. That means there has been a two-month shift in reading the temperature,” he says.
“Fifty degrees is very dangerous if you’re out in the open. For the poor it is even more dangerous. They have no air conditioning to cool down. We expect the future climate of Iraq to be very dangerous,” Mr Hamed, the meteorologist says. “I expect that if the issue isn’t fixed, it will bring down the government.”
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/climate-change-apartheid-poor-iraq-effects-heatwave-a9049206.html
Worth the read. The Pentagon has warned that climate change also creates political instability.
That Summer When Climate Change Baked Alaska
An Anchorage-based wildlife biologist describes what life is like in our northernmost state—one that’s been dramatically altered by rising temperatures.
NRDC
August 09, 2019
By Jeff Turrentine
Chris McKee lived down the street from me when we were kids growing up...I’m going to move to Alaska and work with animals when I grow up,” nine-year-old Chris would say with perfect self-assurance as we kicked the soccer ball in his backyard, imagining our futures. Remarkably, Chris did exactly what he said he would do all those many years ago. Today he’s a wildlife biologist living and working in Alaska, the place he’s called home for the past three decades. Over that period of time he’s watched closely—with a scientist’s eye—as the physical environment of his beloved state has changed and continues to change.
...Thanks to climate scientists, we know that the average global temperature has risen by 1 degree Celsius over the past century. What many people may not realize is that over the same time frame, Alaska’s average temperature has risen twice as much. To hear Chris tell it, the changes resulting from this phenomenon can be seen—and felt—just about everywhere. “My first winter here, in Fairbanks from 1988 to 1989, was the coldest I’ve ever experienced. Temperatures of minus 40 were common, and even 50 and 60 below weren’t unheard of.”
That was the same winter he witnessed his first glacier: the Portage Glacier, just south of Anchorage. “There was a brand-new visitor center that had just been built,” he recalls. “It had a direct view, and it was a magnificent sight.” But when he went back to visit with his family last month, “the glacier had retreated so that you now have to take a boat to be able to see it. Every glacier I visited in my first decade up here has retreated so much, in fact, that sometimes it takes great effort to be able to see it.”
Despite all the bad news coming out of Alaska, my old friend has managed to retain his youthful optimism—although it’s definitely tempered by a middle-aged melancholy. “I think Alaska, and all polar communities, have already passed the tipping point in terms of preventing widespread problems from happening,” he says. “We’re now in a position of having to try and figure out how to deal with and react to those problems.”... It’s a startling thought, but when today’s nine-year-olds are kicking the soccer ball in the backyard and imagining where they’ll live when they grow up, they have to consider something that Chris and I didn’t: what kinds of places will—and won’t—still be around.
Worth the whole read and the photos are shocking.
https://www.nrdc.org/onearth/summer-when-climate-change-baked-alaska
The heat index in Galveston has remained above 100 for over 30 hours.
Even in the dead of night, there’s no respite. The Texas Gulf Coast city registered its warmest low temperature on record Thursday.
Washington Post
By Matthew Cappucci
August 9 at 4:29 PM
The heat index hit 100 degrees at 5:52 a.m. Thursday in Galveston, Tex. And, as of Friday afternoon, it hadn’t dropped below the century mark since. It’s part of a larger heat wave across the Deep South and Southern Plains that shows no signs of letting up through at least next week.
The National Weather Service in Houston issued an excessive heat warning for “high heat index values between 108 and 114 degrees” during the day on Thursday. Heat advisories stretched over 1,000 miles from the U.S./Mexico border to Georgia, encompassing more than 30 million in the forecast for “dangerous heat.” Galveston failed to drop below 86 degrees Thursday, marking its warmest all-time low temperature on record! Records there date back to 1874. Galveston also set a daily record high Thursday, hitting 96 degrees.
Sure it’s summer, and it’s supposed to be hot. What makes this heat wave noteworthy is the exceptional humidity accompanying it. It’s much more difficult to get high temperatures when there’s copious water in the air. It’s because of water’s inherent “thermal inertia,” or the tendency for water to put the brakes on big temperature swings.
Gulf of Mexico water temperatures are running between 1 and 2 degrees above average. That adds additional water vapor to the air. Thrust atop an environment that’s already warming due to climate change, and these sorts of oppressive heat waves are becoming and will continue to be increasingly common in the years ahead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/09/heat-index-galveston-has-remained-above-over-hours-its-part-another-major-heat-wave/
The heat index in Galveston has remained above 100 for over 30 hours.
Even in the dead of night, there’s no respite. The Texas Gulf Coast city registered its warmest low temperature on record Thursday.
Washington Post
By Matthew Cappucci
August 9 at 4:29 PM
The heat index hit 100 degrees at 5:52 a.m. Thursday in Galveston, Tex. And, as of Friday afternoon, it hadn’t dropped below the century mark since. It’s part of a larger heat wave across the Deep South and Southern Plains that shows no signs of letting up through at least next week.
The National Weather Service in Houston issued an excessive heat warning for “high heat index values between 108 and 114 degrees” during the day on Thursday. Heat advisories stretched over 1,000 miles from the U.S./Mexico border to Georgia, encompassing more than 30 million in the forecast for “dangerous heat.” Galveston failed to drop below 86 degrees Thursday, marking its warmest all-time low temperature on record! Records there date back to 1874. Galveston also set a daily record high Thursday, hitting 96 degrees.
Sure it’s summer, and it’s supposed to be hot. What makes this heat wave noteworthy is the exceptional humidity accompanying it. It’s much more difficult to get high temperatures when there’s copious water in the air. It’s because of water’s inherent “thermal inertia,” or the tendency for water to put the brakes on big temperature swings.
Gulf of Mexico water temperatures are running between 1 and 2 degrees above average. That adds additional water vapor to the air. Thrust atop an environment that’s already warming due to climate change, and these sorts of oppressive heat waves are becoming and will continue to be increasingly common in the years ahead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/08/09/heat-index-galveston-has-remained-above-over-hours-its-part-another-major-heat-wave/
Report on Lake Tahoe "It is changing"
TheUnion
News for Nevada County, California
It is changing’
Environment | August 8, 2019
Justin Scacco
Special to The Union
...“We all love Tahoe,” said Schladow, director of the University of California, Davis Tahoe Environmental Research Center. “Tahoe’s beautiful. It’s like no other place on earth, but it is changing....During the past 107 years, daily air temperatures measured in Tahoe City have increased. The average daily maximum temperature has risen by 2.25 degrees Fahrenheit, and the average daily minimum temperature has risen by 4.43 degrees. According to the report, the number of days when air temperatures averaged below freezing has declined by about 30 days since 1911, though year-to-year variability is high.
Furthermore, rising temperatures are forecast to change the Tahoe area from a snow-based hydrology to a rain-based hydrology by the final third of the century, moving the time of peak streamflows from June to January.
“When you suddenly don’t have a snowpack storing water, you’re getting rain reaching the stream much sooner, much higher flows, potential for more erosion, potential for bridges to be washed out, and we as engineers can deal with that,” said Schladow. “Think, however, if you’re a fish and your time of year for spawning is when those flows are happening … used to happen in June, now it happens in January. I wish I could tell you what that means.”
While Schladow painted a grim picture for the future of the area as the climate warms, he indicated there is hope to protect the lake’s clarity against warming temperatures. “We cannot keep the lake cooler,” he said. “We cannot stop snow from turning into rain, but maybe we can maintain clarity in the face of all these things.”
https://www.theunion.com/news/environment/it-is-changing/
A study referenced in the article found, that if we do nothing about climate change, average maximum temperatures would rise by 9 degrees Fahrenheit in the basin by the end of the century.
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