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      NOAA’s 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season Forecast

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      The Atlantic hurricane season is looking to be an extraordinary one, with 17 to 25 named storms predicted, experts said.In yet another dire warning about the coming Atlantic hurricane season, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday predicted that this year could see between 17 to 25 named tropical cyclones, the most it has ever forecast in May for the Atlantic Ocean. The NOAA forecast joins more than a dozen other recent projections from experts at universities, private companies and other government agencies that have predicted a likelihood of 14 or more named storms this season; many were calling for well over 20.Rick Spinrad, the NOAA administrator, said at a news conference on Thursday morning that the agency’s forecasters believed eight to 13 of the named storms could become hurricanes, meaning they would include winds of at least 74 miles per hour. Those could include four to seven major hurricanes — Category 3 or higher — with winds of at least 111 m.p.h.According to NOAA, there is an 85 percent chance of an above-normal season and a 10 percent chance of a near-normal season, with a 5 percent chance of a below-normal season. An average Atlantic hurricane season has 14 named storms, including seven hurricanes and three major hurricanes.While it only takes one storm in a below-average season to devastate a community, having conditions conducive to almost twice the average amount of storms makes it more likely that North America will experience a tropical storm or, worse, a major hurricane.There are 21 entries on this year’s official list of storm names, from Alberto to William. If that list is exhausted, the National Weather Service moves on to an alternative list of names, something it’s only had to do twice in its history. More

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      DeSantis Signs Law Deleting Climate Change From Florida Policy

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      The law also stops programs designed to encourage renewable energy and conservation in a state that is highly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.Florida’s state government will no longer be required to consider climate change when crafting energy policy under legislation signed Wednesday by Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican.The new law, which passed the Florida Legislature in March and takes effect on July 1, will also prohibit the construction of offshore wind turbines in state waters and will repeal state grant programs that encourage energy conservation and renewable energy.The legislation also deletes requirements that state agencies use climate-friendly products and purchase fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prevents any municipality from restricting the type of fuel that can be used in an appliance, such as a gas stove.The legislation, along with two other bills Mr. DeSantis signed on Wednesday, “will keep windmills off our beaches, gas in our tanks, and China out of our state,” the governor wrote on the social media platform X. “We’re restoring sanity in our approach to energy and rejecting the agenda of the radical green zealots.”Florida is one of the states most vulnerable to the costly and deadly impacts of climate change, which is largely driven by the burning of oil, gas and coal. Multiple scientific studies have shown that the increase of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has contributed to sea level rise and more flooding in the state’s coastal cities.Last year was the hottest in Florida since 1895, and the waters off its coast heated to 90 degrees during the summer, bleaching corals and scorching marine life. Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Aug. 30 near Keaton Beach and caused an estimated $3.6 billion in damages. The year before, Hurricane Ian was blamed for more than 140 deaths and $109.5 billion in damages in Florida, becoming the costliest hurricane in state history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Summer 2023 Was the Northern Hemisphere’s Hottest in 2,000 Years, Study Finds

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      Scientists used tree rings to compare last year’s extreme heat with temperatures over the past two millenniums.The summer of 2023 was exceptionally hot. Scientists have already established that it was the warmest Northern Hemisphere summer since around 1850, when people started systematically measuring and recording temperatures.Now, researchers say it was the hottest in 2,000 years, according to a new study published in the journal Nature that compares 2023 with a longer temperature record across most of the Northern Hemisphere. The study goes back before the advent of thermometers and weather stations, to the year A.D. 1, using evidence from tree rings.“That gives us the full picture of natural climate variability,” said Jan Esper, a climatologist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany and lead author of the paper.Extra greenhouse gases in the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels are responsible for most of the recent increases in Earth’s temperature, but other factors — including El Niño, an undersea volcanic eruption and a reduction in sulfur dioxide aerosol pollution from container ships — may have contributed to the extremity of the heat last year.The average temperature from June through August 2023 was 2.20 degrees Celsius warmer than the average summer temperature between the years 1 and 1890, according to the researchers’ tree ring data.And last summer was 2.07 degrees Celsius warmer than the average summer temperature between 1850 and 1900, the years typically considered the base line for the period before human-caused climate change.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      California Will Add a Fixed Charge to Electric Bills and Reduce Rates

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      Officials said the decision would lower bills and encourage people to use cars and appliances that did not use fossil fuels, but some experts said it would discourage energy efficiency.Utility regulators in California on Thursday changed how most residents will pay for energy by adding a new fixed monthly charge and lowering the rates that apply to energy use. Officials said the shift would reduce monthly bills for millions of residents and support the use of electric vehicles and appliances that run on electricity, rather than fossil fuels.The decision by the California Public Utilities Commission will apply to the rates charged by investor-owned utilities, which provide power to about 70 percent of the state. Starting next year, most customers of those companies will be required to pay a $24.15 monthly charge. Low-income customers will pay $6 to $12 a month.Regulators said the revenue from the fixed charge would be paired with a roughly 20 percent reduction in rates assessed by how many kilowatts of energy were used per hour by a home or business. (The average American home uses around 1,000 kilowatt-hours in a month.) California’s residential electric rates, which averaged 31.2 cents per kilowatt-hour in February, are the highest in the country after Hawaii, where rates were about 44 cents, according to the federal Energy Information Administration. The national average in February was 16.1 cents.Some energy experts have argued that California’s high rates for energy use are very likely discouraging some people from buying electric vehicles, heat pumps and induction stoves to replace cars and appliances that run on gasoline and natural gas.“This new billing structure puts us further on the path toward a decarbonized future, while enhancing affordability for low-income customers and those most impacted from climate change-driven heat events,” said Alice Reynolds, president of the utilities commission.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Podesta Meets With China’s Climate Envoy Amid Deep Economic Tensions

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      Beijing’s dominance raises economic and security concerns, and tensions will be on full display as top climate diplomats meet this week.The world’s two most powerful countries, the United States and China, are meeting this week in Washington to talk about climate change. And also their relationship issues.In an ideal world, where the clean energy transition was the top priority, they would be on friendlier terms. Maybe affordable Chinese-made electric vehicles would be widely sold in America, instead of being viewed as an economic threat. Or there would be less need to dig a lithium mine at an environmentally sensitive site in Nevada, because lithium, which is essential for batteries, could be bought worry-free from China, which controls the world’s supply.Instead, in the not-ideal real world, the United States is balancing two competing goals. The Biden administration wants to cut planet-warming emissions by encouraging people to buy things like EVs and solar panels, but it also wants people to buy American, not Chinese. Its concern is that Chinese dominance of the global market for these essential technologies would harm the U.S. economy and national security.Those competing goals will be on vivid display this week, as the Biden Administration’s top climate envoy, John Podesta, meets for the first time with his counterpart from Beijing, Liu Zhenmin, in Washington.Trade tensions are likely to loom over their talks.The flood of Chinese exports, particularly in solar panels and other green-energy technology, has become a real sore spot for the Biden administration as it tries to spur the same industries on American soil. Mr. Podesta has sharply criticized China for having “distorted the global market for clean energy products like solar, batteries and critical minerals.”Not only that, he has set up a task force to explore how to limit exports from countries that have high carbon footprints, a practice that he called “carbon dumping.” That was considered a veiled reference to China.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      What Makes a Society More Resilient? Frequent Hardship.

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      Comparing 30,000 years of human history, researchers found that surviving famine, war or climate change helps groups recover more quickly from future shocks.From the Roman Empire to the Maya civilization, history is filled with social collapses. Traditionally, historians have studied these downturns qualitatively, by diving into the twists and turns of individual societies.But scientists like Philip Riris have taken a broader approach, looking for enduring patterns of human behavior on a vaster scale of time and space. In a study published Wednesday, these methods allowed Dr. Riris and his colleagues to answer a profound question: Why are some societies more resilient than others?The study, published in the journal Nature, compared 16 societies scattered across the world, in places like the Yukon and the Australian outback. With powerful statistical models, the researchers analyzed 30,000 years of archaeological records, tracing the impact of wars, famines and climate change. They found that going through downturns enabled societies to get through future shocks faster. The more often a society went through them, the more resilient it eventually became.“Over time, you will suffer less, essentially,” said Dr. Riris, an archaeologist at Bournemouth University in England. “There tends not to be wholesale collapse.”The researchers tracked the history of societies by taking advantage of the way archaeologists tell time. Most organic material, whether it’s charcoal or mussel shells, contains trace amounts of radioactive carbon-14, which gradually breaks down over thousands of years. By measuring the carbon-14 left at an archaeological site, researchers can estimate its age.This approach can also track population changes. As human groups get bigger, they burn more wood, eat more food and leave behind more garbage, all of which can be dated. When those groups shrink, their sites become rarer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Prevalence of Standing Ovations

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      More from our inbox:China, America and the Climate ChallengeKids’ Reactions to the ‘Cringe-Worthy’ News TodayDebate Conditions Pablo DelcanTo the Editor:Re “Bravo! Hurray! Wahoo! (Meh.),” by John McWhorter (Opinion, April 16):The currency of the standing ovation is indeed seriously debased. The impulse to stand up during the ovation following a performance may in some cases represent a kind of unconscious one-upmanship. “I’m more sensitized than most people to the sublimity of what we all have just witnessed, and it is imperative that I separate myself from the underappreciative herd.”Needless to say, if other audience members follow suit by rising from their seats, then you can raise the ante by hoisting your clapping hands up from the standard mid-torso level to over your head — signifying that the artistry one is acknowledging is not just merely great, but really most sincerely great.I confess that although I invariably applaud performances, I usually “sit out” the competitive appreciation derby, and haul myself to my feet only if I feel particularly inspired. I avoid the over-the-head clapping mode at all times. Maybe this marks me as a philistine; I’ve been called worse.David EnglishActon, Mass.To the Editor:I admit that I’m often among the first to give a standing ovation. I always wondered why the holdouts would deny something so simple to these hardworking actors.You have to walk out of the theater a few minutes later anyway, so why not stretch your legs and participate with your fellow theatergoers in the shared joy of theater? Perhaps it’s generational, cultural or regional, or maybe it’s a combination.Jumping to my feet in appreciation of the actors’ hard work is my way of giving back, and it feels really good! I’m sure the actors like to feel the good will as well.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Plan to Protect Oceans Has a Problem, Some Say: Too Much Fishing

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      An effort to protect 30 percent of land and waters would count some commercial fishing zones as conserved areas.New details of the Biden administration’s signature conservation effort, made public this month amid a burst of other environmental announcements, have alarmed some scientists who study marine protected areas because the plan would count certain commercial fishing zones as conserved.The decision could have ripple effects around the world as nations work toward fulfilling a broader global commitment to safeguard 30 percent of the entire planet’s land, inland waters and seas. That effort has been hailed as historic, but the critical question of what, exactly, counts as conserved is still being decided.This early answer from the Biden administration is worrying, researchers say, because high-impact commercial fishing is incompatible with the goals of the efforts.“Saying that these areas that are touted to be for biodiversity conservation should also do double duty for fishing as well, especially highly impactful gears that are for large-scale commercial take, there’s just a cognitive dissonance there,” said Kirsten Grorud-Colvert, a marine biologist at Oregon State University who led a group of scientists that in 2021 published a guide for evaluating marine protected areas.The debate is unfolding amid a global biodiversity crisis that is speeding extinctions and eroding ecosystems, according to a landmark intergovernmental assessment. As the natural world degrades, its ability to give humans essentials like food and clean water also diminishes. The primary driver of biodiversity declines in the ocean, the assessment found, is overfishing. Climate change is an additional and ever-worsening threat.Fish are an important source of nutrition for billions of people around the world. Research shows that effectively conserving key areas is an key tool to keep stocks healthy while also protecting other ocean life.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More