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These forests below the Arctic Circle are designed to burn. A camera slowly rises above a large forest of light green trees extending to the horizon. But not this often. A camera slowly rises above a similar landscape, but the forest from this vantage point is burned. The dead black spruce looked like a collection […] More
A new study shows that behavioral and social changes can reduce heat mortality. But challenges remain as temperatures continue to rise.More than 47,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes during 2023, the world’s hottest year on record, a new report in Nature Medicine has found.But the number could have been much higher.Without adaptations to rising temperatures over the past two decades — including advances in health care, more widespread air-conditioning and improved public information that kept people indoors and hydrated during extreme temperatures — the death toll for Europeans experiencing the same temperatures at the start of the 21st century could have been 80 percent higher, according to the new study. For people over 80 years old, the death toll could have doubled.“We need to consider climate change as a health issue,” said Elisa Gallo, a postdoctoral researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, a nonprofit research center, and the lead author of the study. “We still have thousands of deaths caused by heat every year, so we still have to work a lot and we have to work faster.”Counting deaths from extreme heat is difficult, in part because death certificates don’t always reflect the role heat played in a person’s death. The study used publicly available death records in 35 countries, representing about 543 million Europeans and provided by Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union.The researchers used an epidemiological model to analyze the deaths alongside 2023 weekly temperature records to estimate what fraction of deaths could be attributable to heat.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
Las Vegas is among the fastest-warming cities in the United States. More
Right now, every moment of every day, we humans are reconfiguring Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and wetter storms. Higher seas and fiercer wildfires. The steady, upward turn of the dial on a host of threats to our homes, our societies and the environment around us. We might also be changing the climate […] More
The rapidly spreading fire has consumed over 426,000 acres since it started burning in late July. The Park fire, the largest wildfire currently burning in the United States, has torn through over 426,000 acres in Northern California in recent weeks and has destroyed hundreds of homes and other structures.The fire ballooned in size in a matter of days, and it is the largest blaze in California so far this year. Thousands of firefighters and other personnel, some from as far as Utah and Texas, are battling the fire, which was 34 percent contained as of Wednesday.The hot and dry weather has made it difficult for firefighters to suppress the blaze, which is spreading northeast within Lassen National Forest and “ascending slopes with critically dry fuel,” according to Cal Fire. But forecasters say the coming days could bring lower temperatures and higher humidity levels in the fire zone. Current unseasonably warm temperatures are expected to steadily fade and give way to highs in the 70s next week.“It’s not a dramatic change, it’s slow. But each day is getting a little better,” said Eric Kurth, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Sacramento. “That’s certainly helpful.”Here’s what to know about the fire.The Park fire has burned more than 426,000 acres.Loren Elliott for The New York TimesWhen and how did the fire start?The fire ignited on July 24 near Chico, a college town in Butte County, north of Sacramento. After igniting, the fire exploded to more than 120,000 acres by the next day and then nearly doubled in size the night after that. Officials said the cause of the fire was arson.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
A new study found that temperatures in the Coral Sea have reached their highest levels in at least four centuries.This generation will probably see the demise of the Great Barrier Reef unless humanity acts with far more urgency to rein in climate change, according to scientists in Australia who released new research on heat in the surrounding ocean.The Great Barrier Reef is the largest coral reef system in the world and is often called the largest living structure on Earth. The study, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, found that recent extreme temperatures in the Coral Sea are at their highest in at least 400 years, as far back as their analysis could reach.It included modeling that showed what has been driving those extremes: Greenhouse gas emissions caused by humans burning fossil fuels and destroying natural places that store carbon, like forests.“The heat extremes are occurring too often for those corals to effectively adapt and evolve,” said Ben Henley, a paleoclimatologist at the University of Melbourne and an author of the new study. “If we don’t divert from our current course, our generation will likely witness the demise of one of Earth’s great natural wonders, the Great Barrier Reef.”The study’s scientific prose put it this way: “The existential threat to the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem from anthropogenic climate change is now realized.”Tanya Plibersek, Australia’s environment minister, said in a statement that the government understood its responsibility to act on climate change and safeguard the reef. She pointed to a recent law that calls for a 43 percent reduction of emissions by 2030 and to $1.2 billion in measures to protect the reef.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
Researchers with the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service said Sunday was Earth’s hottest day. Then it happened again on Monday.Monday was most likely the hottest day ever recorded on Earth, with a global average of about 62.87 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.15 degrees Celsius, preliminary data showed — beating a record that had been set just one day before.The data, released on Wednesday by the Copernicus Climate Change Service, a European Union institution that provides information about the past, present and future climate, caused alarm among some experts.Earlier this week, the service announced that Sunday had set a record, with a global average of about 62.76 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.09 degrees Celsius. A day later it announced that Monday was the hottest day since at least 1940, when records began.Before this week’s back-to-back records, the previous record, 62.74 degrees Fahrenheit, or 17.08 degrees Celsius, was set last year, on July 6, besting a record that stood since 2016.Since Sunday’s and Monday’s temperatures were averages, some portions of the globe felt that extra heat more strongly, like parts of the Western United States where an excessive heat warning has been in place for days and is expected to continue for much of the week.“What is truly staggering is how large the difference is between the temperature of the last 13 months and the previous temperature records,” Carlo Buontempo, the director of the service, said in a news release announcing Sunday’s record. “We are now in truly uncharted territory and as the climate keeps warming, we are bound to see new records being broken in future months and years.”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
A waterlogged hillside above a village gave way, burying several houses in mud. Neighbors and rescue workers who had rushed to help were hit by a second slide.More than 150 people were killed in southwestern Ethiopia on Monday after a landslide flattened several houses in a village following days of heavy rain, and neighbors who rushed to dig out those buried under the mud were hit with a second landslide about an hour later.The first landslide struck the village in the Geze district between 8:30 and 9 a.m. on Monday, said Habtamu Fetena, who heads the local government’s emergency response. Nearly 300 people from two neighboring villages ran to the area to help and began digging through the mud by hand.Then about an hour later, without warning, more mud slid down the hillside above the village, and killed many of those trying to help their neighbors.“They had no clue that the land they were standing on was about to swallow them,” Mr. Fetana said.The first landslide killed entire families as mud rolled down the hillside, officials said. Teachers and health care workers were among those killed in the second landslide. Among those killed in the second landslide was the local administrative leader, who had also rushed to the scene. Most of those who have died were men, but pregnant women and children were also among the dead, Mr. Fetana said.A man uses his hands to search for survivors and victims of the landslide.Isayas Churga/Gofa Zone Government Communication Affairs Department, via Associated PressThe death toll was expected to rise as more victims were pulled from the mud. As of Tuesday afternoon, just 10 people had been pulled alive from the landslide, officials said.The largely rural area had experienced several days of heavy rain, hampering rescue efforts and saturating the land, causing multiple landslides.The devastated village lies in a region that is increasingly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. In recent years, East Africa has experienced increasingly extreme weather, including long droughts followed by intense storms, according to the United Nations. A third of the countries considered most susceptible to the risks of climate change are in southern and eastern Africa.The area where the landslides occurred is impossible to reach by heavy machinery, so villagers and rescue workers were forced to dig by hand. Images from the scene showed a gash in the green hillside where the mud slid down, with rescue workers, knee-deep in the mud, using hoes and shovels, or their bare hands, to search for victims.The area has seen disasters like this before, another local administrator, Dagmawi Ayele, told the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation. While some villages were moved after previous disasters, landslides were now occurring in unexpected regions, he added.A video released by the local government shows survivors of the landslide in southwestern Ethiopia.Gofa Zone Government Communication Affairs Department, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images More
