Explainer: What’s causing the recent U.S. heat waves?

Much of the United States will experience another heat wave this week, with above-normal temperatures forecast for the Pacific Northwest, Southern Plains and the Lower Mississippi Valley.

The extreme heat is fueling a fast-moving California wildfire, just went of Yosemite National Park. The Oak Fire has destroyed 10 structures and is 10% contained.

The U.S. heat wave followed record heat that killed hundreds if not thousands of people and sparked wildfires in Europe.

Continue reading on Reuters.

Trees are overrated

Preserving the world’s great expanses of grass could be essential to combatting climate change.

Once upon a time, not a blade of grass could be found on this planet we call home. There were no verdant meadows, no golden prairies, no sunbaked savannas, and certainly no lawns. Only in the past 80 million years—long after the appearance of mosses, trees, and flowers—did the first shoots of grass emerge. We know this in part because a dinosaur ate some, and its fossilized poop forever memorialized the plant’s arrival.

Grass then was still an odd little weed, vying for a spot on the forest floor. It took ages for grasses to grow in numbers that might constitute a grassland. And grasslands only started to occupy serious real estate in the past 10 million years—basically yesterday. They now cover roughly one-third of Earth’s land area.

Continue reading on The Atlantic.

Record-breaking heat waves in US and Europe prove climate change is already here, experts say

Concurrent heat waves across the globe will continue to shatter records.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are currently experiencing sweltering, dangerous heat — a new reality as the effects of climate change continue to manifest in severe weather events of every kind.

A scorching airmass remains over the majority of the continental U.S. on Wednesday, with a heat dome sitting over the Southwest and Great Plains and triple-digit temperatures stretching throughout the Midwest and up and down the East Coast.

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon hits record for first half of 2022

A drone image of smoky burned trees in the Cerrado

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest reached a record high for the first six months of the year, as an area five times the size of New York City was destroyed, preliminary government data showed on Friday.

From January to June, 3,988 square km (1,540 square miles) were cleared in the region, according to national space research agency Inpe.

That’s an increase of 10.6% from the same months last year and the highest level for that period since the agency began compiling its current DETER-B data series in mid-2015.

Continue reading on Reuters.

Heat and fires scorch northern Canada

In July 2022, a combination of lightning, dry weather, and unusual heat fueled hundreds of wildland fires in northern Canada. According to the Canadian government, 136 fires were burning in The Yukon and 65 in the Northwest Territories on July 6.

Geologic tick

How a prehistoric landslide in San Juans can help communities deal with climate change

A steep slope in the San Juan Mountains, CO

A newly documented landslide in the San Juan Mountains that dates back to the last Ice Age might help answer one of climate change’s most pressing questions: do retreating glaciers increase the frequency and intensity of landslides?

Continue reading on the Durango Telegraph.