On the Highway to Climate Hell. The world’s infrastructure was built for a climate that no longer exists. Countries have spent decades building critical infrastructure that is now buckling under extreme heat, wildfires, and floods. They were laying bare just how unprepared the world’s energy and transportation systems are to withstand the volatility of climate...
Record temperatures are driving food prices higher. Here are some of the crops facing the biggest impacts. What’s in your regular shopping basket? What are the foods you can’t live without? And what are your occasional treats? Whatever they are, it’s pretty likely you’ve noticed a change in their price over recent months—some more than...
Scorching temperatures have put millions of Americans in danger this summer, with heat extremes stretching from coast to coast in the Southern U.S. Phoenix hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43.3 Celsius) or higher every day for over three weeks in July. Other major cities, from Las Vegas to Miami, experienced relentless high temperatures, which residents described as...
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The Acropolis has stood above the city of Athens for centuries, its ancient walls and pillars withstanding war, siege and conquest. But as temperatures crested 40C across southern Europe this month, Greece’s top tourist attraction briefly fell victim to extreme heat. Officials shut the site for several hours during the hottest parts of the day,...
The floods, droughts, wildfires and extreme heat sweeping the globe are offering a dose of the climate future that scientists have warned about for decades — and all the ways the world is not ready. From a nearly depleted federal disaster fund to state insurance markets that are faltering under the weight of multiple catastrophes, extreme weather is testing the ability of...
Earth’s average temperature set a new unofficial record high on Thursday, the third such milestone in a week that already rated as the hottest on record and what one prominent scientist says could be the hottest in 120,000 years. But it’s also a record with some legitimate scientific questions and caveats, so much so that the National...
It was a smell that invoked a memory. Both for Emily Kuchlbauer in North Carolina and Ryan Bomba in Chicago. It was smoke from wildfires, the odor of an increasingly hot and occasionally on-fire world. Kuchlbauer had flashbacks to the surprise of soot coating her car three years ago when she was a recent college...
Wildfires are hurting many industries and could strain households across Canada, one of many countries reckoning with the impact of extreme weather. Canada’s wildfires have burned 20 million acres, blanketed Canadian and U.S. cities with smoke and raised health concerns on both sides of the border, with no end in sight. The toll on the Canadian economy is...
These readings will get you up to speed on the causes and impacts of flooding around the world. By now, it’s clear, one result of global warming is more flooding. Considering only instances caused by torrential rainstorms (not hurricanes, glacial-lake outbursts, or other factors), here is a partial list of countries that had significant floods...