Copyright © Françoise Herrmann
The COVID-19 pandemic and its lockdown ordinances ushered in the term “new normal”, partly in connection to everyone coping with the great online migration. Dramatic changes in the weather are now ushering in yet another expression of life-altering changes: “the new abnormal”.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) data on US Climate Normals releases updated data every decade, comparing the past 30 years, so that information is provided on weather and precipitation trends on any given day, anywhere in the US. When data was last released, in April 2021, US Climate Normals were already showing a decade warmer than any of the previous ones, and more precipitations everywhere, except in California and the Southwest with dryer weather than ever before.
Most recently, consider the 490 wildfires that burned across Canada, 110 in the Province of Quebec, devastating a record 30,000 square miles (the size of South Carolina). An extreme weather event with wildfire smoke crossing the border to the Great Lakes, and further east, sending particle-filled air quality to New York City, resulting in never-seen-before orange skies on the East Coast of the United States. Satellite images even showed the Canadian wildfire smoke, crossing the Atlantic Ocean, and blanketing the Iberian peninsula in Europe. At the end of the day, the Canadian wildfires sent 160 million tons of carbon in the air.
Indeed warmer weather brings longer and wider fires. On the West Coast, where wildfires happen often, fires burned more than 4 million acres (an area as large as Connecticut) in 2020, also bringing stay-at-home orders to cities like San Francisco, due to the dangerous smoke-filled air quality. On at least one day, smoke particles high in the atmosphere even scattered short blue light waves, only letting longer red-orange waves through to the surface, also resulting in eerie, apocalyptic orange skies, through to midday.
- Making extreme heat hotter, straining energy and healthcare systems.
- Making wildfires burn longer and wilder.
- Making hurricanes more intense, as they draw more energy from warmer oceans.
- Prolonging and intensifying drought conditions, as water evaporates from water bodies and soil.
- Driving increases in precipitation, causing widespread flooding.
- Causing rises in sea levels, as oceans warm, and land ice melts, causing more flooding.
- Causing stronger winter storms, with heavier snowfall.
Indeed, climate change is already the new abnormal. According to the NOOA, the United States had already been struck with 12, separate, billion-dollar, extreme weather-related disasters, as of June 2023.
References
Allan, S. and N. Taylor-Vaisey (July 6, 2023). Literally off the charts: Canada's season sets records–and it's far from over.https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/06/canada-fire-season-00104959
Borenstein, S. and M. Walling (June 30, 2023). Climate change keeps making wildfires and smoke worse. Scientists call it the ‘new abnormal’. Associated Press.https://apnews.com/article/wildfire-smoke-canada-climate-change-new-normal-f22a68e7df9688ef8eccd970efde3baf
Gore, A. (2006). An Inconvenient Truth.
Staff (June 28, 2023). How climate is fueling extreme weather – EarthJustice.
https://earthjustice.org/feature/how-climate-change-is-fueling-extreme-weather
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