Category: Climate

The changing climate

Here is one explanation.

There is no question the world’s weather systems are changing. However, for folk who are not trained in this science it is all a bit mysterious. So thank goodness that The Conversation have not only got a scientist who does know what he is talking about but also they are very happy for it to be republished.

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Atmospheric rivers are shifting poleward, reshaping global weather patterns

Atmospheric rivers are long filaments of moisture that curve poleward. Several are visible in this satellite image. Bin Guan, NASA/JPL-Caltech and UCLA

Zhe Li, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

Atmospheric rivers – those long, narrow bands of water vapor in the sky that bring heavy rain and storms to the U.S. West Coast and many other regions – are shifting toward higher latitudes, and that’s changing weather patterns around the world.

The shift is worsening droughts in some regions, intensifying flooding in others, and putting water resources that many communities rely on at risk. When atmospheric rivers reach far northward into the Arctic, they can also melt sea ice, affecting the global climate.

In a new study published in Science Advances, University of California, Santa Barbara, climate scientist Qinghua Ding and I show that atmospheric rivers have shifted about 6 to 10 degrees toward the two poles over the past four decades.

Atmospheric rivers on the move

Atmospheric rivers aren’t just a U.S West Coast thing. They form in many parts of the world and provide over half of the mean annual runoff in these regions, including the U.S. Southeast coasts and West Coast, Southeast Asia, New Zealand, northern Spain, Portugal, the United Kingdom and south-central Chile.

California relies on atmospheric rivers for up to 50% of its yearly rainfall. A series of winter atmospheric rivers there can bring enough rain and snow to end a drought, as parts of the region saw in 2023.

Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world, as this animation of global satellite data from February 2017 shows. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio

While atmospheric rivers share a similar origin – moisture supply from the tropics – atmospheric instability of the jet stream allows them to curve poleward in different ways. No two atmospheric rivers are exactly alike.

What particularly interests climate scientists, including us, is the collective behavior of atmospheric rivers. Atmospheric rivers are commonly seen in the extratropics, a region between the latitudes of 30 and 50 degrees in both hemispheres that includes most of the continental U.S., southern Australia and Chile.

Our study shows that atmospheric rivers have been shifting poleward over the past four decades. In both hemispheres, activity has increased along 50 degrees north and 50 degrees south, while it has decreased along 30 degrees north and 30 degrees south since 1979. In North America, that means more atmospheric rivers drenching British Columbia and Alaska.

A global chain reaction

One main reason for this shift is changes in sea surface temperatures in the eastern tropical Pacific. Since 2000, waters in the eastern tropical Pacific have had a cooling tendency, which affects atmospheric circulation worldwide. This cooling, often associated with La Niña conditions, pushes atmospheric rivers toward the poles.

The poleward movement of atmospheric rivers can be explained as a chain of interconnected processes.

During La Niña conditions, when sea surface temperatures cool in the eastern tropical Pacific, the Walker circulation – giant loops of air that affect precipitation as they rise and fall over different parts of the tropics – strengthens over the western Pacific. This stronger circulation causes the tropical rainfall belt to expand. The expanded tropical rainfall, combined with changes in atmospheric eddy patterns, results in high-pressure anomalies and wind patterns that steer atmospheric rivers farther poleward.

An animation of satellite data shows sea surface temperatures changing over months along the equator in the eastern Pacific Ocean. When they're warmer than normal, that indicates El Niño forming. Cooler than normal indicates La Nina.
La Niña, with cooler water in the eastern Pacific, fades, and El Niño, with warmer water, starts to form in the tropical Pacific Ocean in 2023. NOAA Climate.gov

Conversely, during El Niño conditions, with warmer sea surface temperatures, the mechanism operates in the opposite direction, shifting atmospheric rivers so they don’t travel as far from the equator.

The shifts raise important questions about how climate models predict future changes in atmospheric rivers. Current models might underestimate natural variability, such as changes in the tropical Pacific, which can significantly affect atmospheric rivers. Understanding this connection can help forecasters make better predictions about future rainfall patterns and water availability.

Why does this poleward shift matter?

A shift in atmospheric rivers can have big effects on local climates.

In the subtropics, where atmospheric rivers are becoming less common, the result could be longer droughts and less water. Many areas, such as California and southern Brazil, depend on atmospheric rivers for rainfall to fill reservoirs and support farming. Without this moisture, these areas could face more water shortages, putting stress on communities, farms and ecosystems.

In higher latitudes, atmospheric rivers moving poleward could lead to more extreme rainfall, flooding and landslides in places such as the U.S. Pacific Northwest, Europe, and even in polar regions.

A long narrow band of moisture sweeps up toward California, crossing hundreds of miles of Pacific Ocean.
A satellite image on Feb. 20, 2017, shows an atmospheric river stretching from Hawaii to California, where it brought drenching rain. NASA/Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen

In the Arctic, more atmospheric rivers could speed up sea ice melting, adding to global warming and affecting animals that rely on the ice. An earlier study I was involved in found that the trend in summertime atmospheric river activity may contribute 36% of the increasing trend in summer moisture over the entire Arctic since 1979.

What it means for the future

So far, the shifts we have seen still mainly reflect changes due to natural processes, but human-induced global warming also plays a role. Global warming is expected to increase the overall frequency and intensity of atmospheric rivers because a warmer atmosphere can hold more moisture.

How that might change as the planet continues to warm is less clear. Predicting future changes remains uncertain due largely to the difficulty in predicting the natural swings between El Niño and La Niña, which play an important role in atmospheric river shifts.

As the world gets warmer, atmospheric rivers – and the critical rains they bring – will keep changing course. We need to understand and adapt to these changes so communities can keep thriving in a changing climate.

Zhe Li, Postdoctoral Researcher in Earth System Science, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Those last two paragraphs of the above article show the difficulty in coming up with clear predictions of the future. As was said: ‘How that might change as the planet continues to warm is less clear. Predicting future changes remains uncertain due largely to the difficulty in predicting the natural swings between El Niño and La Niña, which play an important role in atmospheric river shifts.‘

Ancient times

This attracted me very much, and I wanted to share it with you.

The opening paragraph of this article caught my eye so I read it fully. As it was published in The Conversation then that meant I could republish it.

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Centuries ago, the Maya storm god Huracán taught that when we damage nature, we damage ourselves

An illustration of K’awiil, the Maya god of storm, on pottery. K2970 from the Justin Kerr Maya archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.

James L. Fitzsimmons, Middlebury

The ancient Maya believed that everything in the universe, from the natural world to everyday experiences, was part of a single, powerful spiritual force. They were not polytheists who worshipped distinct gods but pantheists who believed that various gods were just manifestations of that force.

Some of the best evidence for this comes from the behavior of two of the most powerful beings of the Maya world: The first is a creator god whose name is still spoken by millions of people every fall – Huracán, or “Hurricane.” The second is a god of lightning, K’awiil, from the early first millennium C.E.

As a scholar of the Indigenous religions of the Americas, I recognize that these beings, though separated by over 1,000 years, are related and can teach us something about our relationship to the natural world.

Huracán, the ‘Heart of Sky’

Huracán was once a god of the K’iche’, one of the Maya peoples who today live in the southern highlands of Guatemala. He was one of the main characters of the Popol Vuh, a religious text from the 16th century. His name probably originated in the Caribbean, where other cultures used it to describe the destructive power of storms.

The K’iche’ associated Huracán, which means “one leg” in the K’iche’ language, with weather. He was also their primary god of creation and was responsible for all life on earth, including humans.

Because of this, he was sometimes known as U K’ux K’aj, or “Heart of Sky.” In the K’iche’ language, k’ux was not only the heart but also the spark of life, the source of all thought and imagination.

Yet, Huracán was not perfect. He made mistakes and occasionally destroyed his creations. He was also a jealous god who damaged humans so they would not be his equal. In one such episode, he is believed to have clouded their vision, thus preventing them from being able to see the universe as he saw it.

Huracán was one being who existed as three distinct persons: Thunderbolt Huracán, Youngest Thunderbolt and Sudden Thunderbolt. Each of them embodied different types of lightning, ranging from enormous bolts to small or sudden flashes of light.

Despite the fact that he was a god of lightning, there were no strict boundaries between his powers and the powers of other gods. Any of them might wield lightning, or create humanity, or destroy the Earth.

Another storm god

The Popol Vuh implies that gods could mix and match their powers at will, but other religious texts are more explicit. One thousand years before the Popol Vuh was written, there was a different version of Huracán called K’awiil. During the first millennium, people from southern Mexico to western Honduras venerated him as a god of agriculture, lightning and royalty.

A drawing showing a reclining god-like figure with a large snake around him.
The ancient Maya god K’awiil, left, had an ax or torch in his forehead as well as a snake in place of his right leg. K5164 from the Justin Kerr Maya archive, Dumbarton Oaks, Trustees for Harvard University, Washington, D.C.

Illustrations of K’awiil can be found everywhere on Maya pottery and sculpture. He is almost human in many depictions: He has two arms, two legs and a head. But his forehead is the spark of life – and so it usually has something that produces sparks sticking out of it, such as a flint ax or a flaming torch. And one of his legs does not end in a foot. In its place is a snake with an open mouth, from which another being often emerges.

Indeed, rulers, and even gods, once performed ceremonies to K’awiil in order to try and summon other supernatural beings. As personified lightning, he was believed to create portals to other worlds, through which ancestors and gods might travel.

Representation of power

For the ancient Maya, lightning was raw power. It was basic to all creation and destruction. Because of this, the ancient Maya carved and painted many images of K’awiil. Scribes wrote about him as a kind of energy – as a god with “many faces,” or even as part of a triad similar to Huracán.

He was everywhere in ancient Maya art. But he was also never the focus. As raw power, he was used by others to achieve their ends.

Rain gods, for example, wielded him like an ax, creating sparks in seeds for agriculture. Conjurers summoned him, but mostly because they believed he could help them communicate with other creatures from other worlds. Rulers even carried scepters fashioned in his image during dances and processions.

Moreover, Maya artists always had K’awiil doing something or being used to make something happen. They believed that power was something you did, not something you had. Like a bolt of lightning, power was always shifting, always in motion.

An interdependent world

Because of this, the ancient Maya thought that reality was not static but ever-changing. There were no strict boundaries between space and time, the forces of nature or the animate and inanimate worlds.

People walking through knee-deep water on a flooded street with building on either side and electric wires overhead.
Residents wade through a street flooded by Hurricane Helene, in Batabano, Mayabeque province, Cuba, on Sept. 26, 2024. AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa

Everything was malleable and interdependent. Theoretically, anything could become anything else – and everything was potentially a living being. Rulers could ritually turn themselves into gods. Sculptures could be hacked to death. Even natural features such as mountains were believed to be alive.

These ideas – common in pantheist societies – persist today in some communities in the Americas.

They were once mainstream, however, and were a part of K’iche’ religion 1,000 years later, in the time of Huracán. One of the lessons of the Popol Vuh, told during the episode where Huracán clouds human vision, is that the human perception of reality is an illusion.

The illusion is not that different things exist. Rather it is that they exist independent from one another. Huracán, in this sense, damaged himself by damaging his creations.

Hurricane season every year should remind us that human beings are not independent from nature but part of it. And like Hurácan, when we damage nature, we damage ourselves.

James L. Fitzsimmons, Professor of Anthropology, Middlebury

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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It is such a powerful message, that when we damage nature, we damage ourselves.

But I am unaware, no we are both unaware of a solution, and there doesn’t appear to be a government desire to make this the number one topic.

Please, if there is anyone who reads this post and has a more positive message then we would be very keen to hear from you.

Picture Parade Four Hundred and Forty-Nine

A beautiful shot from Southern California.

This photograph was forwarded to me from Dan Gomez, who took it on the morning of last Tuesday.

It was taken in the Coachella Valley and was a morning shot of the sun through the haze caused by the Lion Fire.

Fabulous!

There is no-one else

We are speaking of the universe.

I follow Patrice Ayme and have done for many years. Some of his posts are super-intellectual and those I struggle to understand.

But a post published on September 8th, 2024 was very easy for me, and countless others no doubt, to understand and I have pleasure in republishing it on Learning from Dogs today.

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No Civilizations Out There, We Are It. We Must Rise To The Occasion

September 8, 2024

I doubt that there are civilizations around. We are facing a galaxy devoid of intelligent aliens: little green mats out there, not little green men.

First, we don’t see them. With foreseeable technology (hibernation, nuclear propulsion, compact thermonuclear reactors, bioengineering, AI, quantum computers) we should be able to send very large interstellar spaceships at 1,000 kilometers per second… Thus it would take a millennium to colonize the Centaur tri-star system…. 25,000 years to colonize a 200 light years across ball… And the entire galaxy in ten million years… Wars would only accelerate the expansion. So if there was a galactic civilization, within ten million years it would have spanned the entire galaxy and its presence should be in sight.

Second, life took nearly four billion years to evolve animals. Bacterial life could have been nearly extinguished on Earth many times…. Be it only during the Snowball Earths episodes. A star whizzing by could have launched a thousand large comets. The large planets could have fallen inward.

Third, ultra intelligent life may not be able to have hands or tentacles and thus develop industry. Once intelligent life forms have evolved, say sea lions or parrots, let alone wolves, they may just be sitting ducks for the next disaster which would revert life to the bacterial level, erasing billions of years of evolution.

Fourth, when civilization is launched, it can fail… And not get a second chance (from lack of availability of mines after easy picking during the initial civilization).

Fifth, nuclear powered Earth is special. Earth has plate tectonics, probably from a nuclear reactor at the core, keeps the CO2 just so for a temperate temperature… Water, but not too much. Her large Moon stabilizes her. Earth doesn’t have a weird rotation like Venus (retrograde and slow) or Mars (spectacularly tilting axis). Ian Miller has aluminosilicates considerations on top of that.

So I don’t expect little green men… Besides those sent by the perverse Putin…

Just when we thought we knew of all the stress, here is another one: if we go extinct, the universe loses its soul! We have thus found a new Superior Moral Directive: SUS, Save Unique Soul!

Expect little green mats, not little green men.

Patrice Ayme

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A couple of weeks ago I gave a talk to our local Freethinkers group and called it The Next Ten Years. It began, thus:

This presentation is about the world of the future; of the near future. And the biggest issue, most agree, is the change in the climate. 

The Global Temperature anomaly, as of last year, 2023, is 1.17 Centigrade, 2.11 Fahrenheit, above the long-term average from 1951 to 1980. The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry is quoted as saying that ‘a goal without a plan is just a wish.’ So my plan is to show you how we can change, no let me put that more strongly, how we must change in the next ten years. Because our present habits are ruining the world.

The weather conundrum!

We are in an era of unknown weather, across the world!

Niccolò Ubalducci Photographer
Photo by Niccolò Ubalducci

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The climate is changing so fast that we haven’t seen how bad extreme weather could get

Simon H. Lee, University of St Andrews; Hayley J. Fowler, Newcastle University, and Paul Davies, Newcastle University

Published: July 30, 2024

Extreme weather is by definition rare on our planet. Ferocious storms, searing heatwaves and biting cold snaps illustrate what the climate is capable of at its worst. However, since Earth’s climate is rapidly warming, predominantly due to fossil fuel burning, the range of possible weather conditions, including extremes, is changing.

Scientists define “climate” as the distribution of possible weather events observed over a length of time, such as the range of temperatures, rainfall totals or hours of sunshine. From this they construct statistical measures, such as the average (or normal) temperature. Weather varies on several timescales – from seconds to decades – so the longer the period over which the climate is analysed, the more accurately these analyses capture the infinite range of possible configurations of the atmosphere.

Typically, meteorologists and climate scientists use a 30-year period to represent the climate, which is updated every ten years. The most recent climate period is 1991-2020. The difference between each successive 30-year climate period serves as a very literal record of climate change.

This way of thinking about the climate falls short when the climate itself is rapidly changing. Global average temperatures have increased at around 0.2°C per decade over the past 30 years, meaning that the global climate of 1991 was around 0.6°C cooler than that in 2020 (when accounting for other year-to-year fluctuations), and even more so than the present day.

A moving target for climate modellers

If the climate is a range of possible weather events, then this rapid change has two implications. First, it means that part of the distribution of weather events comprising a 30-year climate period occurred in a very different background global climate: for example, northerly winds in the 1990s were much colder than those in the 2020s in north-west Europe, thanks to the Arctic warming nearly four times faster than the global average. Statistics from three decades ago no longer represent what is possible in the present day.

Second, the rapidly changing climate means we have not necessarily experienced the extremes that modern-day atmospheric and oceanic warmth can produce. In a stable climate, scientists would have multiple decades for the atmosphere to get into its various configurations and drive extreme events, such as heatwaves, floods or droughts. We could then use these observations to build up an understanding of what the climate is capable of. But in our rapidly changing climate, we effectively have only a few years – not enough to experience everything the climate has to offer.

Extreme weather events require what meteorologists might call a “perfect storm”. For example, extreme heat in the UK typically requires the northward movement of an air mass from Africa combined with clear skies, dry soils and a stable atmosphere to prevent thunderstorms forming which tend to dissipate heat.

Such “perfect” conditions are intrinsically unlikely, and many years can pass without them occurring – all while the climate continues to change in the background. Based on an understanding of observations alone, this can leave us woefully underprepared for what the climate can now do, should the right weather conditions all come together at once.

Startling recent examples include the extreme heatwave in the Pacific north-west of North America in 2021, in which temperatures exceeded the previous Canadian record maximum by 4.6°C. Another is the occurrence of 40°C in the UK in summer 2022, which exceeded the previous UK record maximum set only three years earlier by 1.6°C. This is part of the reason why the true impact of a fixed amount of global warming is only evident after several decades, but of course – since the climate is changing rapidly – we cannot use this method anymore.

Playing with fire

To better understand these extremes, scientists can use ensembles: many runs of the same weather or climate model that each slightly differ to show a range of plausible outcomes. Ensembles are routinely used in weather prediction, but can also be used to assess extreme events which could happen even if they do not actually happen at the time.

When 40°C first appeared in ensemble forecasts for the UK before the July 2022 heatwave, it revealed the kind of extreme weather that is possible in the current climate. Even if it had not come to fruition, its mere appearance in the models showed that the previously unthinkable was now possible. In the event, several naturally occurring atmospheric factors combined with background climate warming to generate the record-shattering heat on July 19 that year.

The highest observed temperature each year in the UK, from 1900 to 2023

A graph showing the highest observed temperature in the UK between 1900 and 2023.
The hottest days are getting hotter in the UK. Met Office/Kendon et al. 2024

Later in summer 2022, after the first occurrence of 40°C, some ensemble weather forecasts for the UK showed a situation in which 40°C could be reached on multiple consecutive days. This would have posed an unprecedented threat to public health and infrastructure in the UK. Unlike the previous month, this event did not come to pass, and was quickly forgotten – but it shouldn’t have been.

It is not certain whether these model simulations correctly represent the processes involved in producing extreme heat. Even so, we must heed the warning signs.

Despite a record-warm planet, summer 2024 in the UK has been relatively cool so far. The past two years have seen global temperatures far above anything previously observed, and so potential extremes have probably shifted even further from what we have so far experienced.

Just as was the case in August 2022, we’ve got away with it for now – but we might not be so lucky next time.

Simon H. Lee, Lecturer in Atmospheric Science, University of St Andrews; Hayley J. Fowler, Professor of Climate Change Impacts, Newcastle University, and Paul Davies, Chief Meteorologist, Met Office and Visiting Professor, Newcastle University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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That last sentence says it all: “Just as was the case in August 2022, we’ve got away with it for now – but we might not be so lucky next time.”

I am giving a talk, The Next Ten Years, next Saturday to our local Freethinkers group in Grants Pass. Close to the start of the presentation I say: “The Global Temperature anomaly, as of last year, 2023, is 1.17 C, 2.11 F, above the long-term average from 1951 to 1980. The 10 most recent years are the warmest years on record.“

Finally, I am getting on in age and part of me wants to die, hopefully naturally, before more climate extremes are reached, but then another part of me would like to experience it!

Wildfire prevention

This is a precarious time of the year!

We live just outside Merlin in Southern Oregon. We have 13 acres of which roughly half is wooded. With the year-on-year warming wildfires are never far from our minds during our Summer. Here’s a part of a message from OPB.

What’s happening

High temperatures are in the forecast along the Interstate 5 corridor, the Willamette Valley and in Central and Eastern Oregon. More than a quarter million acres across multiple counties in Eastern Oregon are ablaze with wildfires, and that could mean smoke and haze, especially in Central and northeastern Oregon.

A view of the southern portion of the Lone Rock Fire in north-central Oregon on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.
A view of the southern portion of the Lone Rock Fire in north-central Oregon on Wednesday, July 17, 2024.Courtesy InciWeb 

Hot weather persists

The National Weather Service is anticipating a hot weekend across much of Oregon and Southwest Washington. The agency on Friday issued a heat advisory along the Interstate 5 corridor from Battle Ground, Washington to Cottage Grove, Oregon from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Saturday. Temperatures could reach the mid-90s.

From central Oregon east towards Burns a heat advisory is in place from 11 a.m. Saturday to 11 p.m. Monday. Harney County could see temperatures over 100 degrees over the weekend.

Which neatly serves as an introduction to an article from The Conversation about protecting one’s home.

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How to protect your home from wildfires – here’s what fire prevention experts say is most important

Bryce Young, University of Montana and Chris Moran, University of Montana

Extreme heat has already made 2024 a busy wildfire year. More acres had burned by mid-July than in all of 2023, and several communities had lost homes to wildfires.

As fire season intensifies across the West, there are steps homeowners can take to make their homes less vulnerable to burning and increase the likelihood that firefighters can protect their property in the event of a wildfire.

We research wildfire risk to homes and communities. Here’s what decades of research suggest homeowners in high-fire-risk areas can do to protect their properties.

Two photos show the house with the fire behind it and after the fire, with burned land around it but the house untouched.
This house near Cle Elum, Wash., survived a 2012 wildfire because of the defensible space around the structure, including a lack of trees and brush close to the house, according to state officials. AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

Small improvements make big differences

A structure’s flammability depends on both the materials that were used to build it and the design of the building. In general, the vulnerability of a house is determined by its weakest point.

The roof, windows, siding and vents are all vulnerable points to pay attention to.

Roof: The roof provides a landing pad where airborne embers can accumulate like snowflakes. Roofs with lots of valleys can collect pine needles and leaves, which can be ignited by flying embers. This is why it’s important for the roof itself to be made of Class A non-flammable material like clay tiles or asphalt shingles, and why roof maintenance, including cleaning gutters, is important. Embers can easily find their way under peeling shingles, through gaps of clay tiles, or into gutters where pine needles and leaves can accumulate.

Windows: If windows are exposed to heat, they can shatter and allow fire inside the home, where curtains can easily ignite. Even double-paned windows can be shattered by the heat of a burning shed 30 feet away, unless the window glass is tempered, making it stronger. Fire-resistant shutters made of metal, if closed before a fire arrives, can offer additional protection. https://www.youtube.com/embed/HjA9yLP1icg?wmode=transparent&start=0 A life-size test with blowing embers at IBHS’s fire lab shows ways homes are at risk form a nearby fire.

Siding: Materials like stucco are non-flammable, while cedar shake siding will burn. Your exterior siding should be non-flammable, but the siding is only as strong as its weakest point. If there are holes in the siding, plug them with caulk to prevent embers from reaching the wooden frame in your walls. Ideally, there will be a 6- to 12-inch concrete foundation between the ground and the bottom of your siding material.

Vents: Reducing risk from vents is easy and affordable and can drastically reduce the flammability of your home. Make sure that one-eighth inch or finer metal mesh is installed over all vents to keep embers out of your attic and your home’s interior.

Controlling your home ignition zone

A home’s vulnerability also depends on the area around it, referred to as the home ignition zone.

The risk in your home ignition zone depends on things such as the slope of your land and the ecosystem surrounding your home. Here are a few guidelines the National Fire Protection Association recommends, both to reduce the chance of flames reaching your home and make it easier for firefighters to defend it.

Zone 1 – Within 5 feet

From the home’s exterior to 5 feet away, you want to prevent flames from coming in contact with windows, siding, vents and eaves. The gold standard is to have only non-flammable material in Zone 1.

The most common risks are having flammable mulch, plants, firewood, lawn furniture, decks and fences. These items have been a primary reason homes burned in many wildfires, including the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of Paradise, California, and the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire near Colorado Springs, Colorado.

An illustration of a house with rings at different distances around it and advice for each ring.
Fire protection guidelines take into consideration the surrounding ecosystem. Here some examples based on the National Fire Protection Association’s guidelines. Bryce Young, CC BY

Replacing mulch with gravel or pavers and having only short, sparse plants that don’t touch the house can help reduce the risk.

Wooden decks and fences can burn even if they are well-maintained. Replacing them with non-flammable materials or installing a thin sheet of metal on the house where the siding touches a wooden deck or fence can help protect the home. Mesh screens can prevent the accumulation of debris and embers under the deck.

Zone 2 – 5 to 30 feet away

In the next ring, between 5 and 30 feet from the home, the lawn should be green and short. This is Zone 2.

Be sure to rake up pine needles and leaves and take care to prune the lowest tree branches at least 6 feet high.

There should be about 18 feet of space between trees on a flat slope, and the spacing should increase with slope because steeper terrain drives faster, more intense fires. Walks, pathways, patios, decks and firewood can be kept in this zone.

Zone 3 – 30 to 100 feet away

Beyond Zone 2 and out to about 100 feet from the home is Zone 3. In this area, be sure to give sheds and propane tanks their own defensible space, just like around the house, and prune all low branches to 6 feet.

You can contact your local emergency management office or community wildfire nonprofit to learn more about grant funding that can offset the costs of pruning and removing trees on a forested property.

Beyond 100 feet may extend past your property boundary, but the adjacent house can still be fuel for a wildfire. That’s why it’s smart to plan with your neighbors as you’re reinforcing your own home. Once one house catches fire, house-to-house fire spread is facilitated by closer distances between buildings.

Be prepared

While most U.S. government spending aims to mitigate wildfire hazard on national forests, it is up to residents and communities themselves to reduce their vulnerability to a wildfire disaster.

Following the guidelines required by your community or state and those outlined above can help. Communities can also take steps to reduce fire risk and make fires easier to control by developing a community wildfire protection plan, exploring their wildfire risk, and adopting wildfire-specific building codes.

As the nation rolls into fire season, make sure your property is prepared. And when the call to evacuate comes, know where to go and get the heck out.

Bryce Young, Graduate Student Researcher, Fire Center, University of Montana and Chris Moran, Post-doctoral Researcher, Fire Center, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Where we live is beautiful and earlier this year we had a great deal of rain. But the summers are dry; that is a function of the climate in this part of the world. So for July so far we have had no rain and that is normal. Also no rain in July in 2023.

The three zones, as described earlier in this post, are very helpful.

This is home!

Reflections on Oregon.

Or more precisely Southern Oregon.

We live in a beautiful State.

Roughly 100 miles North-East of us is Crater Lake.

Photo by Anukrati Omar on Unsplash

It was formed when this former volcano, “which collapsed on itself during an eruption just 7,700 years ago and slowly filled with melted snow, now stands as Oregon’s only national park.”

At over 2,000 feet deep it is the deepest lake in the United States of America.

There is a website, 16 Reasons Why Oregon is the Best State in the Country, and Jean and I believe it. Do visit this web page.

Oregon has acres and acres of forest and wild lands.

Photo by Dan Meyers on Unsplash

Photo by Moss and Fog on Unsplash

Oregon has many truly wild places. Here is a photograph of one of Oregon’s famous waterfalls.

Photo by Chris Briggs on Unsplash

Here is a photo of the wild coast and the ocean.

Photo by KAL VISUALS on Unsplash

Photo by Jordan Steranka on Unsplash

As was said at the start, Jean and I live in a very beautiful part of America.

Plus the people are incredibly friendly.

A post on Heat

Not the first and I’m sure it won’t be the last on this topic!

We are experiencing the first week of Summer’s heat.

Where it is going, temperature-wise, who knows but the consensus is that it is becoming warmer year on year.

So this seemed like a great post to republish. It was on The Conversation.

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Heat index warnings can save lives on dangerously hot days − if people understand what they mean

The sticky combination of heat and high humidity can be more than uncomfortable – it can be deadly. Mario Tama/Getty Images

Micki Olson, University at Albany, State University of New York

You’ve probably heard people say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” There’s a lot of truth to that phrase, and it’s important to understand it as summer temperatures rise.

Humidity doesn’t just make you feel sticky and uncomfortable – it also creates extra dangerous conditions on hot days. Together, too much heat and humidity can make you sick. And in severe cases, it can cause your body to shut down.

Meteorologists talk about the risk of heat and humidity using the heat index, but it can be confusing.

I’m a risk communication researcher. Here’s what you need to know about the heat index and some better ways meteorologists can talk about the risks of extreme heat.

A construction worker in reflective gear holds a jacket over his head against the sun.
Outdoor workers can be at high risk of heat illnesses. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

What is the heat index, and how is it measured?

Heat index is the combination of the actual air temperature and relative humidity:

  • Air temperature is how hot or cold the air is, which depends on factors such as the time of day, season of the year and local weather conditions. It is what your thermometer reads in degrees Celsius or Fahrenheit.
  • Relative humidity compares how much water vapor is in the air with how much water vapor the air could hold at that temperature. It’s expressed as a percentage.

The heat index tells you what it “feels like” outside when you factor in the humidity. For example, if it’s 98 degrees Fahrenheit (36.7 Celsius) with 55% relative humidity, it might feel more like a scorching 117 F (47.2 C).

A chart with a grid showing heat and humidity risks.
NOAA’s heat index chart shows how heat and humidity combine for dangerous temperatures. NOAA

But there’s a catch: Heat index is measured in shady conditions to prevent the sun’s angle from affecting its calculation. This means if you’re in direct sunlight, it will feel even hotter.

Apparent temperature, alerts and wet bulb

“Apparent temperature” is another term you might hear this summer.

Apparent temperature is the “feels like” temperature. It considers not only temperature and humidity but also wind speed. This means it can tell us both the heat index and wind chill – or the combination of the temperature and wind speed. When conditions are humid, it feels hotter, and when it’s windy, it feels colder.

We found that apparent temperature is even less well understood than the heat index, possibly due to the word apparent having various interpretations.

There are a few other ways you may hear meteorologists talk about heat.

Wet bulb globe temperature considers temperature, humidity, wind and sunlight. It’s especially useful for those who spend time outdoors, such as workers and athletes, because it reflects conditions in direct sunlight.

HeatRisk is a new tool developed by the National Weather Service that uses colors and numbers to indicate heat risks for various groups. More research is needed, however, to know whether this type of information helps people make decisions.

In many places, the National Weather Service also issues alerts such as excessive heat watches, warnings and advisories.

The risk is getting lost in translation

Knowing about heat and humidity is important, but my colleagues and I have found that the term heat index is not well understood.

We recently conducted 16 focus groups across the United States, including areas with dry heat, like Phoenix, and more humid areas, like Houston. Many of the people involved didn’t know what the heat index was. Some confused it with the actual air temperature. Most also didn’t understand what the alerts meant, how serious they were or when they should protect themselves.

In our discussions with these groups, we found that meteorologists could get across the risk more clearly if, instead of using terms like heat index, they focus on explaining what it feels like outside and why those conditions are dangerous.

Watches, warnings and advisories could be improved by telling people what temperatures to expect, when and steps they can take to stay safe.

A woman holds a baby at an open window with a fan blowing in.
Clear warnings can help residents understand their risk and protect themselves, which is especially important for small children and older adults, who are at greater risk of heat illness. Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Climate change is exacerbating heat risks by making extreme heat more common, intense and long-lasting. This means clear communication is necessary to help people understand their risk and how they can protect themselves.

What you can do to protect yourself

With both hot and humid conditions, extra precautions are necessary to protect your health. When you get hot, you sweat. When sweat evaporates, this helps the body cool down. But humidity prevents the sweat from evaporating. If sweat cannot evaporate, the body has trouble lowering or regulating its temperature.

Although everyone is at risk of health issues in high heat, people over 65, pregnant women, infants and young children can have trouble cooling their bodies down or may run a higher risk of becoming dehydrated. Certain health conditions or medications can also increase a person’s risk of heat-related illness, so it’s important to talk to your doctor about your risk.

Heat illnesses, such as heat exhaustion and heat stroke, are preventable if you take the right steps. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention focuses on staying cool, hydrated and informed.

  • Stay cool: Use air conditioning in your home, or spend time in air-conditioned spaces, such as a shopping mall or public library. Limit or reschedule your exercise and other outdoor plans that occur in the middle of the day when it is hottest.
  • Stay hydrated: Drink more water than you might otherwise, even if you don’t feel thirsty, so your body can regulate its temperature by sweating. But avoid sugary drinks, caffeine or drinks with alcohol, because these can cause you to become dehydrated.
  • Stay informed: Know the signs of heat illness and symptoms that can occur, such as dizziness, weakness, thirst, heavy sweating and nausea. Know what to do and when to get help, because heat illnesses can be deadly.
Heat exaustion includes dizziness, thirst, heavy sweating, nausea and weakness. Move to cooler area, loosen clothing, sip cool water and get medical help if no improvement. If heat stroke, including confusion, dizziness and unconsciousness, also call 911.
The difference between heat exhaustion and heat stroke and the CDC’s advice on how to respond. NOAA, CDC

Micki Olson, Senior Researcher in Emergency and Risk Communication, University at Albany, State University of New York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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That last diagram on staying cool, staying hydrated, and staying informed is one element in me choosing this article for publication. Further, if one looks up the website for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then immediately one comes across:

Stay cool indoors.Stay in an air-conditioned place as much as possible. If your home does not have air conditioning, go to the shopping mall or public library—even a few hours spent in air conditioning can help your body stay cooler when you go back into the heat.

Please take care!

Our forests

The challenge in deciding what is best for our forests.

As a great many of you already know, we live in a rural area in Southern Oregon. It is a beautiful place and we look out to the East upon Mount Sexton. But locally a great many houses are built on rural sites with the local forest just yards away.

Thus it was with interest that an article on The Conversation website ‘spoke’ to me.

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Fighting every wildfire ensures the big fires are more extreme, and may harm forests’ ability to adapt to climate change

Extreme fires leave forests struggling to recover in a warming world. Mark Kreider

Mark Kreider, University of Montana

In the U.S., wildland firefighters are able to stop about 98% of all wildfires before the fires have burned even 100 acres. That may seem comforting, but decades of quickly suppressing fires has had unintended consequences.

Fires are a natural part of many landscapes globally. When forests aren’t allowed to burn, they become more dense, and dead branches, leaves and other biomass accumulate, leaving more fuel for the next fire. This buildup leads to more extreme fires that are even harder to put out. That’s why land managers set controlled burns and thin forests to clear out the undergrowth.

However, fuel accumulation isn’t the only consequence of fire suppression.

Fire suppression also disproportionately reduces certain types of fire. In a new study, my colleagues and I show how this effect, known as the suppression bias, compounds the impacts of fuel accumulation and climate change.

What happened to all the low-intensity fires?

Most wildfires are low-intensity. They ignite when conditions aren’t too dry or windy, and they can often be quickly extinguished.

The 2% of fires that escape suppression are those that are more extreme and much harder to fight. They account for about 98% of the burned area in a typical year.

The author and colleagues discuss changing wildfire in Montana and Idaho’s Bitterroot Mountains. By Mark Kreider.

In other words, trying to put out all wildfires doesn’t reduce the total amount of fire equally – instead, it limits low-intensity fires while extreme fires still burn. This effect is worsened by climate change.

Too much suppression makes fires more severe

In our study, we used a fire modeling simulation to explore the effects of the fire suppression bias and see how they compared to the effects of global warming and fuel accumulation alone.

Fuel accumulation and global warming both inherently make fires more severe. But over thousands of simulated fires, we found that allowing forests to burn only under the very worst conditions increased fire severity by the same amount as more than a century’s worth of fuel accumulation or 21st-century climate change.

The suppression bias also changes the way plants and animals interact with fire.

By removing low-intensity fires, humans may be changing the course of evolution. Without exposure to low-intensity fires, species can lose traits crucial for surviving and recovering from such events.

After extreme fires, landscapes have fewer seed sources and less shade. New seedlings have a harder time becoming established, and for those that do, the hotter and drier conditions reduce their chance of survival.

In contrast, low-intensity fires free up space and resources for new growth, while still retaining living trees and other biological legacies that support seedlings in their vulnerable initial years.

By quickly putting out low-intensity fires and allowing only extreme fires to burn, conventional suppression reduces the opportunities for climate-adapted plants to establish and help ecosystems adjust to changes like global warming.

Firefighters keep watch for smoke from a fire tower in the Coeur d’Alene National Forest, Idaho, in 1932. Forest Service photo by K. D. Swan

Suppression makes burned area increase faster

As the climate becomes hotter and drier, more area is burning in wildfires. If suppression removes fire, it should help slow this increase, right?

In fact, we found it does just the opposite.

We found that while conventional suppression led to less total area burning, the yearly burned area increased more than three times faster under conventional suppression than under less aggressive suppression efforts. The amount of area burned doubled every 14 years with conventional fire suppression under simulated climate change, instead of every 44 years when low- and moderate-intensity fires were allowed to burn. That raises concerns for how quickly people and ecosystems will have to adapt to extreme fires in the future.

Two charts show fire area increasing faster in a warming climate climate under conventional fire suppression.
With conventional fire suppression, the average fire size will increase faster as the planet warms than it would under a less aggressive approach. Mark Kreider

The fact that the amount of area burned is increasing is undoubtedly driven by climate change. But our study shows that the rate of this increase may also be a result of conventional fire management.

The near total suppression of fires over the last century means that even a little additional fire in a more fire-prone future can create big changes. As climate change continues to fuel more fires, the relative increase in area burned will be much bigger.

This puts more stress on communities as they adapt to increased extreme wildfires, from dealing with more wildfire smoke to even changing where people can live.

A way forward

To address the wildfire crisis, fire managers can be less aggressive in suppressing low- and moderate-intensity fires when it is safe to do so. They can also increase the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning to clear away brush and other fuel for fires.

These low-intensity fires will not only reduce the risk of future extreme fires, but they also will create conditions that favor the establishment of species better suited to the changing climate, thereby helping ecosystems adapt to global warming.

Coexisting with wildfire requires developing technologies and approaches that enable the safe management of wildfires under moderate burning conditions. Our study shows that this may be just as necessary as other interventions, such as reducing the number of fires unintentionally started by human activities and mitigating climate change.

Mark Kreider, Ph.D. Candidate in Forest and Conservation Science, University of Montana

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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The article makes a great deal of sense and presents a solution that may not be our first thought. But especially the message is fundamentally important, and please watch the video because it very clearly presents the benefits of the solution.

So we want more low-intensity fires! Please! Or to say it another way, we want more prescribed fires.

Water, water, everywhere, but …

A dramatic article from George Monbiot about water!

I read the latest from George Monbiot yesterday morning and was startled. Startled because I hadn’t thought of it before. Startled because here in Merlin, Southern Oregon we have had so much rain since the beginning of November, 2023 that our acres are swimming in the wet. Startled since that time also our Bummer Creek, which flows across our land, has been at record depths.

But this report is incredibly important and I wanted to share it with you, as I have Geo. Monbiot’s permission for so doing.

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Dry Run

Posted on11th March 2024

The mega-droughts in Spain and the US are a portent of a gathering global water crisis.

By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 4th March 2024

There’s a flaw in the plan. It’s not a small one: it is an Earth-sized hole in our calculations. To keep pace with the global demand for food, crop production needs to grow by at least 50% by 2050. In principle, if nothing else changes, this is feasible, thanks mostly to improvements in crop breeding and farming techniques. But everything else is going to change.

Even if we set aside all other issues – heat impacts, soil degradation, epidemic plant diseases accelerated by the loss of genetic diversity – there is one which, without help from any other cause, could prevent the world’s people from being fed. Water.

A paper published in 2017 estimated that to match crop production to expected demand, water use for irrigation would have to increase by 146% by the middle of this century. One minor problem. Water is already maxed out.

In general, the dry parts of the world are becoming drier, partly through reduced rainfall; partly through declining river flow as mountain ice and snow retreats; and partly through rising temperatures causing increased evaporation and increased transpiration by plants. Many of the world’s major growing regions are now threatened by “flash droughts”, in which hot and dry weather sucks moisture from the soil at frightening speed. Some places, such as the southwest of the US, now in its 24th year of drought, may have switched permanently to a drier state. Rivers fail to reach the sea, lakes and aquifers are shrinking, species living in freshwater are becoming extinct at roughly five times the rate of species that live on land and major cities are threatened by extreme water stress.

Already, agriculture accounts for 90% of the world’s freshwater use. We have pumped so much out of the ground that we’ve changed the Earth’s spin. The water required to meet growing food demand simply does not exist.

That 2017 paper should have sent everyone scrambling. But as usual, it was ignored by policymakers and the media. Only when the problem arrives in Europe do we acknowledge that there’s a crisis. But while there is understandable panic about the drought in Catalonia and Andalusia, there’s an almost total failure among powerful interests to acknowledge that this is just one instance of a global problem, a problem that should feature at the top of the political agenda.

Though drought measures have triggered protests in Spain, this is far from the most dangerous flashpoint. The catchment of the Indus river is shared by three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan and China – and several highly unstable and divided regions already afflicted by hunger and extreme poverty. Today, 95% of the river’s dry season flow is extracted, mostly for irrigation. But water demand in both Pakistan and India is growing rapidly. Supply – temporarily boosted by the melting of glaciers in the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush – will, before long, peak and then go into decline.

Even under the most optimistic climate scenario, runoff from Asian glaciers is expected to peak before mid-century, and glacier mass will shrink by about 46% by 2100. Some analysts see water competition between India and Pakistan as a major cause of the repeated conflicts in Kashmir. But unless a new Indus waters treaty is struck, taking falling supplies into account, this fighting could be a mere prelude for something much worse.

There’s a widespread belief that these problems can be solved simply by enhancing the efficiency of irrigation: huge amounts of water are wasted in agriculture. So let me introduce you to the irrigation efficiency paradox. As better techniques ensure that less water is required to grow a given volume of crops, irrigation becomes cheaper. As a result, it attracts more investment, encourages farmers to grow thirstier, more profitable plants, and expands across a wider area. This is what happened, for instance, in the Guadiana river basin in Spain, where a €600m investment to reduce water use by improving the efficiency of irrigation has instead increased it.

You can overcome the paradox through regulation: laws to limit both total and individual water consumption. But governments prefer to rely on technology alone. Without political and economic measures, it doesn’t work.

Nor are other technofixes likely to solve the problem. Governments are planning massive engineering schemes to pipe water from one place to another. But climate breakdown and rising demand ensure that many of the donor regions are also likely to run dry. Water from desalination plants typically costs five or 10 times as much as water from the ground or the sky, while the process requires masses of energy and generates great volumes of toxic brine.

Above all, we need to change our diets. Those of us with dietary choice (in other words, the richer half of the world’s population) should seek to minimise the water footprint of our food. With apologies for harping on about it, this is yet another reason to switch to an animal-free diet, which reduces both total crop demand and, in most cases, water use. The water demand of certain plant products, especially almonds and pistachios in California, has become a major theme in the culture wars, as rightwing influencers attack plant-based diets. But, excessive as the watering of these crops is, more than twice as much irrigation water is used in California to grow forage plants to feed livestock, especially dairy cows. Dairy milk has much higher water demand even than the worst alternative (almond milk), and is astronomically higher than the best alternatives, such as oat or soya milk.

This is not to give all plant products a free pass: horticulture can make massive demands on water supplies. Even within a plant-based diet, we should be switching from some grains, vegetables and fruit to others. Governments and retailers should help us through a combination of stronger rules and informative labelling.

Instead, they do the opposite. Last month, at the behest of the EU’s agricultural commissioner, Janusz Wojciechowski, the European Commission deleted from its new climate plan the call to incentivise “diversified” (animal-free) protein sources. Regulatory capture is never stronger than in the food and farming sector.

I hate to pile yet more on to you, but some of us have to try to counter the endless bias against relevance in politics and most of the media. This is yet another of those massive neglected issues, any one of which could be fatal to peace and prosperity on a habitable planet. Somehow, we need to recover our focus.

http://www.monbiot.com

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Oh dear, oh dear!

One hates to be alarmist and yet Monbiot is a very smart reporter and this is truly important.

Oh dear, oh dear!