From an article by ANNA BAXTER on the OCEANA website:

In January 2025, a series of devastating wildfires hit Southern California. Lives were lost. Homes and businesses were destroyed. Families were displaced. The scale of the devastation is staggering. But the damage doesn’t stop at the shoreline.

This week, as Southern Californians are deluged with torrential downpours, harmful pollutants and toxic runoff from the fires could wash into local waters and put both marine life and local communities at risk.

Click here to read the full article.

From an article by REBECCA LINDSEY on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate.gov website:

Highlights:

• • A trifecta of fire-friendly climate conditions set the stage for the January 2025 fires: back-to-back wet winters that boosted vegetation, a record-dry fall, and an extremely strong Santa Ana wind event. 
  • By one estimate, record-low fall precipitation had a bigger influence on the exceptionally low vegetation moisture than the near-record summer and fall temperatures.
  • A preliminary attribution analysis concluded that long-term global warming and the development of La Niña contributed roughly equally to making the extreme fire weather conditions more likely and more extreme.
  • The most effective near-term strategies to lower risk are controlling unwanted human ignitions under high-risk conditions, using fire-resistant building materials and landscaping, and locating development in lower-risk areas.

Click here to read the full article.

From a column by Michael J. Coren, Naema Ahmed and Kevin Crowe in the Washington Post:

"Most people think about good schools, safe streets or desirable jobs when considering where to live. As climate risks inexorably rise, how well your community bounces back from a climate-related disaster — or even a bad thunderstorm — will begin to weigh more heavily on the value of your home.

Imagine a house high up on a hill. It may seem safe from flooding. But the streets around it become impassable during storms or even high tide. Getting to the grocery store is difficult. As extreme weather worsens, insurance rates rise. Some carriers stop issuing policies — or cancel them. Even if the house on higher ground is safe, property values could fall, reducing tax revenue needed to rebuild and protect the city. A downward cycle could ensue."

Click here to read the full column.

From an article by Raymond Zhong and Mira Rojanasakul in the New York Times:

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 in an even bigger way.

For the past two decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing toward collapse. These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point.

Click here to read the full article.

From the book review in Kirkus Reviews:

"A lyrical and scientifically rigorous account of the emotional and physical toll climate change is taking on the human brain.

This is your brain on climate change.

In his second book, neuroscientist and environmental journalist Aldern examines the palpable effects of climate change on our brain chemistry, including not just increased anxiety, stress, and depression, but also detrimental changes in decision-making abilities and judgment."

- Kirkus Reviews

Click here to read the full review.

From an article by Li Cohen on the CBS News website:

The world has marked yet another consecutive month of record-breaking heat. New data from Copernicus, the European Union's climate change monitoring service, shows that last month was the hottest February on record globally, with "exceptionally high" temperatures in both the air and sea. 

The record heat comes as the U.S. continues to battle weather extremes. In recent weeks, communities across the nation have seen spring- and summer-like temperatures, extreme rain and flooding, massive snowfall, and fire weather conditions that drove Texas' largest-ever wildfire that quickly became one of the biggest in U.S. history. Those kinds of extremes are a byproduct of the climate change-fueled rise in global temperatures, and are only expected to become more frequent and intense as warming continues. 

Click here to read the full article.

Click here to read a New York Times review of this powerful book. 

From a news story on the website of National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA):

New paper sheds light on 2023's record sea surface temperatures

2023 was a record-breaking year. According to the Annual 2023 Global Climate Report, 2023 was the warmest year since global atmospheric temperature records began in 1850, at 1.18°C (2.12°F) above the 20th-century average of 13.9°C (57.0°F). Now, a new analysis led by NCEI scientists published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) shows that global mean sea surface temperatures also set a record high in 2023. The paper further indicates that these record-breaking temperatures were associated with extremely strong marine heatwaves that the authors dubbed super-marine heatwaves.

Decades of data

Sea surface temperature (SST) is the temperature of the uppermost layer of seawater, which typically means the top few meters. SST data are collected by satellite observations or by in situ observations from ships, drifting buoys, moored buoys, and more recently, Surface Autonomous Vehicles such as Saildrones. Monitoring changes in SST is essential for understanding and mitigating the impacts of climate change and other environmental stressors.

From the news story in the New York Times:

"In a country known for its picturesque landscapes and orderliness, the out-of-control wildfires have stoked unease and underlined the perils of global warming. Scientific research suggests that heat and drought associated with climate change are major reasons for the increase in bigger and more intense fires buffeting the country.

The fires have also underscored the interconnectedness between Canada and its neighbor to the south with smoke from the hundreds of wildfires blazing in eastern Canada casting a hazy pall over New York City and polluting air quality from Minnesota to Massachusetts."

From the reader comments to the NYT news story:

The California mandate, which is likely to become a model for other states and perhaps federal action, will require half of all heavy trucks sold in the state to be all-electric by 2035.

Los Angeles Times story.

New York Times story about Held v. Montana.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a major report indicating that the world is blowing past its chances to retain control over global warming.  The situation is already dire.  All hope will be lost if the industrial nations do not take immediate critical action to move away from fossil fuel usage.

Washington Post article .

New York Times story by Apoorva Mandavilli.

Scientists think the Holocene's over, and we're entering a new age of humans:  the Anthropocene Age.

From the New York Times.

Article in The Atlantic. 

Report follows the UN Climate Change COP27 summit in Egypt: "Many experts believe that the progress necessary to repair a warming world will be extremely difficult, and perhaps impossible, without close collaboration between these two great powers."

A new UNICEF report states that by 2050 almost all of the world's children will be exposed to high-heat wave frequency.

From the Washington Post.

Los Angeles Times article:

"The extreme temperatures that will bear down on California over the next week are the result of a “heat dome,” a phenomenon that typically brings broiling conditions to the state as summer fades into fall. But climate change is worsening the dome’s effects and making it more lethal for people who cannot seek relief."

From the New York Times:  "Britain made meteorological history on Tuesday when temperatures in some places topped 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time ever recorded in the United Kingdom, as a second straight day of record-setting heat gripped parts of Europe."

New York Times article.

Disturbing Frontline program "The Power of Big Oil".