Sunny climate stormy climate | Weekly digest #55
This week: Biden bans offshore drilling across a large coastal area, LA wildfires continue to blaze and it's official now - 2024 was the hottest year ever!
Hello folks!
Welcome to your weekly dose of climate news where I bring one sunny story that gives hope and two stormy ones that are a cause for alarm. Hope you like them!
🌞 Sunny news 🌞
1. Biden bans new drilling in US coastal waters weeks before Trump takes office
What are we talking about?
Joe Biden has banned offshore drilling across an immense area of US coastal waters.
The ban protects more than 253 mn Hectares of waters. It encompasses the entire Atlantic coast and eastern Gulf of Mexico, as well as the Pacific coast off California, Oregon and Washington, and a section of the Bering Sea off Alaska.
Why does this matter?
Scientists are clear that oil and gas production must be radically cut to avoid disastrous climate impacts. And steps like these are crucial steps in that direction.
The timing of this ban is crucial. Trump will take office on Jan 20. He has been open about his support for drilling with statements such as ‘Drill baby, drill’.
Trump said he would “unban it immediately” as soon as he re-enters the White House, although it is unclear whether he will be able to do this easily.
The ban does not have an end date and could be legally – and politically – tricky for Trump to overturn.
Sources for further reading
🌩️ Stormy news 🌩️
2. LA wildfires continue to rage; Highlight how unprepared we are to deal with the changing climate.
What is happening?
The LA wildfires have been blazing for more than a week (since Jan 7)
So far 24 people have been killed and the fire has charred more than 40,000 acres.
Approximately 180,000 residents have been evacuated and over 12,000 structures have been reported destroyed or damaged.
Why is this happening?
This wildfires have been fuelled by a ‘Santa Ana wind event’. The Santa Ana winds are the strong, dry and often warm winds that blow west from the deserts of Nevada and Utah to Southern California.
But the main culprit is the unnatural dryness. Dry conditions and fires in Southern California are not uncommon this time of the year. However, this year it is unusually dry (driest 8 months since 1900) and that is what is making the fires so much worse.
Read more about this in last week’s newsletter here
Why does this matter?
While fires in southern California are not uncommon, the intensity and extent of this is new (as explained above). And it has shown that we are unprepared to deal with it.
Firefighters have been working around the clock but have still struggled to contain the fires.
At one point, the fire hydrants ran out of water! During the roughly 15-hour window from the Palisades Fire sparking and the available water tanks running dry, the CEO of the LA water department said the demand for water was four times the norm, causing water pressure to lower. This made it difficult to achieve the force needed to get water into the higher-elevation tanks, particularly at the rate necessary to address a fire moving five football fields a minute, boosted by the gusty Santa Ana winds.
Tens of thousands of wildfire evacuees in Los Angeles are scrambling to find — and hold onto — temporary shelter, exacerbating the housing shortage in one of America’s least affordable cities.
There have also been instances of looting from abandoned houses.
Sources for further reading
3. It’s official: 2024 was the hottest year ever and 1.5 is dead!
What is happening?
It’s official: 2024 was the planet’s warmest year on record (i.e since record keeping began in 1850), according to an analysis by scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI).
Everyone agrees than 2024 was the hottest year, however there is some disagreement on exactly how hot.
According to US’s NOAA - The 2024 worldwide average temp 1.46 deg C (2.6 deg F) warmer than the pre-industrial era (the era prior to humans burning huge volumes of planet-heating fossil fuels). 2024 was 0.1 deg C hotter than the previous high mark set in 2023.
According EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) - 2024 global temperature exceeded 1.5°C above its pre-industrial level.
Why does this matter?
This was the hottest year ever and all of the 10 hottest years since 1850 have occurred in the past decade.
A senior scientist at NASA, Schmidt said the levels of global heating are pushing humanity beyond its historical experience of the Earth’s climate.
The extremely hot weather is resulting in extreme weather in terms of more intense and more frequent cyclones, more intense rainfall, related flooding, droughts and wildfires.
Sources for further reading
You can read previous editions of the newsletter -
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #54
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #53
Sunny climate, stormy climate | News Digest #52
If you liked this newsletter, please hit like or leave a comment. If you are a climate champion and want to take this conversation to more people, please share the newsletter with a friend, family member or colleague who may like it too!
As and when i am getting the time to read your newsletter , it is updating me whatever is happening in the world about climate - thank you