Sunny climate, stormy climate | Weekly digest #15
This week we talk about an Arctic snow school, how whales can help capture carbon, the devastating Maui wildfires and more heat records getting broken across the world!
For the ones who are new here - Every week I bring to you 5 stories about the changing climate and its impact on us!
3 stormy ones - concerning stories that are a source of alarm
2 sunny ones - green shoots that tell you that all is not yet lost
If you would like to get future editions of the newsletter delivered to your mailbox, please hit subscribe.
Sunny news
An Arctic snow school aims to respond to the climate crisis with some help from indigenous people.
Scientists participating in the snow school along with Intuit elders This is a Canadian project that plans to strengthen understanding of Arctic environment by drawing on Indigenous knowledge of the Intuit people.
Intuit are a group of culturally similar indigenous people who have been inhabiting arctic and sub arctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories, and Alaska.
Why is this important?
The Arctic is expected to change 4 times as much as the planetary average due to climate change.
Scientists believe that a better understanding of what is happening in the Arctic can help in guiding better responses to the climate crisis in general.
Example: It is critical to understand how the snow in the Arctic will respond to climate change as changes in snow in the Arctic will have a huge impact on sea levels and ocean currents.
The snow school for the first time involved Inuit voices and integrated them within the fieldwork led by scientists. Thus, it attempts to diversify knowledge by adding the lived experience of elders, hunters and knowledge-holders on the ground and thus strengthen understanding of the Arctic.
Sources to read further:
Yet another reason to save the whales - they can be a valuable carbon sink!
Source: National Geographic Marine biologists have discovered that whales, particularly great whales, also play an important role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. They can weigh up to 28 tons and live over 100 years. Their size and long lives mean they accumulate more carbon in their bodies than other small animals. When they die, they sink to the bottom of the ocean, taking carbon out of the atmosphere for centuries.
A 2019 report published by the International Monetary Fund estimated that a great whale sequesters 33 tons of carbon dioxide each year on average (for comparison a tree absorbs 48 pounds a year on avg)
Protecting whales could thus add significantly to carbon capture because the current population of the largest great whales is only a small fraction of what it once was.
Sources to read further:
Stormy news
One of the deadliest US wildfires blazes through Maui island in Hawaii
The hall of the historic Waiola Church is engulfed in flames in Lahaina on Tuesday.Credit: Matthew Thayer/The Maui News, via Associated Press A series of wildfires burned parts of the island of Maui in the U.S. state of Hawaii in August 2023.
The fires began on August 8, struck hardest the historic resort town of Lahaina reducing most of the town to ash and ruins
The fires have killed more than 110 people with hundreds more still missing more than 10 days after the fires
What caused the fires?
The fires occurred at the height of Hawaii’s dry season
Immediate cause: Sparks produced by a downed power line may have touched off at least one of the fires.
Their severity was exacerbated by the presence of El Niño—that is, the development of unusually warm ocean waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean. El Nino brings drought conditions to Hawaii which results in dried vegetation that turns into large tracts of fire prone shrubs and grasses.
Impact of Hurricane Dora: Dora that passed near Mexico resulted in high speed winds near Hawaii that helped intensify and spread the fires
Is this related to climate change?
TLDR: Yes
Increases in surface temperatures due to ongoing global warming are thought to have caused grasses and other vegetation to dry out faster than usual.
90 percent of Hawaii had experienced at least some decline in overall rainfall between 1920 and 2012 resulting in more dryness → helping fires spread faster
Replacement of native vegetation with crops has also affected local climate conditions
Sources to read further:
Heat waves rage and temperatures continue to set records across the world
Several teenagers attending the World Scout Jamboree in South Korea were badly affected by the ongoing heat wave. The UK and US contingent left the event early in order to protect the scouts from the extreme heat. South Korea: Has been facing an intense heat wave that has caused at least 23 deaths. More than 400 heatstroke cases have been reported among teenage campers at the World Scout Jamboree that was held in the country earlier this month.
Japan: Japan has just seen its hottest July on record and has continued to see an intense heat wave in August. In rapidly aging Japan, the elders are hardest hit by the extreme heat. More than 11K people have been hospitalized due to heat stroked in August so far.
Turkey: Reported a new national temperature record of 49.5°C on 15 August, beating the previous record of 49.1°C set in July 2021.
US: The temperature reached a record high for the date of 104 deg F (40 deg C) on Saturday in Jackson, Mississippi. Record high temperatures were also seen in Texas and other states.
Source to read further:
Zero degree line rises to record height in Switzerland
The zero-degree line – the altitude at which the temperature falls below freezing, considered a key meteorological marker particularly in mountainous regions – was measured at 5,298 metres overnight this week.
The weather balloon climbed to 5,300 metres before temperature fell to 0 deg C amid late summer heatwave
The figure constituted “a record since monitoring began in 1954”, the service said, and surpassed the previous high of 5,184 metres that was “only set in July last year”
Sources for further reading: