Extreme Weather
Hurricane Irene left millions on the East Coast without power and caused widespread flooding from New Jersey to New England. At least 46 people were killed, and when the damage was totaled, Irene was declared one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history -- the tenth billion-dollar-plus weather catastrophe this year.
What's going on here? As the earth warms, what we call extreme weather is becoming "normal," thanks to changing weather patterns, higher sea levels, and the atmosphere's ability to hold more water vapor. The result: more weather extremes costing more money and causing more misery. Irene wasn't caused by climate change, but it is the latest disaster whose potential for destruction was made worse because of global warming.
February 21, 2012:
Not awful, just really bad: "Game over for climate change" is how NASA climate scientist James Hansen has described plans to unearth Alberta's vast tar sands reserves. Two respected Canadian scientists crunched the numbers... read more >
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September 13, 2011:
Just when it looked like weather conditions couldn’t get any worse in Texas, a new wildfire burning outside of Austin destroyed nearly 800 homes last week. This came on the heels of the state's hottest and driest summer in... read more >
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September 12, 2011:
Across much of Vermont, New York, and New Jersey, home and business owners continue to cope with devastating flood damage unleashed by Hurricane Irene. The immense storm is already listed as one of the costliest natural... read more >
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September 9, 2011:
The summer of 2011 has rewritten the record books. Using our record temperature tracker (see below), which draws on the National Climatic Data Center's database, Climate Central found that June, July, and August saw more... read more >
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August 31, 2011:
From my home about 10 miles southwest of Rutland, Vermont, the past two days have been surreal --and not for the obvious reasons. Our town made it through Hurricane Irene relatively unscathed. The view from my front porch is... read more >
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August 31, 2011:
New York City dodged a bullet with Hurricane Irene, but big trouble passed more closely than most people think. If the storm surge had pushed the waters of New York Harbor about one inch higher, it could have been enough... read more >
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August 31, 2011:
In the days leading up to Hurricane Irene, the messages urging me to get ready for the storm were ceaseless: Stock up on nonperishable food, water and batteries; fill up the car with gasoline; clear the yard of objects that... read more >
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August 29, 2011:
Flooding appears to be the worst problem left behind by Hurricane Irene, and especially in big cities, those floodwaters are likely to be full of raw sewage discharged by overwhelmed city sewer systems. Believe it or not,... read more >
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August 29, 2011:
[Updated at 7:10pm on Monday, August 29th]Author's note: The recovery efforts in Vermont will be extensive. If you'd like to offer a helping hand in way way -- through volunteer time or donations -- you can find a whole list... read more >
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August 29, 2011:
When a disaster strikes, the narrative tends to follow one of two paths: lamenting the lack of preparedness, or blasting the hype as overblown. In the case of Hurricane Irene, we seemed to jump back and forth between these... read more >
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August 28, 2011:
The author in front of damage from Hurricane Irene on North Carolina's Topsail Island. Credit: Mike WhiteFor a long time environmentalists have fretted that people don’t take their warnings about global warming seriously. I... read more >
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August 26, 2011:
We're now a day out from Hurricane Irene’s projected landfall in the Outer Banks of North Carolina (or near-miss, and it doesn’t make a lot of difference which it is). A day later -- sometime Sunday, that is -- the storm’... read more >
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August 26, 2011:
Back in 2005, after I returned from covering Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of the Gulf Coast, an editor at my newspaper asked me a very simple question: Why can’t somebody figure out how to stop these monster storms? Or at... read more >
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August 25, 2011:
As Hurricane Irene takes aim at the East Coast, with New York or New England possibly in its sights, I’m thinking back on the time that I witnessed the great 1635 hurricane that hit the Jamestown settlement and Massachusetts... read more >
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August 25, 2011:
Twenty years ago last week, I stood outside a low cement building in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod, and leaned into the 80 mph wind. Hurricane Bob had arrived, and a few hundred of us had piled into one of the more... read more >
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August 16, 2011:
People who live in dry places are forced -- by their water bills (one hopes), or by public education campaigns or their parched lawns -- to think about water conservation. But why should people with full reservoirs and... read more >
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August 3, 2011:
July was hot: Washington, D.C., Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, and Austin set records for not just their warmest July in history, but their warmest month on record. The heat prompted people to hide indoors, crank up the... read more >
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July 21, 2011:
My colleague Heidi Cullen had an excellent op-ed in the New York Times yesterday on the current heat wave, and the shifting notion of what constitutes a "normal climate" as average global temperatures continue to warm. She... read more >
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July 15, 2011:
Though his is no doubt the voice most associated with climate change (for better or worse), it seems like it's been awhile since we've heard from Al Gore on the subject. Well, Al's back, with quite the splash. A few weeks... read more >
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July 13, 2011:
In Monday’s New York Times, Kim Severson and Kirk Johnson wrote an eloquent story on the intense drought that is maintaining a tight grip on a broad swath of America’s southern tier, from Arizona to Florida. Reporting from... read more >
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June 21, 2011:
Last week I talked with the nonprofit energyNOW! program about tornadoes, climate change, and how tornado-ravaged communities can rebuild green. We also discussed how all of our communities need to become more resilient to... read more >
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June 7, 2011:
This is a NASA satellite image of the deadly tornado that tore through Western Massachusetts. On June 1, an EF3 tornado touched down in Westfield, intensifying as it traveled due east, until it reached Springfield. Footage... read more >
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April 29, 2011:
With more than 300 dead from at least 100 tornadoes, including at least 210 deaths in Alabama alone, the tornado outbreak that tore across the South on Wednesday was certainly one for the record-books. Storm surveys are... read more >
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October 28, 2010:
Most Americans may not realize it, but the 2010 Atlantic hurricane season has been a doozy, with 17 named storms so far. Remarkably, the U.S. has gotten through most of the season largely unscathed, with not a single... read more >
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October 4, 2010:
The heavy rains that inundated the East Coast during the last week of September were the result of a rare combination of ingredients--namely a wide-open, 3,000-mile-long pipeline of tropical moisture extending from the... read more >
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