{"id":401738,"date":"2023-11-16T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-16T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=401738"},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"-0001-11-29T14:00:00","slug":"Worsening-warming-is-hurting-people-in-all-regions-US-climate-assessment-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/Worsening-warming-is-hurting-people-in-all-regions-US-climate-assessment-shows\/","title":{"rendered":"Worsening warming is hurting people in all regions, US climate assessment shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

Revved-up climate change now permeates Americans\u2019 daily lives with harm that is \u201calready far-reaching and worsening across every region of the United States,\u201d a massive new government report says.<\/p>\n

The National Climate Assessment, which comes out every four to five years, was released Tuesday with details that bring climate change\u2019s impacts down to a local level. Unveiling the report at the White House, President Joe Biden blasted Republican legislators and his predecessor for disputing global warming.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone who willfully denies the impact of climate change is condemning the American people to a very dangerous future. Impacts are only going to get worse, more frequent, more ferocious and more costly,\u201d Biden said, noting that disasters cost the country $178 billion last year. \u201cNone of this is inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n

Overall, Tuesday\u2019s assessment paints a picture of a country warming about 60% faster than the world as a whole, one that regularly gets smacked with costly weather disasters and faces even bigger problems in the future.<\/p>\n

Since 1970, the Lower 48 states have warmed by 2.5 degrees (1.4 degrees Celsius) and Alaska has heated up by 4.2 degrees (2.3 degrees Celsius), compared to the global average of 1.7 degrees (0.9 degrees Celsius), the report said. But what people really feel is not the averages, but when weather is extreme.<\/p>\n

With heat waves, drought, wildfire and heavy downpours, \u201cwe are seeing an acceleration of the impacts of climate change in the United States,\u201d said study co-author Zeke Hausfather of the tech company Stripe and Berkeley Earth.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s not healthy.<\/p>\n

Climate change is \u201dharming physical, mental, spiritual, and community health and well-being through the increasing frequency and intensity of extreme events, increasing cases of infectious and vector-borne diseases, and declines in food and water quality and security,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

Compared to earlier national assessments, this year\u2019s uses far stronger language and \u201cunequivocally\u201d blames the burning of coal, oil and gas for climate change.<\/p>\n

The 37-chapter assessment includes an interactive atlas that zooms down to the county level. It finds that climate change is affecting people\u2019s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority and Native American communities often disproportionately at risk.<\/p>\n

In Alaska, which is warming two to three times faster than the global average, reduced snowpack, shrinking glaciers, thawing permafrost, acidifying oceans and disappearing sea ice have affected everything from the state\u2019s growing season, to hunting and fishing, with projections raising questions about whether some Indigenous communities should be relocated.<\/p>\n

The Southwest is experiencing more drought and extreme heat \u2013 including 31 consecutive days this summer when Phoenix\u2019s daily high temperatures reached or exceeded 110 degrees \u2013 reducing water supplies and increasing wildfire risk.<\/p>\n

Northeastern cities are seeing more extreme heat, flooding and poor air quality, as well as risks to infrastructure, while drought and floods exacerbated by climate change threaten farming and ecosystems in rural areas.<\/p>\n

In the Midwest, both extreme drought and flooding threaten crops and animal production, which can affect the global food supply.<\/p>\n

In the northern Great Plains, weather extremes like drought and flooding, as well as declining water resources, threaten an economy dependent largely on crops, cattle, energy production and recreation. Meanwhile, water shortages in parts of the southern Great Plains are projected to worsen, while high temperatures are expected to break records in all three states by midcentury.]<\/p>\n

In the Southeast, minority and Native American communities \u2014 who may live in areas with higher exposures to extreme heat, pollution and flooding \u2014 have fewer resources to prepare for or to escape the effects of climate change.<\/p>\n

In the Northwest, hotter days and nights that don\u2019t cool down much have resulted in drier streams and less snowpack, leading to increased risk of drought and wildfires. The climate disturbance has also brought damaging extreme rain.<\/p>\n

Hawaii and other Pacific islands, as well as the U.S. Caribbean, are increasingly vulnerable to the extremes of drought and heavy rain as well as sea level rise and natural disaster as temperatures warm.]<\/p>\n

The United States will warm in the future about 40% more than the world as a total, the assessment said. The AP calculated, using others\u2019 global projections, that that means America would get about 3.8 degrees (2.1 degrees Celsius) hotter by the end of the century.<\/p>\n

Hotter average temperatures means weather that is even more extreme.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe news is not good, but it is also not surprising,\u201d said University of Colorado\u2019s Waleed Abdalati, a former NASA chief scientist who was not part of this report. \u201cWhat we are seeing is a manifestation of changes that were anticipated over the last few decades.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 2,200-page report comes after five straight months when the globe set monthly and daily heat records. It comes as the U.S. has set a record with 25 different weather disasters this year that caused at least $1 billion in damage.<\/p>\n

\u201cClimate change is finally moving from an abstract future issue to a present, concrete, relevant issue. It\u2019s happening right now,\u201d said report lead author Katharine Hayhoe, chief scientist at the Nature Conservancy and a professor at Texas Tech University. Five years ago, when the last assessment was issued, fewer people were experiencing climate change firsthand.<\/p>\n

Surveys this year by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research show that.<\/p>\n

In September, about 9 in 10 Americans (87%) said they\u2019d experienced at least one extreme weather event in the past five years \u2014 drought, extreme heat, severe storms, wildfires or flooding. That was up from 79% who said that in April.<\/p>\n

Hayhoe said there\u2019s also a new emphasis in the assessment on marginalized communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is less a matter … of what hits where, but more what hits whom and how well those people can manage the impacts,\u201d said University of Colorado\u2019s Abdalati, whose saw much of his neighborhood destroyed in the 2021 Marshall wildfire.<\/p>\n

Biden administration officials emphasize that all is not lost and the report details actions to reduce emissions and adapt to what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n

By cleaning up industry, how electricity is made and how transport is powered, climate change can be dramatically reduced. Hausfather said when emissions stops, warming stops, \u201cso we can stop this acceleration if we as a society get our act together.\u201d<\/p>\n

But some scientists said parts of the assessment are too optimistic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report\u2019s rosy graphics and outlook obscure the dangers approaching,\u201d Stanford University climate scientist Rob Jackson said. \u201cWe are not prepared for what\u2019s coming.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The bank of the Mississippi River is seen, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023, near Cairo, Ill. Parts of the Mississippi River have been at historic lows after drought conditions have persisted this fall.<\/p>\n

-Joshua A. Bickel
<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Revved-up climate change now permeates Americans\u2019 daily lives with harm that is \u201calready far-reaching and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-401738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=401738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}