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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>July 20, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[Notice WXshift]<br>
<b>related News for U.S. Wildfires </b><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://wxshift.com/climate-change/climate-indicators/us-wildfires">https://wxshift.com/climate-change/climate-indicators/us-wildfires</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://wxshift.com/news/by-category/us-wildfires">https://wxshift.com/news/by-category/us-wildfires</a><br>
- - <br>
[bookmark this]<br>
<b>Active Fire Mapping Program</b><br>
Large incident map products updated daily while the National
Preparedness Level (NPL) is Level 2<br>
or higher. Otherwise, when the NPL is Level 1, the map products are
updated only on Fridays.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/">https://fsapps.nwcg.gov/</a><br>
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[wildfires explained]<br>
<b>Explainer: How climate change is affecting wildfires around the
world</b><br>
This year has seen unprecedented wildfires cause havoc across the
world. Australia recently battled its largest bushfire on record,
while parts of the Arctic, the Amazon and central Asia have also
experienced unusually severe blazes.<br>
<br>
It follows on from "the year rainforests burned" in 2019. Last year
saw the Amazon face its third-largest fire on record, while intense
blazes also raged in Indonesia, North America and Siberia, among
other regions.<br>
<br>
A rapid analysis released this year found that climate change made
the conditions for Australia's unprecedented 2019-20 bushfires at
least 30% more likely. Further analysis - visualised below in an
interactive map - has shown that, globally, climate change is
driving an increase in the weather conditions that can stoke
wildfires.<br>
<br>
But despite a growing field of evidence suggesting that climate
change is making the conditions for fire more likely, research finds
that the total area burned by wildfires each year decreased by up to
a quarter in the past two decades.<br>
<br>
Understanding this paradox requires scientists to assess a vast
range of influential factors, including climate change, human
land-use and political and social motivations.<br>
<br>
In this explainer, Carbon Brief examines how wildfires around the
world are changing, the influence of global warming and how risks
might multiply in the future.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-climate-change-is-affecting-wildfires-around-the-world">https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-how-climate-change-is-affecting-wildfires-around-the-world</a><br>
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[bookmark]<br>
<b>Forest Monitoring Designed for Action</b><br>
Global Forest Watch offers the latest data, technology and tools
that empower people everywhere to better protect forests.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.globalforestwatch.org/">https://www.globalforestwatch.org/</a><br>
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[Risk.net]<br>
<b>Q&A: New York Fed's Stiroh on climate change and Covid</b> <br>
Co-chair of Basel task force discusses possible supervisory
approaches to climate risk<br>
The coronavirus pandemic had the potential to push climate risk
cleanly off the global regulatory agenda, much as the financial
crisis had done more than a decade earlier. Instead, central bankers
have doubled down on multilateral plans since March, treating the
economic wreckage of the virus as a warning of the kind of shocks
that will occur with alarming frequency due to climate change. In
May, Luiz Pereira da Silva, deputy general manager of the Bank for
International Settlements (BIS)<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.risk.net/regulation/7655541/qa-new-york-feds-stiroh-on-climate-change-and-covid">https://www.risk.net/regulation/7655541/qa-new-york-feds-stiroh-on-climate-change-and-covid</a><br>
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[South China Morning Post]<br>
<b>Global warming and illegal land reclamation add to severe floods
in China</b><br>
Worst flooding in decades has affected more than 37 million people
and left 141 dead or missing<br>
Climate change and developments that have reduced the size of
freshwater lakes have contributed, according to experts<br>
Echo Xie - 19 Jul, 2020<br>
This summer, tens of millions of people across China have been
affected by torrential rains that caused floods and landslides and
battered cities and villages in dozens of provinces.<br>
It is the worst flooding to hit China in decades. Heavy rains have
lashed 27 of the country's 31 provinces since June, affecting more
than 37 million people and leaving 141 dead or missing, the Ministry
of Emergency Management said on Monday. Economic losses have been
estimated at 86 billion yuan (US$12.3 billion) so far.<br>
By comparison, the Great Flood of 1993 along the Mississippi and
Missouri rivers and their tributaries - one of the most costly and
devastating floods seen in the United States - resulted in about 50
deaths and 54,000 people being evacuated. Economic losses were put
at US$15 billion to US$20 billion.<br>
China's floods started in the south, in the Guangxi Zhuang region
and Guizhou province, in June. Heavy rains have since wreaked havoc
across large swathes of the country, including Jiangxi province in
the east, Anhui in the southeast and Hubei in the centre, with the
emergency response for flood control raised to its highest level in
some places.<br>
The scale of the disaster is vast, with the water level of 433
rivers going above the flood control line since June, and 33 of them
at record high levels, according to the Ministry of Water Resources.<br>
In some of the hardest-hit areas such as Jiangxi, levees have
collapsed and houses have been destroyed, reminding stranded locals
of the devastating floods in 1998 that killed more than 3,000 people
and left 15 million homeless."We're on higher ground so we did not
expect the floods to be so serious, but the water rushed in and I
had to take a car to my shop to pack up," said Ping Ping, a
porcelain shop owner in Jingdezhen, Jiangxi.<br>
<br>
"I had only ever seen floods on the news. That night, the floodwater
came up to my knees at first, then there was a swell of water
again," she said.<br>
"The Jingdezhen government must think about this problem. We hear
that there are floods every year, so shopkeepers with experience
usually know when to prepare," she said, questioning why they were
so unprepared this summer.<br>
<b>Why are this year's floods so severe ?</b><br>
China has perennial flooding in summer but a combination of climate
reasons and human behaviour have contributed to a longer-than-usual
duration and incessant rainfall in some regions.<br>
"The subtropical high pressure system over the western North Pacific
was strong this year," said Song Lianchun, a meteorologist with the
National Climate Centre. "Its intersection with cold air has led to
continuous heavy rainfall in the Yangtze River basin."<br>
Another reason was global warming, he said.<br>
"We cannot say a single extreme weather event is directly caused by
climate change, but seeing it over the long term, global warming has
led to an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather
events," Song said.<br>
<br>
From 1961 to 2018, there has been an increase in "extremely heavy
rainfall" events in China, according to the China Climate Change
Blue Book (2019). And since the mid-1990s, the frequency of extreme
rainfall has increased dramatically.<br>
Over the past 60 years, the number of days of heavy rain has gone up
by 3.9 per cent a decade, according to Song.<br>
Aside from the rainfall, human behaviour has also contributed to the
severity of the floods in China.<br>
Fan Xiao, a geologist with the Sichuan Geology and Mineral Bureau,
said decades of land reclamation and dam-building on nearby rivers
had reduced the area and volume of Poyang Lake, the country's
largest freshwater lake which is located in Jiangxi.<br>
Some 1,300km (808 miles) of land was reclaimed there from 1954 to
1998, which caused the surface area of the lake to shrink from
5,160km (3,206 miles) to 3,860km (2,398 miles), according to a study
by University of Alabama geographer David Shankman.<br>
Environmental volunteer Zhang Wenbin said he had investigated
illegal land reclamation activities at Tuolin, another lake in the
province. He said some of the projects around the lake were still
under way last year, even though they had been ordered to stop by
environmental inspectors from Beijing.<br>
"There are many similar cases," Zhang said, adding that Tuolin Lake
had also shrunk in size, reducing its storage capacity for
floodwaters.<br>
<b>How does it compare to other years?</b><br>
China's worst known floods were in 1931, when more than 2 million
people were killed. The flooding inundated an area the size of
England and half of Scotland combined, affecting about 25 million
people - or a tenth of the population at the time, Chris Courtney,
an assistant professor at Durham University, wrote in The Nature of
Disaster in China.<br>
Since the People's Republic of China was founded in 1949, there have
been two catastrophic floods. The first was in the summer of 1954
along the Yangtze River, resulting in over 30,000 deaths and
affecting 18 million people.<br>
The second was in 1998, again along the Yangtze but also in the
south and north of the country. It was the worst flooding in recent
years, with more than 3,000 people killed, 15 million left homeless,
and US$24 billion in economic losses.<br>
But Song Lianchun, head of the National Climate Centre, told
reporters on Wednesday that this year's downpours had not affected
such a broad area of the Yangtze River basin as in 1998.<br>
"The floods in 1998 had an impact on the whole Yangtze region, but
this year torrential rains have mainly affected the middle and lower
reaches of the river, so the affected area is smaller," Song said.<br>
<b>What about flood defences?</b><br>
After the disaster in 1998, Beijing increased its spending on flood
defences.<br>
"China's investment in water resource [infrastructure] in the five
years after 1998 was more than the total from 1949 to 1999,"
according to Cheng Xiaotao, who sits on an expert panel of the
National Disaster Reduction Committee.<br>
Cheng said reservoirs built on China's major rivers after 1998,
including the huge Three Gorges Dam, had a key role in relieving
flood pressure in the lower reaches of the Yangtze.<br>
However, experts have questioned whether massive dams can
effectively control flooding downstream, and the controversial Three
Gorges Dam - built in 2006 to help tame the Yangtze - is again under
scrutiny.<br>
Fan, the geologist from Sichuan, said the dam could partially
intercept flooding upstream, but it had a limited effect on
controlling floodwaters in the middle and lower reaches of the
Yangtze.<br>
According to Peter Gleick, a hydroclimatologist and member of the US
National Academy of Sciences, one of the lessons from the Three
Gorges was that no dam - no matter how large it was - could prevent
the worst floods from occurring.<br>
But Gleick added that it was not known whether China's floods would
have been better or worse without the dam.<br>
"What is known is that the growing risks of human-caused climate
change is worsening the risks of extreme rainfall events and floods,
which makes it even more likely that dams like the Three Gorges will
be unable to prevent the worst flooding from occurring in the
future," he said.<br>
Liu Junyan, a climate and energy campaigner with Greenpeace East
Asia, said the growing intensity and frequency of extreme weather
events meant climate risks should be a consideration for China's
urban planners.<br>
"Planning and construction should be able to deal with [climate]
risks in the future," she said.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3093713/global-warming-and-illegal-land-reclamation-add-severe-floods">https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3093713/global-warming-and-illegal-land-reclamation-add-severe-floods</a><br>
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</p>
<br>
[video commentary]<br>
<b>Global Green Recovery. Really?</b><br>
Jul 19, 2020<br>
Just Have a Think<br>
Global Green Recovery seems to be the buzz phrase exciting
journalists and Social Media types in many parts of the world right
now. But there's also a large contingent of battle-weary climate
campaigners, as well as a number of multi-billionaire corporate
overlords, who suspect it's all just fine words in the press to give
us average folks a little something to be hopeful about, and that in
reality the world will sprint back to business as usual at the
earliest possible opportunity like a free diver taking their first
breath after resurfacing. So is there any chance of our society
adopting any of the sustainability proposals that are being put
forward by just about every global organisation involved in modern
energy, food, transport and industry? <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjD9pDsGdVo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjD9pDsGdVo</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
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<br>
[Omaha World-Herald]<br>
<b>Nebraska legislators, scientists make 11th hour bid for climate
change study</b><br>
Nancy Gaarder - July 19, 2020<br>
<br>
Nebraskans know well the destructive power of weather.<br>
<br>
Take the catastrophic flood in 2019 that caused $3.4 billion in
damage, or the 2012 flash drought that sucked $4 billion out of the
state. Or the 2.5-mile-wide tornado that smashed into Hallam in
2004.<br>
<br>
But that's not what keeps Nebraska's climate scientists up at night.
Instead, it's the knowledge that as bad as things have been,
Nebraska's weather will become more extreme because of global
warming. And the state needs to prepare.<br>
<br>
For that reason, they, Nebraska youths and others have joined with a
group of state senators to make an 11th hour push for the
Legislature to pass a climate action plan this session, which
resumes Monday. And they're seeking the public's help, asking that
people contact their senators to support Legislative Bill 283, which
would fund a study that has stalled for a number of years.<br>
<br>
"The implications of this are just incredible for our state -- our
economy, our social fabric, the health and well-being of
Nebraskans," said Don Wilhite, a retired University of
Nebraska-Lincoln climate scientist who founded UNL's Drought
Mitigation Center.<br>
<br>
"We are going to see more and more extreme events," he said.
Devastating summers like 2012 will become routine in the lifetime of
today's children, he said. Extreme rains, which generate flooding,
are already on the increase, research and experience has shown, as
the atmosphere becomes soggier as a result of global warming.<br>
<br>
To pass, the proposal needs the votes of 25 of the 49 state
senators, and it would need 33 votes to overcome a filibuster.<br>
<br>
"We need people to support this. We've seen what extreme events can
do to Nebraska," said Sen. Patty Pansing Brooks, the original
sponsor of the bill.<br>
<br>
Young people have been doing just that, said Kat Woerner, a
20-year-old UNL junior from Bellevue. Letters, cards, phone calls,
personal visits, even a so-called climate strike, have been used
over the past year to promote LB 283. Elementary school children
have also contacted legislators, she said.<br>
<br>
"LB 283 is so important," she said. "Not only is it putting us with
the 30-plus states that already have one, but it gives young people
in Nebraska more hope for the future. This is something we actively
think about, we actively worry about."<br>
<br>
The planet's climate systems have entered uncharted territory in the
human record, Wilhite said. The Earth's atmosphere has more
heat-trapping carbon dioxide in it than it has in at least 3 million
years, and those gases have to fully convert to heat. (Research
buttressing those findings has been aided by UNL.)<br>
<br>
The study would be conducted by UNL at an estimated $250,000 cost.
It might look at a range of things: Should bridges and levees be
built higher and wider? What can be done about the increasing risk
of fatal heat stress to cattle? How nimbly could agriculture switch
to alternate crops if corn is no longer viable? And what happens to
the Ogallala Aquifer if Nebraska becomes as hot as southern Texas
over the next 80 years?<br>
<br>
And then there is the potential of growing the state's economy, jobs
and property tax revenue by cultivating Nebraska wind and solar
energy, rather than importing coal from Wyoming.<br>
<br>
Nothing in the study would be binding, Pansing Brooks said.<br>
<br>
The study is meant to help people plan, said Alan Moeller, a retired
assistant vice chancellor of UNL's Institute of Agriculture and
Natural Resources, who is on the team pushing for the plan.<br>
<br>
"If we don't have a plan, then it's business as usual, and things
will continue to get worse," he said. "People will not have the
information and tools they need to adapt... We're not going to
eliminate ... damage. But if we can significantly reduce it, we save
dollars, we save lives, we protect the environment."<br>
<br>
LB 283 has made it out of committee and is Sen. John McCollister's
priority bill, which means that it's guaranteed an airing over the
remaining 17 days of the session.<br>
<br>
"This is analogous to the COVID-19 issue, but unlike COVID-19,
there's no vaccine," he said. "Climate change truly is an
existential threat. It's something we need to deal with ... sooner
rather than later because it only gets more difficult the longer you
wait."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska-legislators-scientists-make-11th-hour-bid-for-climate-change-study/article_30a1074c-0f14-5f5e-a77a-947e355898eb.html">https://omaha.com/news/state-and-regional/nebraska-legislators-scientists-make-11th-hour-bid-for-climate-change-study/article_30a1074c-0f14-5f5e-a77a-947e355898eb.html</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
July 20, 2006 </b></font><br>
NPR reports on the GOP's show trials, er, hearings regarding climate
research in the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.<br>
<blockquote>RICHARD HARRIS reporting:<br>
<br>
The focus of this argument is a graph that's shaped like a hockey
stick and which suggests that the planet has warmed abruptly in
recent decades. Last year, Texas Republican Joe Barton attacked
that conclusion and went after the scientists who published the
paper by demanding they turn over their data and their computer
programs.<br>
<br>
Representative JOE BARTON (Republican, Texas): A number of people
basically use that report to come to the conclusion that global
warming was a fact and that the 1990s was the hottest decade on
record. And that one year, 1998, was the hottest year in the
millennium. Now, a millennium is a thousand years. That's a pretty
bold statement.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: Too bold a statement to make on the basis of that study.
Last month, the National Academy of Sciences said the study's
claims were overreaching but largely beside the point in the big
picture of global warming. But Chairman Barton had handpicked his
own reviewers as well, and yesterday he called a hearing to
discuss their results. Democrats wondered why the Energy and
Commerce Committee up till now has all but ignored global warming.<br>
<br>
Jay Inslee is a Democrat from Washington State.<br>
<br>
Representative JAY INSLEE (Democrat, Washington): Instead of
really engaging Congressional talent and figuring out how to deal
with this problem, we try to poke little pinholes in one
particular statistical conclusion of one particular study where
the overwhelming evidence is that we have to act to deal with this
global challenge.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: Inslee pointed out that National Academies of Sciences
from around the world, including that of the United States, have
come to the conclusion from many lines of evidence that global
warming is real and that humans are largely responsible. When the
time came, he turned to the Republicans' key witness, statistician
Ed Wegman.<br>
<br>
Rep. INSLEE: Now, I guess the question to you is do you have any
reason to believe all of those academies should change their
conclusion because of your criticism of one report?<br>
<br>
Professor EDWARD J. WEGMAN (Professor Information Technology and
Applied Statistics, George Mason University): Of course not.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: And the limits of Wegman's expertise became painfully
clear when he tried to answer a question from Illinois Democrat
Jan Schakowsky about the well known mechanism by which carbon
dioxide traps infrared radiation - heat - in our atmosphere.<br>
<br>
Prof. WEGMAN: Carbon dioxide is heavier than air. Where it sits in
the atmospheric profile, I don't know. I'm not an atmospheric
scientist to know that. But presumably, if the atmospheric - if
the carbon dioxide is close to the surface of the earth, it's not
reflecting a lot of infrared back.<br>
<br>
Representative JAN SCHAKOWSKY (Democrat, Illinois): But you're not
clearly qualified to...<br>
<br>
Prof. WEGMAN: No, of course not.<br>
<br>
Rep. SCHAKOWSKY: ...comment on that.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: Republicans on that committee were unmoved by the
discussion. Michael Burgess is a Republican from Texas.<br>
<br>
Representative MICHAEL BURGESS (Republican, Texas): It's false to
presume that a consensus today - exists today where the human
activity has been proven to cause global warming, and that's the
crux of this hearing. I would point out that simply turning off
the electrical generation plants that provide the air conditioning
back in my district would not be a viable option.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: Chairman Barton finally allowed that climate change is a
serious matter and that eminent scientists are deeply concerned
about it.<br>
<br>
Rep. BARTON: My problem is that everybody seems to think that it's
automatically a given and that we shouldn't even debate the
possibility of it and we probably shouldn't debate the causes of
it. And I think that's wrong.<br>
<br>
HARRIS: But if anyone showed up at this hearing room to hear a
true scientific debate on global warming they ended up instead
with just a political debate often far afield from the facts.<br>
<br>
Richard Harris, NPR News.<br>
<br>
(Soundbite of music)<br>
<br>
MONTAGNE: This is NPR News.<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5569901">http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5569901</a><br>
<br>
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