{"id":1086,"date":"2020-12-05T08:50:23","date_gmt":"2020-12-05T08:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=132948"},"modified":"2020-12-05T08:50:23","modified_gmt":"2020-12-05T08:50:23","slug":"from-alaska-to-california-the-climate-is-off-kilter-in-the-west","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/05\/from-alaska-to-california-the-climate-is-off-kilter-in-the-west\/","title":{"rendered":"From Alaska to California, the climate is off-kilter in the West"},"content":{"rendered":"

This <\/em>story <\/em><\/a>was originally published by High Country News <\/a><\/em>and is reproduced here as part of the <\/em>Climate Desk<\/em><\/a> collaboration.<\/em><\/p>\n

In September, President Donald Trump visited fire-ravaged California and declared that the wildfires that had already burned across millions of acres were the result of forest mismanagement, not a warming climate. \u201cWhen trees fall down after a short period of time, they become very dry \u2014 really like a matchstick. No more water pouring through, and they can explode,\u201d he said. \u201cAlso leaves. When you have dried leaves on the ground, it\u2019s just fuel for the fires.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump is right about one thing: Global warming isn\u2019t the only reason the West is burning. The growing number of people in the woods has increased the likelihood of human-caused ignitions, while more than a century of aggressive fire suppression has contributed to the fires\u2019 severity. In addition, unchecked development in fire-prone areas has resulted in greater loss of life and property.<\/p>\n

Yet, much as California Governor Gavin Newsom told Trump, it\u2019s impossible to deny the role a warming planet plays in today\u2019s blazes. \u201cSomething\u2019s happening to the plumbing of the world,\u201d Newsom said.\u201cAnd we come from a perspective, humbly, where we submit the science is in and observed evidence is self-evident that climate change is real, and that is exacerbating this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The accompanying graphic includes a few examples of the evidence Newsom mentioned. But then, you only have to step outside for a moment and feel the scorching heat, witness the dwindling streams, and choke on the omnipresent smoke to know that something\u2019s way off-kilter, climate-wise.<\/p>\n

But during his September stop outside Sacramento, California, under a blanket of smoke, Trump merely grinned and shrugged it off, again asserting that scientists don\u2019t know what\u2019s happening with the climate. And, anyway, he said: \u201cIt\u2019ll start getting cooler. You just watch.\u201d<\/p>\n

High Country News<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. \u00a0Lewistown, Montana, (70 degrees Fahrenheit) and Klamath Falls, Oregon, (65 degrees) set high-temperature records for the month of February.<\/li>\n
  2. \u00a0California had its driest February on record.<\/li>\n
  3. \u00a0In April, parts of southern Arizona and California saw the mercury climb past 100 degrees Fahrenheit for multiple days in a row, shattering records.<\/li>\n
  4. \u00a0Nome, Alaska, experienced its warmest May since record-keeping began in the early 1900s.<\/li>\n
  5. \u00a0Seven large fires burned across more than 75,000 acres in Arizona during May, and in early June, lightning ignited the Bighorn Fire in the Santa Catalina Mountains near Tucson, ultimately torching 120,000 acres. A week later, the Bush Fire broke out in Maricopa County and became the fifth largest in the state\u2019s history.<\/li>\n
  6. \u00a0On July 10, Alamosa, Colorado, set a temperature record for a daily low (37 degrees Fahrenheit). Later that day, it set another record for the daily high (92 degrees).<\/li>\n
  7. \u00a0Phoenix, Arizona, set an all-time record for monthly mean temperature in July (98.3 degrees), only to see that record fall in August (99.1 degrees Fahrenheit). The temperature in the burgeoning city exceeded 100 degrees on 145 days in 2020 \u2014 another record.<\/li>\n
  8. \u00a0Westwide in August, 214 monthly and 18 all-time high-temperature records were tied or broken, including in Porthill, Idaho (103 degrees), Mazama, Washington (103 degrees), and Goodwin Peak, Oregon (101 degrees).<\/li>\n
  9. \u00a0By the end of October, Phoenix had experienced 197 heat-associated deaths \u2014 about five times the yearly average during the early 2000s.<\/li>\n
  10. \u00a0In Death Valley National Park, the mercury hit 130 on August 16, breaking the previous all-time record set in 2013.<\/li>\n
  11. \u00a0Across the Western U.S., hundreds of monthly and all-time high-temperature records were broken in August, including in several places in Idaho and Washington, where the mercury climbed above 100 degrees.<\/li>\n
  12. \u00a0Warm temperatures in Alaska caused ice on the Chukchi Sea to melt, leaving record-tying amounts of open sea.<\/li>\n
  13. \u00a0During monsoon season (June through August), Phoenix received just 1 inch of rain, or about 37 percent of average, and then received no precipitation at all in September or October.<\/li>\n
  14. \u00a0Grand Junction, Colorado, experienced its driest July and August on record. On July 31, lightning ignited the nearby Pine Gulch Fire, which grew to 139,000 acres, making it (briefly) the largest in state history, only to be eclipsed by the 207,000-acre Cameron Peak Fire in the northern part of the state.<\/li>\n
  15. \u00a0Colorado\u2019s wildfire season was not only its most severe on record, but most of the fires also burned far later in the year than normal. In mid-October, when Colorado\u2019s mountains would normally be covered with snow, the East Troublesome Fire west of Boulder tore through high-elevation forests and homes to become the state\u2019s second-largest fire ever. Shortly thereafter, the Ice Fire broke out at nearly 10,000 feet above sea level in what was once known as the \u201casbestos forest\u201d near Silverton, burning over 500 acres.<\/li>\n
  16. \u00a0A dry thunderstorm that generated more than 8,000 recorded lightning strikes hit Central and Northern California in late July, igniting multiple megafires. The resulting August Complex became the largest fire in state history, and together with the SCU Lightning Complex, the LNU Lightning Complex, and the North Complex fires, it burned across more than 2 million acres, destroyed 5,000 structures and killed 22 people.<\/li>\n
  17. \u00a0Smoke from California\u2019s fires spread across the region, causing particulate matter to build up to levels that were hazardous to health and significantly diminishing solar energy output.<\/li>\n
  18. \u00a0In September, several fires were sparked in Oregon\u2019s tinder-dry forests. Fueled by high winds, they went on to burn more than 1 million acres and 4,000 homes.<\/li>\n
  19. \u00a0In August the Rio Grande in New Mexico shrank to the lowest mean monthly flow since 1973. Other rivers in the region, including the Colorado, Green, and San Juan, ran at far-below-average levels throughout the summer.<\/li>\n
  20. \u00a0As of early November, Lake Powell\u2019s surface elevation had declined by 35 feet since the same date in 2019, and summer hydroelectric output from Glen Canyon Dam\u2019s turbines was 13 percent below the previous summer\u2019s.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    This story was originally published by Grist<\/a> with the headline From Alaska to California, the climate is off-kilter in the West<\/a> on Dec 5, 2020.<\/p>\n\n

    This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    This story was originally published by High Country News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. In September, President Donald Trump visited fire-ravaged California\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":147,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108,110,4,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/147"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1086"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1087,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1086\/revisions\/1087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}