Climate change causing one-third of flood damage in United States, Stanford study finds [San Francisco Chronicle]
Jan. 12 Increasingly strong storms are responsible for more than a third of the nation’s flood costs, swelling the tab by billions of dollars a year as climate change continues to fuel more extreme weather, according to new research at Stanford University.
The research, which is among the first to put a price tag on heavier rainfall, found that the changing weather is responsible for $75 billion of the cumulative $199 billion of U.S. flood damage between 1998 and 2017. Many of the losses over that period were in California.
By Josie Garthwaite
Record-setting wildfires torched huge swaths of western states in 2020. They blotted out the sun, produced hazardous air pollution in cities far from the blazes and sent toxic smoke wafting clear across the country and beyond. Such far-reaching effects are no longer aberrations, Stanford scholars write in research published Jan. 12 in
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Wildfire smoke shrouded the San Francisco Bay Area and blocked sunlight on Sept. 9, 2020. (Image credit: Aaron Maizlish / Flickr Creative Commons)
The number of homes at direct risk from wildfires – and the investment in firefighting resources to protect them – is on the rise. Nearly 50 million homes in the U.S. now sit in the wildland-urban interface where houses are close to forests and highly combustible vegetation, according to the authors, led by Marshall Burke, an associate professor of Earth system science in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences
Wildfires Produced Up To Half of Pollution in US West medscape.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from medscape.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Wildfires Produced Up to Half of Pollution in U.S. West, Study Says Pollution emissions declined from other sources, but the amount pollution from wildfires has increased sharply in recent years, according to researchers. By Matthew Brown •
Updated on January 12, 2021 at 10:06 am
NBC Universal, Inc.
Wildfire smoke accounted for up to half of all health-damaging small particle air pollution in the western U.S. in recent years as warming temperatures fueled more destructive blazes, according to a study released Monday.
Even as pollution emissions declined from other sources, including vehicle exhaust and power plants, the amount from fires increased sharply, said researchers at Stanford University and the University of California, San Diego.
Covid-19 and Climate Change Will Remain Inextricably Linked, Thanks to the Parallels (and the Denial)
Covid-19 has been described as climate change in fast motion. Climate activists hoped it would underscore the threat. But for some, it may have done the opposite.
January 1, 2021
In May, as the Covid-19 pandemic swept the nation, normally jammed highways in Los Angeles were nearly empty. The absence of traffic led to steep reductions in carbon emissions, at least for a while. Credit: David McNew/Getty Images
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Whether or not people accept the science on Covid-19 and climate change, both global crises will have lasting impacts on health and quality of life, especially for the diverse and low-income communities they’ve already hit hardest.