sam

@hk81.bsky.social

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climate scientist in the upper midwest. regional climate change, extreme precipitation, heatwaves, teleconnections, climate communication.

https://hk81.substack.com/

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every heat record made in the 1930s will be broken, probably before 2050

101 at 1pm in DC. Third day in a row 101-plus. Only previously done in 1930. #dcwx

another dam failure in the midwest. of secondary concern, but cemeteries really are always getting hit by extreme flooding

solving decarbonization of flight with my new plan "the global derecho"

Planes avoiding the derecho last night: twitter.com/TTrogdon/sta...

It's so annoying it's a denier meme because the fact that it was so hot *without global warming* should be cause for enormous alarm. What would a modern dust bowl drought look like?? and so on for every historic weather/climate event

Sure, lots of U.S. stations set all-time extreme heat records in the 1930s. But the globe was nowhere near record-hot. Bob Henson provides great context on the records, which were due to a combination of natural variability and poor farming practices. yaleclimateconnections.org/2024/07/why-...

Why were the 1930s so hot in North America? » Yale Climate Connectionsyaleclimateconnections.org Climate skeptics sometimes point to heat records from that decade to dismiss the reality of global warming. They're leaving out crucial context.

global sea ice continuing its slump from last year

so sad. it must cost several hundred dollars/tree to plant then they just..give up. when we need street trees more than ever and more and more species are getting sick

Seattle friends! Know how the city has been planting saplings to replace trees that have died from heat/drought/age? The city does not actually water them regularly! In this dry heat, a lot of them are dying. Gator bags say they need 15 gal/week. If you see one in distress on your street, adopt it.

last year's Canadian wildfires were unreal

The new reality of wildfire in BC. Now that area burned has passed 600,000 ha the area burned in 2017-2024 has burned more area than 1950-2016 (67 years). Of course, the 2024 fire season is far from over.

Scope 3 Taylor Swift emissions

did a post i've wanted to do for a while: a list of the climate/weather links I click on all the time. hope you can find something to add to your own click-roll

Staying up to date: a list of climate and weather linksopen.substack.com Stuff I click on alot

Beryl's track as shown by CoCoRaHS rain reports, July 8-11. Note the scale is different in each plot.

if finance guys learn how to securitize hypothetical future savings from GHG mitigation maybe we'll really keep under 2C

to cover a day like yesterday California roughly needs to quadruple it's solar output and increase it's short term battery storage ~20x? is that about right? doesn't seem SO bad. not considering increased load from full electrification

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sam

Today in "everything old is new again:" ⚡Electrify everything ⚡ In 1985, 70% of *all new homes built in the US* used electricity for space heating, water heating, and cooking, and had no gas connections. Electrify everything pretty much means "undo our mistakes from 1986-1992."

continuing to build LNG export terminals on the Gulf Coast is an impossible-to-wrap-your-head-around absurdist thing on the level of those chillers they put in the permafrost to keep the trans-alaska pipeline upright.

Nice reporting on Venture Global's Plaquemines LNG plant at the edge of the Louisiana marsh, at a time with rising sea levels www.washingtonpost.com/climate-envi...

A rising fortress in sinking landwww.washingtonpost.com Rising seas and steel walls test the strength of a Louisiana coastal gas development, raising questions about flooding, climate change and community impacts.

from formation to landfall a record-breaking, dangerous storm like Beryl barely made a peep over here. Twitter clearly won the battle of the climate/weather people. so depressing 😭.

some eclectic climate reading for your Friday open.substack.com/pub/hk81/p/t...

Things I've been reading July 05open.substack.com The importance of underwater mountains, the busy sound of a healthy reef, the thriving world beneath the snow, and more

in an alternate world, a family handing down a 1989 honda civic hatchback all the way out to 2090, where it is retired gracefully for a hoversuit

Never stops making me mad every time I see it: if we had begun the process of eliminating fossil fuels in the 1990s, it would've been a relatively shallow curve. Climate deniers and delayers have put us in a position where the same temp limits require a cliff-like drop in emissions.

insane! stay safe everyone.

The current NWS forecast calls for Las Vegas to break their all-time record high. Forecast is 118 on Monday. All-time record is 117. NBM probabilities show this may be achievable on several consecutive days from Sunday to Wednesday.

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sam

New article with a tree-ring (blue intensity) reconstruction of summer temperatures in the southeastern USA back to 1760. Perhaps even cooler is this figure that first author Karen King drew showing the two tree species used. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...

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sam

cowardly pace. blood on your hands

Today, the federal government put itself on the right side of history by seeking, for the 1st time, to establish the precedent that every worker in America has the right to shade, water & rest while working in temps that could kill them. -UFW President Teresa Romero www.politico.com/news/2024/07...

Biden to announce heat rules as climate-related deaths risewww.politico.com If finalized, they would be the first U.S. regulations to protect workers from dangerous temperatures.

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sam

Incredible shot of #Beryl’s eye from Copernicus Sentinel 2 satellite at 10m resolution. If you zoom in you can see the waves. Posted by Ivan Ameztoy on X. www.flickr.com/photos/18424...

Hurricane Beryl 2024-06-30 Sentinel-2www.flickr.com Copernicus

people like to talk about climate change modifying the jet stream as a reason for longer heatwaves but you don't need fancy explanations, a simple shift upwards in temperature pushes that many more days over the safe threshold. when/if the jet streams 'slows down' significantly we'll get far worse

Here’s a high res zoom of the count of days at the Major or Extreme HeatRisk level (when health impacts are more likely) in California and Nevada. Central Valley could be looking at a full week of this, and maybe more as the heat could last into next week.

more climate research pretty explicitly advocating for solar radiation management. decarbonization is the urgent thing, not an impossible dream of a fractured world working together to do climate engineering..

looks like a supertyphoon aiming for the Philippines. 😔

#Beryl is the strongest its been, 140mph winds, moving over island of #Carriacou Strongest hurricane on record (since 1851) to make landfall there & the strongest ever in the area, since Hurricane Allen (early Aug) which eventually became strongest Atl hur by wind 190mph.

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sam

"Annual wildland fire ignitions. The annual distribution of natural (orange) and human-caused (black) wildland fire ignitions in the US (data from the Federal Wildland Fire Database; 1980–2016 CE)." doi.org/10.1371/jour...

New Weather West post: Long-duration and in some cases record-breaking heatwave across much of CA in early July. Significant fire weather concerns across parts of CA this week, esp. given overlap w/July 4th fireworks & associated ignitions. #CAwx #CAfire weatherwest.com/arch...#CAwx #CAfire weatherwest.com/arch...

Long-duration and in some cases record-breaking heatwave across much of CA in early July - Weather Westweatherwest.com June ended up being a very warm (and warmer than expected) month in CA except at immediate coast June was...well, a pretty toasty one across most of the Southwest (unless you happen to live close to the immediate Pacific coast!). In fact, across a large portion of the interior Southwest (including some desert and mountain

a leading hypothesis for the paleocene-eocene thermal maximum is that consumers didn't purchase enough BMW X5 xDrive50e Plug-In Hybrid SUVs

Unthinkable just a few years ago: Almost 20% of all cars sold in 2024 are predicted to be electric vehicles. BNEF expects global EV sales to reach 16.6 million in 2024.

if you gave up trying to improve non-car infrastructure (walking, biking, public transit), what would a serious attempt to decarbonize private transportation look like? dropping Chinese tariffs, massive ICE buy-back program, enormous charger buildout (like 20x by 2030), etc. funny thought experiment

Tropical cyclones play a big role in the climate system, with their strong winds mixing down hot surface waters and mixing up cooler deep waters.This mixing accelerates the transport of heat poleward, cooling the tropics and warming the subtropics. Cool thing to think about as TC season heats up.

if you learn one thing about climate science it should be the longevity of the climate impacts of CO2 emissions. i made a presentation a couple years ago based on this science but with assumption gigatonne scale carbon removal will *not* happen. www.youtube.com/live/OwGgsC8...

We’ve long talked about the carbon budget, but given that the world is on track to pass the 1.5C target in the coming decade its time to start talking about the "carbon debt". My latest piece over at The Climate Brink: www.theclimatebrink.com/p/the-growin...

The growing carbon debtwww.theclimatebrink.com Why the climate change is different from other environmental challenges

The Science of Blamewww.youtube.com Link to slides: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dAWzUZxBXCvxI3_nhWANrcd-VYH-LJ06/view?usp=sharing.Who is responsible for climate impacts today? Who will be ...

people don't care about the average temperature of summers 😭😭. they care about heat waves getter longer and more frequent, overnight temperatures that never cool off, days over 95 or 100, rising dewpoints. it's 2024 we can make much, much better climate graphics than this

“Until we stop burning coal, oil and natural gas, conditions like this week’s dangerous heat will become more and more common” www.theguardian.com/environment/...

Visualized: the parts of the US where summer heat has risen the mostwww.theguardian.com More than a third of Americans endure summers at least 1.5C hotter than the 1895 average, analysis shows