A Summer of Climate Disasters

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/07/briefing/climate-change-heat-waves-us-europe.html

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Heat waves in the U.S., wildfires in Europe, floods in Asia: This summer has shown how the climate crisis has made extreme weather a part of everyday life.

Some of the worst recent damage has taken place in Pakistan. Floods have submerged more than a third of the country and killed at least 1,300 people.

Scientists can’t say yet with certainty that climate change caused the flooding, but experts told me that it was most likely a contributor. As The Times explained, climate change is making severe floods likelier and more intense. “These off-the-charts events are going to happen more often, and this is just one of those examples,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center.

The floods followed a brutal heat wave in Pakistan earlier this year that led to temperatures above 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Scientists have already concluded that global warming made that heat wave much likelier.

Climate disasters also hit many other parts of the world this year:

In the U.S., a heat wave on the West Coast has sent temperatures soaring above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the past few days. About 100 million Americans across the country suffered another heat wave earlier this summer. And floods have ravaged parts of the U.S., including Kentucky and Missouri.

The earlier heat wave that hit Pakistan reached India, too. A severe drought also struck parts of India this summer, reducing the country’s food exports. And floods in Bengaluru, India’s tech capital, forced workers to ride boats and tractors to get to the office.

A heat wave and drought in China dried up rivers, disabling hydroelectric dams and cutting off ships carrying supplies.

Another heat wave in Europe sent temperatures in Britain to a record 104 degrees Fahrenheit. Droughts across the continent dried up rivers, exposing sunken ships from World War II and disrupting the river cruise industry. And wildfires in Europe have burned nearly three times as much land so far this year as the 2006-2021 average.

In April, heavy rainfall caused floods and mudslides in South Africa that killed at least 45 people.

“Some of these events have no historical comparisons from 200 years ago,” my colleague Raymond Zhong, who covers climate change, told me.

Why? Rising temperatures create the circumstances for more frequent and more intense heat waves. Prolonged heat causes more frequent and more intense droughts and wildfires. And as it gets warmer, more water evaporates from the oceans — leading to more moisture in the air, and then heavier rainfall, floods and mudslides.

In my conversations with experts, I referred to the summer’s extreme weather as a “new normal.” But the experts pushed back on that characterization. They argued that calling it normal suggested we had reached some sort of plateau.

“It’s very much getting worse,” said Kim Cobb, the director of the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society. Humanity has emitted greenhouse gases through industrialization for more than a century. Those gases are already in the atmosphere, causing warming and extreme weather. Past and future emissions will continue to heat up the planet over the next couple of decades, leading to even more disasters.

That doesn’t mean the world is helpless, experts said. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as Democrats’ new spending law aims to do, can still lower the risk of climate disasters over the medium term. In the short term, humans can mitigate disasters through adaptation — using better forest management to reduce wildfire risk, for example, or building infrastructure that is more resilient to heavy rainfall and flooding.

(And each year will not automatically be worse than the year before. Factors unrelated to climate change also affect the weather, including seasonal patterns like El Niño and La Niña.)

But poorer countries, like Pakistan, lack the resources to adapt without outside aid. A rapidly changing climate can also upend their plans: After historic floods in 2010, Pakistan rebuilt a destroyed bridge 16 feet higher. In this year’s floods, the bridge was inundated again.

It’s in many ways unfair. Poorer countries have contributed to climate change much less because they have emitted less greenhouse gas than wealthier nations, as I’ve explained before. Yet some, like Pakistan, are now suffering the worst consequences of global warming.

Part of the danger of the West’s dayslong heat wave is its “mind-blowing” duration. California averted rolling blackouts despite record energy use.

Europe bet on wood pellets as a form of green energy. Some of them are logged from centuries-old forests.

Switzerland’s glaciers are an indicator of climate change, and scientists worry that some could soon vanish, Bloomberg reports.

Follow the extreme weather in the U.S. with The Times’s heat tracker and news briefing.

Steve Bannon, pardoned by Donald Trump last year, is expected to turn himself in today to the New York authorities to face state charges in a sealed indictment.

Massachusetts Republicans nominated Geoff Diehl, a Trump-backed candidate who has repeated false election-fraud claims. He’ll face Maura Healey, who could become the country’s first openly lesbian governor.

More than a third of Republican nominees for major state or federal offices this fall fully deny that President Biden won the 2020 election, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Stacey Abrams is trailing in polls of the Georgia governor’s race, worrying Democrats who hoped she would lead the state’s blue shift.

A judge ordered a New Mexico county commissioner who participated in the ‌Capitol riot to be removed from his role under the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from office.

Many legal experts have criticized a federal judge’s intervention in the Mar-a-Lago documents case.

Juul has tentatively agreed to pay $438.5 million to settle an investigation into whether it fueled teenage vaping.

The U.N.’s nuclear watchdog called for a no-fire zone around a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, warning of a “constant threat” to safety.

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Head Start, a federal pre-K program for low-income families, still requires universal masking, when C.D.C. guidance does not. Some parents worry it could hinder development.

As Apple moves some manufacturing out of China, the country is getting more involved in designing iPhones.

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Prohibition and criminalization remain at the core of the global war on drugs. It’s time to change that, Christy Thornton says.

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Jair Bolsonaro doesn’t just want to control Brazil’s government; he wants to dismantle it, Miguel Lago argues.

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Need for speed: In Germany, one energy-saving idea is apparently taboo: an Autobahn speed limit.

Winemaking in the desert: Israeli vineyards in Negev show it can be done.

Business U-turn: Peloton is reselling used bikes.

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Lives Lived: Peter Straub’s novels about ghosts, demons and the supernatural made him a leading author of the horror-fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s. He died at 79.

A tossup at No. 1: Alabama remained atop the A.P. Top 25 college football poll in the first in-season edition. But after a statement Week 1 win, Georgia looked deserving as well. The No. 131 team? Sorry, Charlotte.

A legend bows out: The W.N.B.A. star Sue Bird’s career ended with the Seattle Storm’s Game 4 semifinals loss to the Las Vegas Aces last night. Vegas will play the winner of the Chicago Sky-Connecticut Sun series, which heads to a winner-take-all Game 5 tomorrow.

U.S. Open: Caroline Garcia, from France, beat Coco Gauff and advanced to the semifinals. Also: In 2012, The Times profiled Frances Tiafoe, then a teenager who had lived most his life in a spare office at an elite tennis training center — and now a men’s quarterfinalist.

Six novels have been named finalists for this year’s Booker Prize. Several of them use humor to address painful chapters of history: In “Glory,” the Zimbabwean author NoViolet Bulawayo writes about the fall of an African dictator from the perspective of talking animals; and Percival Everett’s story of Black detectives, “The Trees,” lampoons the inescapable nature of American racism.

The authors come from four continents, with a wide range of styles, from quiet, introspective fiction to fantasy. “The prize is a moment for everyone to pause and to marvel at what English as a language can actually do,” Neil MacGregor, the chair of this year’s judges, said. Read more about the finalists.

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Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Dodge (five letters).

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Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German

P.S. The Times reporter Julian Barnes (“not the British author”) explained why it’s not easy sharing a name in journalism.

Here’s today’s front page.

“The Daily” is about the nuclear plant standoff in Ukraine. On “The Argument,” which books high schoolers should read.

Lauren Hard, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Tom Wright-Piersanti and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.