Disasters

"In the past two years, California has found itself under siege from more large-scale fires burning with greater intensity than at any time on record. Giant blazes are tearing across the state with greater speed and frequency, destroying towns and sending smoke hurtling hundreds of miles away. Nine of California’s 20 largest fires have occurred since 2020, according to Cal Fire, the state’s firefighting agency."

"The World Health Organization and about three-quarters of global health care workers on Monday called on governments to step up climate action at the COP26 global climate conference, saying it could save millions of lives a year."

"China’s largest coal-producing region was hit by severe flooding, threatening the country’s already strained power supply and displacing more than 120,000 people as residents called for help from other regions."

"This is the fourth year that drought has devastated Aly's home in southern Madagascar. Now more than one million people, or two out of five residents, of his Grand Sud region require emergency food aid in what the United Nations is calling a 'climate change famine."'

"When weather disaster strikes, observers near and far ask the same question: Climate change—is it or isn’t it?" "Friederike Otto and her colleagues jump into action during heat waves, floods, and fires to pinpoint if global warming is to blame."

"No nation in the Mediterranean region has been hit harder by climate change than Turkey. But as heat and drought increase, Turkey is doubling down on water-intensive agriculture and development and spurring a water-supply crisis that is expected to get much worse."

"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is known for damming rivers and building levees to keep waterways at bay. But a new initiative seeks natural flood control solutions as climate change brings increasingly frequent and severe weather events that test the limits of concrete and steel."

"Two dozen federal agencies flagged the biggest dangers posed by a warming planet. The list spreads across American society."

"The Canadian government has invoked a decades-old treaty with the United States in its latest bid to save a pipeline that critics warn could be environmentally catastrophic if it were to fail."

"Josh Edelson has shot some of the most iconic images of increasing destructive wildfires. Earther spoke with him about his work."