#globalburning — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #globalburning, aggregated by home.social.
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#GrandCanyon, #Utah #wildfires creating "#FireClouds" that can form their own weather systems
August 1, 2025
"Two wildfires burning in the western United States — including one that has become a '#megafire' on the North Rim of the Grand Canyon — are so hot that they're spurring the formation of 'fire clouds' that can create their own #ErraticWeather systems.
"In #Arizona, the wind-whipped #DragonBravoFire that destroyed the #GrandCanyonLodge is 9% contained and has charred more than 164 square miles to become the largest fire now burning in the continental U.S. and one of the top 10 largest in recorded Arizona history. Getting around it would be roughly like driving from New York City to Washington, D.C.
"Another large fire in #MonroeUT, has burned 75 square miles since July 13 and is 11% contained, officials said Thursday. Evacuation orders were issued Wednesday for several towns in the fire's path, and scorched power poles prompted the shutoff of electricity in other nearby communities in south-central #Utah.
"Utah Gov. Spencer Cox declared an emergency Thursday as #wildfires grew around the state and planned to visit Monroe on Friday.
"Towering convection clouds known as #pyrocumulus clouds have been spotted over Arizona's blaze for seven consecutive days, fueling the fire with dry, powerful winds, fire information officer Lisa Jennings said. They form when air over the fire becomes #superheated and rises in a large smoke column. The giant billowing clouds can be seen for hundreds of miles and can resemble an anvil.
"Their more treacherous big brother, a fire-fueled thunderstorm known as the #pyrocumulonimbus cloud, sent rapid winds shooting in all directions this week as a smoke column formed from the Utah fire then collapsed on itself, fire team information officer Jess Clark said.
" 'If they get high enough, they can also create #downdrafts, and that's something we really watch out for because that can quickly spread the fire and can be very dangerous for firefighters who are doing their work on the ground,' Jennings said.
"Multiple fire crews in Utah were forced to retreat Wednesday as the unpredictable climate created by the clouds threatened their safety, officials said. Fire crews in both Utah and Arizona had better control of the blazes, but containment has been slipping as the fires grow rapidly.
"The same type of cloud, which the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has dubbed the 'fire-breathing dragon of clouds,' recently formed a fire tornado that tore through an eastern Utah neighborhood with wind speeds estimated at 122 miles per hour."
#Firenado #ExtremeWeather #WildfireWeather #ClimateChange #GlobalBurning #USWx #ExtremeWx
#Utah #GrandCanyon -
Unexplained #HeatWave ‘#Hotspots’ Are Popping Up Across the Globe
Kevin Krajick
November 26, 2024"Earth’s hottest recorded year was 2023, at 2.12 degrees F above the 20th-century average. This surpassed the previous record set in 2016. So far, the 10 hottest yearly average temperatures have occurred in the past decade. And, with the hottest summer and hottest single day, 2024 is on track to set yet another record.
"All this may not be breaking news to everyone, but amid this upward march in average temperatures, a striking new phenomenon is emerging: distinct regions are seeing repeated heat waves that are so extreme, they fall far beyond what any model of global warming can predict or explain. A new study provides the first worldwide map of such regions, which show up on every continent except Antarctica like giant, angry skin blotches. In recent years these heat waves have killed tens of thousands of people, withered crops and forests, and sparked devastating wildfires.
"'The large and unexpected margins by which recent regional-scale extremes have broken earlier records have raised questions about the degree to which climate models can provide adequate estimates of relations between global mean temperature changes and regional climate risks,' says the study.
"'This is about extreme trends that are the outcome of physical interactions we might not completely understand,' said lead author Kai Kornhuber, an adjunct scientist at the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. 'These regions become temporary hothouses.' Kornhuber is also a senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
"The study was just published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences."
"The study looks at heat waves over the past 65 years, identifying areas where extreme heat is accelerating considerably faster than more moderate temperatures. This often results in maximum temperatures that have been repeatedly broken by outsize, sometimes astonishing, amounts. For instance, a nine-day wave that hammered the U.S. Pacific Northwest and southwestern Canada in June 2021 broke daily records in some locales by 30 degrees C, or 54 F. This included the highest ever temperature recorded in Canada, 121.3 F, in Lytton, British Columbia. The town burned to the ground the next day in a wildfire driven in large part by the drying of vegetation in the extraordinary heat. In Oregon and Washington state, hundreds of people died from heat stroke and other health conditions.
"These extreme heat waves have been hitting predominantly in the last five years or so, though some occurred in the early 2000s or before. The most hard-hit regions include populous central China, Japan, Korea, the Arabian peninsula, eastern Australia and scattered parts of Africa. Others include Canada’s Northwest Territories and its High Arctic islands, northern Greenland, the southern end of South America and scattered patches of Siberia. Areas of Texas and New Mexico appear on the map, though they are not at the most extreme end.
"According to the report, the most intense and consistent signal comes from northwestern Europe, where sequences of heat waves contributed to some 60,000 deaths in 2022 and 47,000 deaths in 2023. These occurred across Germany, France, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and other countries. Here, in recent years, the hottest days of the year are warming twice as fast the summer mean temperatures. The region is especially vulnerable in part because, unlike places like the United States, few people have air conditioning, because traditionally it was almost never needed. The outbreaks have continued. In September, new maximum temperature records were set in Austria, France, Hungary, Slovenia, Norway and Sweden. Well into October, many parts of the U.S. Southwest and California saw record temperatures for the month more typical of midsummer.
"The researchers call the statistical trends 'tail-widening'―that is, the anomalous occurrence of temperatures at the far upper end, or beyond, anything that would be expected with simple upward shifts in mean summer temperatures. But the phenomenon is not happening everywhere; the study shows that maximum temperatures across many other regions are actually lower than what models would predict. These include wide areas of the north-central United States and south-central Canada, interior parts of South America, much of Siberia, northern Africa and northern Australia. Heat is increasing in these regions as well, but the extremes are increasing at similar or lower speed than what changes in average would suggest.
"Climbing overall temperatures make heat waves more likely in many cases, but the causes of the extreme heat outbreaks are not entirely clear. In Europe and Russia, an earlier study led by Kornhuber blamed heat waves and droughts on wobbles in the jet stream, a fast-moving river of air that continuously circles the northern hemisphere. Hemmed in by historically frigid temperatures in the far north and much warmer ones further south, the jet stream generally confines itself to a narrow band. But the Arctic is warming on average far more quickly than most other parts of the Earth, and this appears to be destabilizing the jet stream, causing it to develop so-called Rossby waves, which suck hot air from the south and park it in temperate regions that normally do not see extreme heat for days or weeks at a time."
#RossbyWaves #Rossby #GlobalWarming #GlobalBurning #Wildfires #GlobalHotSpots #Heatwaves #ExtremeHeat #ClimateChange #ExtremeHeatwaves #ExtremeWeather
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#BigOil firms knew of dire effects of #FossilFuels as early as 1950s, memos show
Newly unearthed documents contain warning from head of #AirPollutionFoundation, founded in 1953 by oil interests
Dharna Noor
Tue 12 Nov 2024 10.00 EST"Major oil companies, including #Shell and precursors to energy giants #Chevron, #ExxonMobil and #BP, were alerted about the planet-warming effects of fossil fuels as early as 1954, newly unearthed documents show.
The warning, from the head of an industry-created group known as the Air Pollution Foundation, was revealed by Climate Investigations Center and published Tuesday by the climate website DeSmog. It represents what may be the earliest instance of big oil being informed of the potentially dire consequences of its products.
"'Every time there’s a push for #ClimateAction, [we see] fossil fuel companies downplay and deny the harms of burning fossil fuels,' said Rebecca John, a researcher at the Climate Investigations Center who uncovered the historic memos. 'Now we have evidence they were doing this way back in the 50s during these really early attempts to crack down on sources of pollution.'"
Read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/12/big-oil-fossil-fuel-warning#GlobalWarming #GlobalBurning #ExxonKnew #BPKnew #ShellOilKnew #ExxonLied #ClimateCatastrophe