What 120 Degrees Looks Like in One of Mexico’s Hottest Cities – the New York Times
People in Hermosillo are used to the heat: Enduring scorching temperatures is a local point of pride (for) the “city of sun.” But on a recent Sunday in June, temperatures reached a record high when thermometers registered 49.5 degrees Celsius, or 121 Fahrenheit…
In the Bahamas, a Constant Race to Adapt to Climate Change – the New York Times
Rising seas and the ongoing threat of hurricanes and storm surges have forced the Caribbean nation to become a laboratory for climate adaptation.
At the United Nations climate summit in Egypt last year, Prime Minister Philip Davis of the Bahamas emerged as one of the most impassioned speakers among the more than 100 heads of state in attendance.
“We have to believe that a safer, better future is possible,” he told the gathering. “We believe that action — real, concerted action — can save the planet and save our human race…”
A Plan to Avert a Vast Oil Spill Off Yemen Finally Moves Ahead – the New York Times
A decaying tanker holds about four times the amount of oil leaked in the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster. Experts have warned that it is an ecological time bomb that could explode or disintegrate at any moment…The tanker is moored north of the port city and was once the site of fierce battles in the country’s eight-year-old war, which created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises…
The Tiny Craft Mapping Superstorms at Sea | Interactive – the New York Times
Shortly after dawn on Sept. 30, 2021, Richard Jenkins watched a Category 4 hurricane overrun his life’s work. The North Atlantic storm was a behemoth — 50,000 feet tall and 260 miles wide. Wind circled the eye wall at 143 miles per hour; waves the size of nine-story apartment buildings tumbled through a confused sea. Puerto Rico lay 500 miles to the southwest; Bermuda was 800 miles straight ahead. Eighty miles northwest, the 23-foot boat that Jenkins had designed and built over the last decade struggled to stay upright…
What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea – the New York Times
China has been rapidly piling sand onto reefs in the South China Sea, creating seven new islets in the region. It is straining geopolitical tensions that were already taut.
China’s activity in the Spratlys (Islands) is a major point of contention between China and the United States and was a primary topic of discussion between President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China during the Chinese president’s visit to the White House in September. On Monday, the United States sent a Navy destroyer near the islands, entering the disputed waters…
If Your House Were Falling Off a Cliff, Would You Leave? – the New York Times
On a stormy day in the spring of 2021, the sea defenses on the beach below Lucy Ansbro’s cliff-top home in Thorpeness, England, washed away. Then, the end of her garden collapsed into the North Sea…“We lost three and a half meters of land,” said Ms. Ansbro, a 54-year-old television producer, sitting in her kitchen on a recent morning. “Every time I went out, I didn’t know if the house would still be here when I came back…”
The Climate Impact of Your Neighborhood, Mapped – Interactive Feature – the New York Times
New data shared with The New York Times reveals stark disparities in how different U.S. households contribute to climate change. Looking at America’s cities, a pattern emerges.
Households in denser neighborhoods close to city centers tend to be responsible for fewer planet-warming greenhouse gases, on average, than households in the rest of the country. Residents in these areas typically drive less because jobs and stores are nearby and they can more easily walk, bike or take public transit…
How Do California’s Storms Weigh In Compared With History’s Big Ones? – the New York Times
The storms that have walloped California in fierce waves since last month have left many communities cleaning up and digging out from flooding and landslides. By one metric, though, the state has seen much worse…
What Will ‘Weather Whiplash’ Mean for California? – the New York Times
California is built upon the great gamble of irrigation. Left alone, much of the land in the Western United States would be inhospitable to teeming cities. But we’re Americans — we couldn’t let the desert stand in our way.
More than a century ago, the United States Bureau of Land Reclamation began taming the water in the West…