A freakish season of record temperatures, wildfire smoke and the destruction of Lahaina could soon become normal, climate experts say
“We just keep seeing these compound disasters – heat then fire, then fire and then flood,” said Jim Whittington, an expert on incident management at Oregon State University.
“The response community is just maxed out, there aren’t a lot of additional resources available. The summer should be a wake-up call because our systems and infrastructure are built on assumptions made in the 1950s and 1960s that just don’t exist now. We need a major rethink and need to start planning for worse to come, rather than just responding.”Inset: Noaa data shows smoke extent over the US on the same day.
that saw candidates either deny the existence of the climate crisis or downplay the need to rapidly move away from fossil fuelsEven a summer as extreme as this one is unlikely to significantly shift this dynamic, Swain said, even though it is likely to be followed by a string of years that are even hotter and more chaotic due to the onward upward march of global temperatures.
“This year is shocking and next year may well be worse. This summer will be among the cooler summers this century, it will feel like a remarkably cool summer 30 years from now even though it feels so extreme now. It is quite amazing, in fact it’s mind-blowing when you think about that.”
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