The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) presents a briefing summarising the global climate each month – and in the first of these calls under the Trump administration, NOAA researchers avoided making any link between January’s record high global temperatures and climate change caused by human greenhouse gas emissions.
“It’s not great for science. It’s not great for truth,” says David Ho at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa. He says greenhouse gas emissions from humans have unequivocally played a role in raising global average temperatures.
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The monthly NOAA briefings generally include information on average temperatures both around the world and in the US, as well as updates on changes in the ocean, drought and any unusual events.
This month’s climate call included reports that global temperatures in January were 1.33°C above the 20th century average. This makes it the hottest January on record, coming on the heels of the hottest year on record. Each of the past 10 years is among the 10 hottest years on record.
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During his Senate confirmation hearing last month, Chris Wright put on a moderate face.
To support his bid to lead the Department of Energy, Wright—the CEO of fracking company Liberty Energy—assured senators that he understands fossil fuels are the primary cause of climate change. He also said he takes the problem seriously. “Climate change is a global challenge that we need to solve,” he said.
A warmer planet with more CO2 is better for growing plants. The world has been getting greener for decades—[there’s] 14 percent more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago. And we have far more people die of the cold than die of the heat.
So everything has a trade-off, but yeah. There’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives.
As electric car sales pick up pace far from the US coasts, a wave of new fast-charging stations are coming online from the Rust Belt down to the Deep South.
Roughly 600 quick-turn stations switched on in the third quarter across the US, a 7% increase from the end of June, according to a Bloomberg Green analysis of Department of Energy data. There are now nearly 9,000 public, fast-charging sites in the US, and their proliferation has only quickened.
For the year to date, the number of fast-charging options in the US has grown by 35% over the year-earlier period. At that rate, quick-turn stations will number roughly 11,600 by the end of the year — roughly one electron station for every 10 US gas stations.
“There are so many new stations going in every quarter,” said Erika Myers, executive director of CharIN North America, a Washington DC-based nonprofit focused on improving the charging experience. “It might feel like there isn’t much (charging) if you researched this last year, but take another look.”
The recent charger blitz is a boon, particularly for drivers in the US Midwest and South. The crowd of the new electron pumps cuts from Michigan south to Florida. Between June and October, drivers got 51 new places to quickly top up an EV in Michigan, 24 in Ohio, 38 in Florida, 25 in Georgia, 14 in Kentucky and 15 in Alabama.
An ambitious project by Salt River Project (SRP) suggests a future where the Arizona desert blooms with more than cacti—an immense new lake designed for pumped storage hydropower could be on the horizon. A report from 12Newsreveals that this additional lake, currently without a name, is expected to generate an impressive 2000 megawatts of power. To put that in perspective, it’s far beyond what the existing Salt River Lakes can muster collectively. Nestled between Roosevelt and Apache Lakes, this new addition could potentially power hundreds of thousands of homes.
The utility recently announced plans to reach net-zero carbon emissionsby 2050. To stay on track toward that goal, SRP says it will need to triple its renewable power output by 2035, and with that, its energy storage capacity.
SRP is considering two sites on federally owned land near Apache Lake to construct a new dam and flood a portion of the desert to create the upper reservoir in what would be Arizona’s largest pumped storage hydropower system.
Currently, SRP has a combined pumped storage hydropower capacity of 150 megawatts at two pumped storage facilities, Mormon Flat Dam and Horse Mesa Dam. The proposed new pumped storage system would have a 1,000 to 2,000 megawatt capacity.
In recent decades, the Northern Hemisphere has featured a “Warm Arctic, Cold Continents” (WACC) pattern, combining the warming and rapid sea ice loss of the Arctic with the frequent occurrence of cold, harsh winters over Eurasia and central North America.
A new study, funded in part by CPO’s Climate Variability and Predictability (CVP) program, investigates the drivers of interannual, or year-to-year, variability in the WACC. The research, published in the Journal of Climate, focuses on the WACC pattern over the North American region, as opposed to the Eurasian content, which has been the focus of most WACC studies. Determining which key processes are responsible for the formation of and variations in the WACC pattern is complex and challenging.
Previous research shows that sea ice loss, warming Arctic surface air temperature, and tropical sea surface temperatures may all play a role, along with the WACC’s own internal atmospheric processes. This study quantitatively characterizes the relative importance of the different key drivers of the WACC interannual variability over the North American region using both observations and multi-model simulations.
This study finds that internal atmospheric variability plays an important role in determining the variability of the internannual WACC pattern. Furthermore, unlike the WACC over Eurasia, the North American pattern seems to be more responsive to changes in sea surface temperature than Arctic sea ice. This link between sea surface temperature and WACC variability could serve as a useful predictor for seasonal climate predictions over the North American region.
— After 2 years of snowless winters, the upper midwest has seen an extended period without a thaw, leading to the thickest snow some areas have seen in years, including where I’m at.
Some areas in the Great Lakes are seeing record snowfall this winter, thanks in part to global warming–or “global weirding,” as I prefer to call it!
That’s because hasn’t been cold enough for most lake areas, other than Lake Erie and Georgian Bay, to completely ice over yet. So as cold air masses sweep across warmer lakes, they’re picking up more moisture. And this means greater snowfalls on the windward (typically south and east) sides of the lakes.
Half empty:s Giant builder of electricity generation caves to Trump/Putin “Energy dominance” agenda.
Half Full: Energy Giant CEO admits “renewables can be delivered right now, they can accommodate that (surging data center/AI) demand today… Gas fired generation announced today, …won’t be ready til 2030 or beyond at scale,…and nuclear beyond that because a lot of it is first of a kind technology..”
Today, the President and CEO of NextEra Energy, John Ketchum, announced the energy company plans to add more gas plants to its fleet to fulfill Donald Trump’s “energy dominance” agenda.
Additional gas plants would expose communities NextEra serves to worse air and water pollution, and all the illnesses associated with long-term exposure to such pollution.
In 2022, NextEra energy announced its Real Zero initiative and committed to completely eliminate carbon emissions from its operations by 2045 by leveraging renewable energy. Today’s announcement moves in the opposite direction of that goal.
In response, Sierra Club Florida Chapter Director Susannah Randolph issued the following statement:
“The best thing NextEra can do for its customers is follow through with its clean energy commitments that are better for the community it serves, for peoples’ wallets, and for the environment. The only ‘agenda’ that NextEra should seek to fulfill is that of its customers, not politicians like Donald Trump.
“As our community continues to heal from the devastations of Hurricane Milton, it is more pressing than ever that energy companies embrace renewable energy to tackle climate change and mitigate the impact of future climate disasters. By prioritizing dirty fossil fuels rather than cheaper, healthier and more reliable renewable energy options, it is clear that NextEra Energy is not serving the best interest of its customers, but instead is simply taking orders from Donald Trump.”
By chance, it was California, a blue state that had the ongoing climate enhanced disaster as Trump was taking office, but inevitably, disasters now hitting Red States, as the administration, following the Project 2025 blueprint, is dismantling FEMA and disaster responses. FEMA currently showing up in Kentucky, but stiffing Georgia, which is still digging out from Hurricane Helene.
In January, Gov. Brian Kemp requested that FEMA extend the period in which local governments in Georgia could be reimbursed for costs associated with Hurricane Helen cleanup. Sens. Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock also called on the administration to extend the deadline.
Last Wednesday, Cameron Hamilton, the senior official performing the duties of the administrator, informed Kemp that the request had been denied.
The backstory:
Hurricane Helen tore through the South in October, leaving flooding, fallen trees, and other damage behind in its wake. At least 34 people in the state were killed during the storm.
Experts estimate the cost to farmers, timber growers and other agribusinesses from Florida to Virginia will reach more than $10 billion. The toll includes ravaged crops, uprooted timber, wrecked farm equipment and mangled chicken houses, as well as indirect costs such as lost productivity at cotton gins and poultry processing plants.
Georgia farmers suffered storm losses of at least $5.5 billion, according to an analysis by the University of Georgia. In North Carolina, a state agency calculated farmers suffered $3.1 billion in crop losses and recovery costs after Helene brought record rainfall and flooding.
Writing to President Donald Trump, Ossoff and Warnock said that the funding for the Debris Coverage Program from FEMA “has been crucial in assisting these impacted counties in helping these communities rebuild.”
While states like Florida and South Carolina had their programs extended 180 days, Georgia’s was only extended 120 and was set to end on Feb. 3.
What they’re saying:
In the acting administrator for FEMA’s letter to Kemp, Hamilton wrote that “it has been determined that the increased level of funding you have requested for major disaster FEMA-4830-DR is not warranted.”
From tornadoes to mudslides and floods and more floods, Kentucky has endured an unlucky streak, stretching back too many uncomfortable years to count, of being pounded by one climate disaster after another. Over the last four years, the flooding in Eastern Kentucky has killed more than 50 people. The previous December, tornadoes on the western side of the state left 80 dead.
