Climate change

Nearly half of Americans, 152.3 million people, live in places with unhealthy levels of air pollution, new study finds (More) | See most polluted cities (More) | ... and cleanest (More)

Ohio Is Where Wind and Solar Projects Go to Die, and Other Findings From New Research on State Permitting

Inside Climate News - Nearly half the nation’s children live in places with dangerous levels of air pollution, according to a report released Wednesday by the American Lung Association.  That’s 33.5 million children—46 percent of the country’s kids—living in areas with failing grades for at least one measure of air pollution that is particularly harmful to developing lungs.

The report also found that people of color are more than twice as likely as white people to live in a community with failing grades for all three measures. Latinos are more than three times as likely to live in such communities, unchanged from last year’s report.

Since 2000, the ALA’s annual State of the Air reports have detailed the nation’s air quality, which improved for decades following the passage of the 1970 Clean Air Act. But in recent years, heat and wildfires worsened by climate change are reversing some of that progress. 

Gabrielle Canon Guardian - Scientists and officials are keeping a close eye on conditions brewing in the Pacific Ocean that could spike temperatures and smash global heat records in the year ahead.  It’s still too early to get a definitive picture, but there are signs that a so-called super El Niño could develop this year, supercharging extreme weather events around the world. Some forecasts are suggesting it could become one of the strongest ever recorded.

Alongside heating from the human-caused climate crisis, this could put the world on track to once again temporarily breach the 1.5C average temperature rise over preindustrial levels – the critical climate threshold that experts have warned comes with a host of catastrophic consequences. Some models show that temperature anomalies could even push past that point next year and go beyond a 2C increase for the first time in recorded history.

Are we heading for ‘super El Niño’ – and what could we expect?

Chance of El Niño forming in Pacific Ocean may push global temperatures to record highs in 202

 

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