Weathered

The 2020 fire season is devastating communities, forcing thousands to evacuate, and choking the air with smoke. In this episode of Weathered, scientists and Native leaders tell us what we can do to reduce the harm fires can cause through design, building materials, and listening to the land. We’ll even watch researchers burn a home in their lab to identify weak points and make them stronger.

Hurricanes are the most powerful and destructive storms on the planet. And 2020 surpassed all expectations, becoming the most active hurricane season on record. Have you ever wondered how they form? Or how climate change is affecting them? And, what can we learn from a lab that creates hurricane-force wind and rain to test the strength of houses?

The Colorado Basin provides water to over 40 million people in 7 US states and it is currently experiencing its worst drought in 1200 years! But unlike other droughts, our actions may have real impacts on the outcome and it’s very likely that we can make things better.

Landslides occur in every US state, killing dozens and costing around $4 billion each year. One of the most devastating in US history struck on January 9, 2018 in the town of Montecito, CA. We traveled to Montecito to speak with experts and survivors about what they’ve learned following the tragedy as well as the lessons we can all apply to be more prepared for these common hazards.

Over the last decade, the American Northeast has seen more than a 200% increase in the frequency of large, disruptive snowstorms. This trend surprised nearly everybody, including many of the top experts, as they had been expecting a warming planet to translate into milder winters. But in many locations, we have seen just the opposite. So what’s going on here?

What are the most important essentials you’ll need to comfortably survive a disaster? In this episode of Weathered, Maiya explains the basics of disaster prep and shows you what she keeps in her own go-bag and pantry. She also explains her thought process behind why she’s included each item to help you get started on your own path to preparation!

The Cascadia Subduction Zone is a sleeping monster lurking just off the Northwest coast of the United States. It extends 600 miles between Northern California and Vancouver B.C. and experiences a massive megathrust earthquake every 250 years on average. The last one happened 321 years ago and scientists say there is a 30% chance we’ll see another in the next 50 years. It’s expected to rival the 9.0 quake that shook Japan for 6 minutes, which was the most destructive natural disaster in human history. It unleashed a tsunami that reached 100 feet in some areas, caused an estimated $360 billion in damages and claimed some 16,000 lives.

The awesome and devastating power of tornadoes is unlike any other that Mother Nature dishes out. The largest among them, known as EF5s, produce winds in excess of 200 mph and can span two miles across. The vast majority of tornadoes – over 1,200 a year – touch down in the United States. And while we know that supercell storms are responsible for most of the destructive tornadoes, much about tornado formation remains a mystery, making exactly where and when they will form difficult to predict. This is why, if you live in a tornado-prone area, being prepared and having a plan long before any tornado warning is issued is so critical.

Each year, flooding kills around 100 Americans and displaces some 75,000 from their homes. And as sea levels rise, storms dump more and more rain, and dams and levees continue aging and increasingly failing, the cost of flooding is increasing. So what do we do? Well, it’s not an easy question to answer. But there are many innovative solutions that communities are taking.

Perhaps no place in the United States more clearly illustrates the dangers of global warming than Phoenix, Arizona. 2020 was their hottest year on record, with 53 days reaching at least 110 degrees F. And heat-related deaths there have more than doubled over the last 5 years. But while these trends are truly disturbing, there is hope. Because of its extreme circumstances, Phoenix has been forced to explore innovative solutions and is learning how to adapt urban life to hotter and hotter temperatures. In this episode of Weathered, we delve into the latest science of the “urban heat island” effect, learn about the looming threat of a potential “Katina-like event” that threatens their electrical grid, and explore the gamut of options being pursued by scientists and activists to make life safer and more livable in America’s hottest city.

A fire tornado, or “firenado,” is exactly what it sounds like: a tornado made out of fire… and it is truly the stuff of nightmares. The most famous example occurred when the 2018 Carr Fire spawned an EF3 fire tornado with estimated wind speeds of 143 mph! And as climate change drives increasing wildfires around the planet, it only makes sense that we see more fire tornadoes as well.

In the 1930s, the US experienced what has been called its greatest ecological disaster, when the dust bowl ravaged the midwest, eroding topsoil, destroying crops, and displacing millions. As climate change exacerbates drought across much of the US in places like Phoenix and the larger Colorado River basin, damaging dust storms and haboobs are becoming more common, leading many experts to ask whether we might be heading into another dust bowl?

Have you ever wondered how hail is formed? Or just how big it can get? The largest hailstone ever recorded, the size of a volleyball, fell in Vivian, South Dakota on July 23rd, 2010. Large hailstones often shatter windshields, destroy crops, and can even smash through roofs. And while hail might not terrify you in the same way a tornado or earthquake does, each year hailstorms cause between $10 and $20 billion across the U.S.

For decades we’ve been planting trees in hopes of reducing carbon pollution. But when it comes to carbon sequestration, have we actually been getting it all backward? As the UN Climate Conference (COP26) approaches this November, the topic of carbon capture and storage will be hotly debated. In this episode, we travel to the Pacific Northwest forests of Oregon to see what we can learn about forest carbon sinks from Beverly Law and her groundbreaking research with Oregon State University’s Department of Forestry.

Out of the 1,500 or so active volcanoes around the world, one erupts every week on average. And the hot plumes of ash they spew into the atmosphere are the most dangerous part of these eruptions, threatening downwind communities and even planes. It turns out these plumes also form lightning! Tune into this episode of Weathered to learn how the volcanological community is using this terrifying weather phenomenon as an early detection system that might just save your life!

With climate change making temperatures more extreme each year, like we recently saw in the great Texas freeze and the Northwest heatwave, large-scale power outages become a matter of life and death. In 2003, a few transmission lines went down in Ohio leading to cascading failures across the Northeast and over 50 million people losing power. This event points toward critical vulnerabilities in our aging power grid. Could a power grid failure during an extreme weather event be the most deadly weather disaster in US history? And what can we do to prevent this kind of catastrophic blackout? Watch to find out.

If you feel like the weather has been getting a lot weirder and wilder lately, you’re not alone. While it’s easy to blame climate change, we need to dive deeper. There has been a recent increase in polar vortex events, extreme heat waves like in the Pacific Northwest, and extreme rain like we saw after Hurricane Ida. Even fires in Siberia and drought hint at a new dust bowl. NOAA’s 2020 Billion-Dollar Weather and Climate Disaster report showed a notable uptick in extremes. And 2021 was no exception, with 10.6% of all weather stations reporting record temperatures. And with the continued emission of carbon into the atmosphere, this should come as no real surprise. But some new scientific research shows that there is a surprising thread that connects nearly all of these weather events. Tune in to learn why it feels like our weather is spiraling out of control and what we might have in store.

Space weather is what causes beautiful Northern Lights, or aurora. But it also can have a major effect on the technology we rely on. In fact, it was space weather that brought down 40 SpaceX satellites during the production of this episode. And a large solar flare could cause the most significant weather threat human civilization has ever experienced. That’s because so much of essential services are powered by a functioning electrical grid and a geomagnetic storm could create grid down scenario. Watch this episode to learn how solar weather can effect the grid, what we can do to prepare and what we can learn from the Carrington Event. Elon Musk’s satellites are only the tip of the iceberg for what can be lost to a major Coronal Mass Ejection or CME so we’ll also learn how to prepare or harden the grid.

We asked six experts where the safest, or least risky, places will be to live as the climate changes and weather becomes more extreme. And the answer is pretty surprising. In this episode, we look at many hazards from temperature, storms, drought, farming, wildfire, polar vortex, hurricanes, sea-level rise, crop failure, extreme heat, and even economics. We look at the effect of climate on future migration patterns in the US and talk to someone who left New York City after Hurricane Sandy and identifies as a climate migrant. She ended up moving to the safest county in the United States from a weather and climate perspective. We’ll reveal where she went and why.

Sea level rise is a problem that is garnishing increasing attention among both scientists and the media. And as climate change continues to warm the earth, the current rate of 1.4 inches per decade is projected to increase, with NOAA predicting another foot of sea-level rise along US coastlines by 2050.

Life on the ground following natural disasters is often chaotic and scary. And with global warming gradually adding energy to our atmosphere, driving more extreme weather and worse disasters, it’s logical that people would be concerned. We’ve all seen the images of chaos and heard the reports of looting and violence in the aftermath of major disasters like hurricanes like Katrina and Maria. And a common way that people address their fear is by owning or buying guns. In the United States, self-defense is actually the most common reason people buy guns. And a lot of conversations in the prepper community are about what guns are best to have for personal protection in case things fall apart and the typical emergency response systems aren’t available.

Both climate models and the laws of physics are clear: more greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere means warmer air and oceans, which means more energy for bigger, stronger hurricanes. So why is it that we haven’t seen a clear signal from climate change in the hurricane record over the last century? This episode explores groundbreaking research on this question and looks ahead at what we can expect in the coming decades.

Wildfires have been consuming homes at a staggering pace over recent years. In fact, structure loss in these fires has grown by 10,000% in the last 13 years! And as climate change further warms the air and dries out the land, this trend seems to be going the wrong way. For decades, conventional wisdom has told us that fuels reduction is key to protecting communities. However, the latest research shows that weather actually plays a big role as well. In fact, the vast majority of structures are destroyed in wind-driven fires. Tune in to learn how we’ve been focusing on the wrong problem and what we can do about it.

With extreme heat waves in Europe, Asia, the United States and beyond, it’s clear climate change is making summers more dangerous and deadly. Urban areas are feeling the worst effects; a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect. 2022 saw high temperatures in Kansas, Spain, Portugal, England (especially London), and India. But even within cities, the warming is not distributed evenly. During the Pacific Northwest heat dome of 2021, the region's most extreme heat wave ever, this temperature difference reached a staggering 25°F between neighborhoods in Portland, OR. And new research is illuminating how a century of racist housing policies known as redlining have contributed to this often deadly inequality. The 2022 heat waves are not single events. They are another data point during years of escalating extreme weather. Previously, the 2019 European heat wave, the 1980 US heat wave, 1995 Chicago heat wave and many more are part of this trend.

A “tipping point” is when a system, with just a small amount of additional energy, is pushed from one stable state to another suddenly and dramatically. This can be a chair falling backwards. Or it can be a major earth system collapsing.

Rivers and reservoirs around the world are drying up this summer as record droughts rage on. Lake Mead along the Colorado, the largest reservoir in the nation, hit record lows. And experts fear the dreaded deadpool – where the reservoir can no longer provide water or hydropower to downstream communities – may only be a couple years away. The Yangtze river in China, the world’s 3rd largest by volume, got so low that Sichuan province experienced rolling blackouts as hydropower had to be severely rationed. And the Danube that runs through eastern Europe is currently at half its usual levels for this time of year.

Subduction zone earthquakes are the largest and most destructive on earth. In 2004 a 9.1 megaquake hit Sumatra off the coast of Indonesia, unleashing a massive tsunami and killing 227,898 people. And in 2011, the Tohoku earthquake struck Japan, killing around 20,000 and triggering the infamous Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the Pacific northwest lurks the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which has been dormant for centuries and is overdue for its next “big one.” In this episode we’re going to tell you what experts think is the best way to survive this inevitable disaster.

Massive floods have been sweeping the globe lately. British Columbia flood of 2021, Pakistan flood of 2022, Hurricane Ian, New Zealand, Las Vegas, Kentucky, Yellowstone National Park flood, and floods in California are all recent examples of such tragic flooding. And many are blaming climate change. But at the same time, we’re also seeing record lows in rivers and reservoirs all around the world. So what’s really going on here? Is the answer Hadley Cells changing? Is it the moisture capacity of the atmosphere?

Global sea level is rising at about 0.14 inches per year. This gradual change may seem small until something catastrophic happens. That’s what happened when category 4 hurricane Ian made landfall at Fort Myers on September 28, 2022, bringing with it some 15 feet of storm surge.

RCP 8.5 has often been referred to as “business as usual.” It describes a world in which the world chose to take no action on climate policy and fossil fuel use continued expanding unchecked, leading to a truly apocalyptic future for our climate and everything living on our planet – including us.

Arctic air is warming, causing scientists to worry that melting arctic ice and snow could also lead to a sudden permafrost thaw and release of carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4) that forms a climate tipping point or feedback loop. Thawing of permafrost has been linked to releasing zombie viruses not seen in millennia and the feedback loop mentioned in the recent IPCC report and COP27 focused on the release of CO2. This is something that US leaders hope the 2022 climate change bill (Inflation Reduction Act) could help avoid, but the trigger temperature may be coming sooner than expected.

The Arctic is experiencing global warming much faster than the rest of the world. A new study shows four times faster, in fact! One of the effects of this accelerated warming is the melting sea ice in the Arctic. And researchers off the southeast coast of Greenland have started to notice some surprising and alarming new guests.

The climate community has gotten pretty loud about telling us that we need to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, which is fast approaching. And in order to do this, we’re going to need to electrify pretty much everything and green the grid. But this raises some pretty big questions. What will this clean, green future look like? Can we pull off this massive transition in time before some seriously dire tipping points are reached? And will our power grid even be able to handle it, considering how much more extreme our weather is getting due to climate change? In this episode of Weathered, we speak to four different experts about this topic and dig as deep as we can to answer the question posed by the title: is the clean energy transition even possible with all this weather?

We’ve all heard that we should keep global climate change under 2 degrees of warming, but did you know that there are many places around the globe that have already surpassed that? Some places around the globe are experiencing extreme warming, while other places have actually seen some cooling. So what’s with all the variation?

As climate change continues warming the planet, a new and invisible killer is emerging: extreme wet bulb temperatures. This refers to a potentially lethal combination of heat and humidity that, until now, have appeared somewhat infrequently around the world. But models predict that they are likely to become an increasingly big problem in the coming years. In this episode we explore the intersection between climate science and meteorology to tell you where in the world is most at risk of these increasingly dangerous conditions.

Remember the 2008 Financial Crisis? Experts warn that the same thing may be happening again, but this time, CLIMATE CHANGE is the culprit. Increasing natural hazards, from wildfires and hurricanes to rising sea levels and catastrophic flooding are threatening the very foundation of our real estate system in huge swaths of the country. State Farm, All State and Farmers Insurance all stopped writing new policies in the entire state of California. And we're seeing similar stories unravel in other states due to different threats, like in Florida and Louisiana. Could the real estate bubble be popping? Where else might be affected?

With unprecedented heat waves and record-breaking global temperatures, it’s hard to believe that there might be a place on earth that has actually COOLED since the industrial revolution. But, it turns out, there is such a spot. The COLD BLOB off of Greenland mystified scientists for years, but new studies have uncovered a scary reality - this cool patch might be a warning of the impending collapse of a vital earth circulation system. And the consequences would be dire.