Climate Point: High tides, penguins and heat
Hurricanes, heat and hope are among the themes of the climate and environment coverage this week.
I'm Dinah Voyles Pulver, a national climate and environment writer at Paste BN, and this is Climate Point, your weekly guide to climate, energy and environment news.
Maricopa County, Arizona is the nation's hot spot for both temperatures and growth, writes Joan Meiners in an investigation evaluating the region’s heat and housing crises for the Arizona Republic. Last year, the county gained more residents than any county in the nation and ranked fifth among metro regions for home building. New homes are needed to meet skyrocketing demand, but as they go up, they make life hotter and harder for those not taken in under their roofs.
More than 1.3 million people in Phoenix live in areas that are an average 8 degrees hotter due solely to urban development compared to an undeveloped landscape, Climate Central found. That’s on top of warming caused by climate change. Often the hottest neighborhoods are those with more low-income and Latino residents. The Republic, with support from MIT, evaluated whether towns and cities are on a trajectory to meet housing needs while addressing the challenges of a warming, drying climate.
Too much water or not enough?
It depends where you are. On the coast, high tides and flooding are occurring more often and over the next year, federal scientists expect that to worsen. High tide flooding continued to break records in the nation last year, Doyle Rice wrote for Paste BN.
Eight locations along the East and West coasts experienced record high-tide flooding, said scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. El Niño will bring even more high-tide flood days in the upcoming year.
But the Panama Canal is facing cargo traffic restrictions as a result of water shortages in the region, and climate change could be putting the canal’s viability at stake.
In the Southwest, Tropical Storm Hilary’s arrival raised hopes that the Salton Sea might be a beneficiary of some extra water, writes Erin Rode with the Palm Springs Desert Sun. A previous storm had done so. Hilary was forecast to bring more than a year’s worth of rain to the desert over the span of two days. But those familiar with California’s largest lake advised not to expect too much. The Sea’s surface elevation has dropped by more than 11 feet since 2003.
In the Gulf of Mexico, the changing climate is helping to heat things up and helping pump up landfalling hurricanes. Hurricane Idalia’s winds grew from 90 mph to 130 mph in just 15 hours, thanks in part to unseasonably warm water, before sweeping a massive storm surge on to more than 100 miles of Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Wildlife Studies
Arizona: If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck in a southern Arizona refuge, which kind of duck is it and how could it be better protected? One wildlife geneticist is trying to figure that out, writes Brandon Loomis with the Arizona Republic. Philip Lavretsky works with Ducks Unlimited to research Mexican ducks to learn more about how they've adapted to the desert.
Antarctica: "Climate change is melting sea ice at an alarming rate," and with it penguin colonies are failing, said Jeremy Wilkinson, a sea ice physicist at the British Antarctic Survey, in a story by Paste BN's Doyle Rice.
The study found that emperor penguin colonies saw unprecedented and "catastrophic" breeding failure in a part of Antarctica where there was total sea ice loss in 2022. The discovery supports predictions that over 90% of emperor penguin colonies will be "quasi-extinct" by the end of the century, based on current global warming trends.
Massachusetts: State shark expert Gregory Skomal is working with others to learn more about the area’s great white sharks. Readers get a look at a day in Skomal’s work life as he searches for the protected animals.
Florida: Researchers are taking a closer look at shark movement, but they're studying how and why small sharks move to deeper, calmer waters ahead of major hurricanes.
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