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Living in a warming world

June 13, 2025 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As global temperatures rise due to increased greenhouse gas emissions, communities around the world face more frequent and intense heatwaves, droughts, and extreme weather events. These growing climate pressures not only strain infrastructure and natural resources, but also play a critical role in shaping where people live.

Recent projections from the First Street Foundation, which analyzes climate risks across the United States, highlight just how significant these shifts could be. In Sacramento County, California, rising flood risks, declining air quality, and soaring insurance costs could lead to a population decline of up to 28% by 2055. The risk assessment also projects that Monmouth and Ocean counties in New Jersey could each lose more than 30% of their populations. And Fresno County, California, could see nearly half of its residents relocate due to mounting climate-related pressures.

Urban areas like cities, towns, and suburbs are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Cities become significantly hotter due to the abundance of heat-absorbing surfaces and lack of green spaces, which intensifies heatwaves, worsens conditions for vulnerable populations, and may ultimately force some people to move.

Addressing these challenges requires a combination of climate solutions focused on both mitigation and adaptation. Solutions like expanding green infrastructure with urban parks and green roofs, and promoting sustainable development through energy-efficient buildings and transit-friendly design could all play a vital role in strengthening climate resilience.

As the planet warms, where we live – and how we live there – is rapidly being redefined.

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Web Links

The 12th National Risk Assessment

Solar on farmland

Photo, posted May 15, 2013, courtesy of Germán Poo-Caamaño via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Where not to plant trees

May 10, 2024 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Planting huge numbers of trees is often proposed as a way to reduce the severity of climate change. Studies have looked at the potential for Earth‘s ecosystems to support large additional areas of forest and have found that it would be possible to have at least 25% more forested area than we do now. This in turn could capture large amounts of carbon and substantially reduce the amount in the atmosphere.

A recent study by researchers at Clark University in Massachusetts and The Nature Conservancy mapped the climate impact of tree planting across the globe, identifying where it would be most and also least beneficial. The study, published in Nature Communications, found that trees planted in arid, desert regions or in snowy places like the Arctic would, on balance, worsen warming rather than reduce it.

Trees take up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which helps to keep warming in check. But trees with dark, green leaves also absorb heat from sunlight. Snow and desert sand, on the other hand, are light-colored and reflect more sunlight back into space. For this reason, trees planted in snowy areas or in the desert will absorb more sunlight than their surroundings. This can negate the climate benefits of soaking up carbon dioxide.

Previous studies only looked at how much carbon dioxide would be removed by planting trees in order to determine how much warming would be prevented. The new study finds that it matters where the trees are planted.

Fortunately, the new study also shows that tree planting projects that are currently underway or that are in the pipeline are largely concentrated in regions where they will indeed help slow global warming.

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This Map Shows Where Planting Trees Would Make Climate Change Worse

Photo, posted April 5, 2022, courtesy of UC Davis Arboretum and Public Garden via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Predicting Lightning Strikes

November 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Lightning is one of the most unpredictable phenomena in nature. Approximately 100 lightning bolts strike earth’s surface every second, and each lightning bolt can contain up to one billion volts of electricity. Lightning regularly kills both people and animals and sets homes and forests on fire. It’s also been known to ground airplanes.

Researchers at EPFL – a research institute and university in Switzerland – have developed a novel way to predict where and when lightning will strike. The system relies on a combination of standard data from weather stations and artificial intelligence to predict lightning strikes to the nearest 10 to 30 minutes and within a radius of less than 20 miles. The simple and inexpensive system was outlined in a research paper recently published in Climate and Atmospheric Science, a Nature partner journal.

According to researchers, the current systems for predicting lightning strikes are slow, expensive, and complex, relying on external data acquired by satellite and radar. The new inexpensive system from EPFL uses real time data that can be obtained from any weather station, meaning it can cover remote regions that are out of radar and satellite range and where communication networks are lacking. The quick predictions from the system allow alerts to be issued before a storm has even formed.

The system uses a machine-learning algorithm that’s been trained to recognize conditions that lead to lightning. The researchers took into account atmospheric pressure, air temperature, relative humidity, and wind speed, among other things. After training the algorithm, the system was able to predict lightning strikes accurately nearly 80% of the time.

This system is a simple way to predict a complex phenomenon.

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Using AI to predict where and when lightning will strike

Photo, posted December 14, 2018, courtesy of Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.