Hurricanes push heat deeper into the ocean than scientists realized, boosting long-term ocean warming, new research shows

Sally Warner, Associate Professor of Climate Science, Brandeis University 

Noel Gutiérrez Brizuela, Ph.D. Candidate in Physical Oceanography, 

University of California, San Diego

THE CONVERSATION
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Satellite data illustrates the heat signature of Hurricane Maria above warm surface water in 2017. NASA

When a hurricane hits land, the destruction can be visible for years or even decades. Less obvious, but also powerful, is the effect hurricanes have on the oceans.

In a new study, we show through real-time measurements that hurricanes don’t just churn water at the surface. They can also push heat deep into the ocean in ways that can lock it up for years and ultimately affect regions far from the storm.

Heat is the key component of this story. It has long been known that hurricanes gain their energy from warm sea surface temperatures. This heat helps moist air near the ocean surface rise like a hot air balloon and form clouds taller than Mount Everest. This is why hurricanes generally form in tropical regions.


What we discovered is that hurricanes ultimately help warm the ocean, too, by enhancing its ability to absorb and store heat. And that can have far-reaching consequences.

How hurricanes draw energy from the ocean’s heat. Kelvin Ma via Wikimedia, CC BY

When hurricanes mix heat into the ocean, that heat doesn’t just resurface in the same place. We showed how underwater waves produced by the storm can push the heat roughly four times deeper than mixing alone, sending it to a depth where the heat is trapped far from the surface. From there, deep sea currents can transport it thousands of miles. A hurricane that travels across the western Pacific Ocean and hits the Philippines could end up supplying warm water that heats up the coast of Ecuador years later.
At sea, looking for typhoons

For two months in the fall of 2018, we lived aboard the research vessel Thomas G. Thompson to record how the Philippine Sea responded to changing weather patterns. As ocean scientists, we study turbulent mixing in the ocean and hurricanes and other tropical storms that generate this turbulence.

Skies were clear and winds were calm during the first half of our experiment. But in the second half, three major typhoons – as hurricanes are known in this part of the world – stirred up the ocean.

Microstructure profilers are used to measure ocean turbulence. This one is designed and built by the Ocean Mixing Group at Oregon State University. Sally Warner

That shift allowed us to directly compare the ocean’s motions with and without the influence of the storms. In particular, we were interested in learning how turbulence below the ocean surface was helping transfer heat down into the deep ocean.

We measure ocean turbulence with an instrument called a microstructure profiler, which free-falls nearly 1,000 feet (300 meters) and uses a probe similar to a phonograph needle to measure turbulent motions of the water.
What happens when a hurricane comes through

Imagine the tropical ocean before a hurricane passes over it. At the surface is a layer of warm water, warmer than 80 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius), that is heated by the sun and extends roughly 160 feet (50 meters) below the surface. Below it are layers of colder water.

The temperature difference between the layers keeps the waters separated and virtually unable to affect each other. You can think of it like the division between the oil and vinegar in an unshaken bottle of salad dressing.

As a hurricane passes over the tropical ocean, its strong winds help stir the boundaries between the water layers, much like someone shaking the bottle of salad dressing. In the process, cold deep water is mixed up from below and warm surface water is mixed downward. This causes surface temperatures to cool, allowing the ocean to absorb heat more efficiently than usual in the days after a hurricane.

For over two decades, scientists have debated whether the warm waters that are mixed downward by hurricanes could heat ocean currents and thereby shape global climate patterns. At the heart of this question was whether hurricanes could pump heat deep enough so that it stays in the ocean for years.

These illustrations show what happens to ocean heat before, during, after and many months after a hurricane passes over the ocean. Sally Warner, CC BY-ND

By analyzing subsurface ocean measurements taken before and after three hurricanes, we found that underwater waves transport heat roughly four times deeper into the ocean than direct mixing during the hurricane. These waves, which are generated by the hurricane itself, transport the heat deep enough that it cannot be easily released back into the atmosphere.

Implications of heat in the deep ocean

Once this heat is picked up by large-scale ocean currents, it can be transported to distant parts of the ocean.

The heat injected by the typhoons we studied in the Philippine Sea may have flowed to the coasts of Ecuador or California, following current patterns that carry water from west to east across the equatorial Pacific.

At this point, the heat may be mixed back up to the surface by a combination of shoaling currents, upwelling and turbulent mixing. Once the heat is close to the surface again, it can warm the local climate and affect ecosystems.

For instance, coral reefs are particularly sensitive to extended periods of heat stress. El Niño events are the typical culprit behind coral bleaching in Ecuador, but the excess heat from the hurricanes that we observed may contribute to stressed reefs and bleached coral far from where the storms appeared.

Coral reefs are essential habitat for fish and other sea life, but they are threatened by rising ocean temperatures. James Watt via NOAA

It is also possible that the excess heat from hurricanes stays within the ocean for decades or more without returning to the surface. This would actually have a mitigating impact on climate change.

As hurricanes redistribute heat from the ocean surface to greater depths, they can help to slow down warming of the Earth’s atmosphere by keeping the heat sequestered in the ocean.

Scientists have long thought of hurricanes as extreme events fueled by ocean heat and shaped by the Earth’s climate. Our findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, add a new dimension to this problem by showing that the interactions go both ways — hurricanes themselves have the ability to heat up the ocean and shape the Earth’s climate.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

It was written by: Noel Gutiérrez Brizuela, University of California, San Diego and Sally Warner, Brandeis University.

Read more:

Atlantic hurricane season 2023: El Niño and extreme Atlantic Ocean heat are about to clash

Hurricane Ida turned into a monster thanks to a giant warm patch in the Gulf of Mexico – here’s what happened

Noel Gutiérrez Brizuela receives funding from the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT).

Sally Warner has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research.

‘The Atlantic is definitely on fire’: Unusually hot ocean sparks up early hurricane season

Alex Harris

MIAMI HERALD
Tue, June 20, 2023 

The Atlantic Ocean is hot right now. Hotter than it’s supposed to be for this time of year, and hot enough to worry scientists — particularly ones who monitor hurricanes.

Those higher-than-normal temperatures help explain why the National Hurricane Center’s tracking map on Tuesday looked a lot more like a snapshot from August than June. It shows two brewing systems east of the Lesser Antilles, including one that has already reached tropical storm strength, Bret. Named storms in June are rare and past ones have typically popped in the Gulf of Mexico or near the Atlantic coast.

That hot water is the prime suspect for the early season activity, but not the only one.

“There’s no doubt it’s related to the extra heat down there,” said Jeff Berardelli, chief meteorologist for WFLA in Tampa Bay. “We typically wouldn’t have water temperatures that are above the critical thresholds across wide swaths of the tropical Atlantic this early in the season.”

Some spots in the Atlantic are so unseasonably hot, they’re now running at temperatures usually seen in September — which is three, long hot summer months ahead.

Ben Noll, a meteorologist with the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research in New Zealand, tweeted a map showing those spots, which include large swaths of the main development region, where Atlantic hurricanes usually form from waves rolling off the coast of Africa.

On average, the tropical Atlantic is running about two degrees Celsius hotter than normal, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, according to NOAA satellite data. And it happened fast.

Micheal Fischer, an assistant scientist with the University of Miami-NOAA Cooperative Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Studies, said that between April to June, the region (including the eastern Caribbean) warmed about 1.6 degrees Celsius. In a normal year, he said, it warms about 1 degree in that same time.

“That’s greater than anything we’ve seen over the last 40 years,” he said. “The Atlantic is definitely on fire.”

Many spots have flashed past an important benchmark that usually doesn’t happen until later in the season — 26.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists use to determine whether water is warm enough to support a tropical storm or hurricane.

Kim Wood, an associate professor of meteorology at Mississippi State University, called the rate of rising sea surface temperatures in the tropical Atlantic “mind-boggling.”

“We need a lot more than warm ocean water for [tropical cyclones] to form, and 26.5°C isn’t a hard-and-fast threshold, but seeing [sea surface temperatures] already exceed that value for so much of this region is... unusual, as many others have noted,” Wood tweeted.

And those pockets of abnormally hot water are already occupied. On Tuesday, the hurricane center was tracking both Tropical Storm Bret as well as another tropical wave close behind it. Hurricane models also had begun to hint at a third wave that could follow.

Why is it so hot?

The latest storm to form, Bret, is weird in several ways. For one, it’s way early.

Typically, the front half of hurricane season features storms that form in the Caribbean and spiral north. That flips around in late July or early August, when conditions line up for that infamous conveyor belt of tropical waves off Africa’s west coast. Some of those strengthen into tropical storms or hurricanes as they head west across the warming Atlantic.

Bret actually formed further to the east than any other early season named storm. Since 1850, only four previous storms have churned up east of the chain of Caribbean islands known as the Lesser Antilles in June.

Forecasters said the abnormally hot waters of the Atlantic could have definitely helped make that possible, but they aren’t the only factor.

“It’s a key ingredient but it’s not the only thing going on,” Fischer said.

Saharan Dust also tends to tamp down the tropics in the early summer. That cloud of loose dirt that floats off the west coast of Africa in the early summer typically slows or shuts down storm formation, blocking the sun and helping keep ocean waters cool. There’s less of that dust than usual this month.

There also are weaker than usual trade winds. Typically this time of year, a high-pressure system sits between Bermuda in the Azores, with a clockwise flow of air around it that helps cool the waters of the Atlantic.

“It’s fair to say the Atlantic has been unusually hospitable to tropical cyclone development this year,” Fischer said.

Satellite data show the tropical Atlantic ocean is almost three degrees Celsius hotter than normal, which could spark an active and early hurricane season.

Uncertain season ahead

Despite the unseasonably hot waters, early forecasts from NOAA and others have called for a near-average hurricane season. That’s because of another massive weather phenomenon that is known to curtail storm activity — El Niño.

El Niño officially began earlier this month, and years with this weather pattern usually see fewer storms form in the Atlantic and more storm-shredding wind shear in the eastern Caribbean. That works directly against the storm-intensifying power of hotter oceans, leaving scientists with a lot of uncertainty about what this season may hold.

“We’re really in uncharted waters,” Fischer said.

And all of that is on top of the steadily building impact of climate change, which has already warmed tropical oceans by about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the 1900s.

On Tuesday, NOAA noted that the ocean last month broke heat records, making it “virtually certain” that 2023 would end up in the top ten hottest years on record.

“This year shows us the potential of climate change,” Berardelli said. “When you take climate change and then on top of it you add natural factors that just happen to line up to create warm temperatures, you’re reaching extremes you’ve never reached in modern history.’

Ocean heat is off the charts – here's what that means for humans and ecosystems around the world


Annalisa Bracco, Professor of Ocean and Climate Dynamics, Georgia Institute of Technology
Wed, June 21, 2023

THE CONVERSATION

The Indian Ocean's heat is having effects on land, too. NOAA Coral Reef Watch

Ocean temperatures have been off the charts since mid-March 2023, with the highest average levels in 40 years of satellite monitoring, and the impact is breaking through in disruptive ways around the world.

The sea of Japan is more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit (4 degrees Celsius) warmer than average. The Indian monsoon, closely tied to conditions in the warm Indian Ocean, has been well below its expected strength.

Spain, France, England and the whole Scandinavian Peninsula are also seeing rainfall far below normal, likely connected to an extraordinary marine heat wave in the eastern North Atlantic. Sea surface temperatures there have been 1.8 to 5 F (1 to 3 C) above average from the coast of Africa all the way to Iceland.

So, what’s going on?

Sea surface temperatures are running well above the average since satellite monitoring began. The thick black line is 2023. The orange line is 2022. The 1982-2011 average is the middle dashed line. ClimateReanalyzer.org/NOAA OISST v2.1

El Niño is partly to blame. This climate phenomenon, now developing in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, is characterized by warm waters in the central and eastern Pacific, which generally weakens the trade winds in the tropics. This weakening of those winds can affect oceans and land around the world.

But there are other forces at work on ocean temperatures.

Underlying everything is global warming – the continuing rising trend of sea surface and land temperatures for the past several decades as human activities have increased greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

The world just came off three straight years of La Niña – El Niño’s opposite, characterized by cooler waters rising in the equatorial Pacific. La Niña has a cooling effect globally that helps keep global sea surface temperatures in check but can also mask global warming. With that cooling effect turned off, the heat is increasingly evident.

Arctic sea ice was also unusually low in May and early June, and it may play a role. Losing ice cover can increase water temperatures, because dark open water absorbs solar radiation that white ice had reflected back into space.

These influences are playing out in various ways around the world.

The effects of extraordinary Atlantic heat

In early June 2023, I visited the NORCE climate center in Bergen, Norway, for two weeks to meet with other ocean scientists. The warm waters and mild winds across the eastern North Atlantic brought a long stretch of sunny, warm weather in a month when more than 70% of days normally would have been downpours.

The whole agricultural sector of Norway is now bracing for a drought as bad as the one in 2018, when yield was 40% below normal. Our train from Bergen to Oslo had a two-hour delay because the brakes of one car overheated and the 90 F (32 C) temperatures approaching the capital were too high to allow them to cool down.

Many scientists have speculated on the causes of the eastern North Atlantic’s unusually high temperatures, and several studies are underway.

Weakened winds caused the Azores high, a semi-permanent high pressure system over the Atlantic that affects Europe’s weather, to be especially weak and brought less dust from the Sahara over the ocean during the spring, which may have increased the amount of solar radiation reaching the water. A decrease in human-produced aerosol emissions in Europe and in the United States over the past few years – which has succeeded in improving air quality – may also have reduced the cooling effect such aerosols have.

A weakened monsoon in South Asia

In the Indian Ocean, El Niño tends to cause a warming of the water in April and May that can dampen the crucial Indian monsoon.

That may be happening – the monsoon was much weaker than normal from mid-May to mid-June 2023. That can be a problem for a large part of South Asia, where most of the agriculture is still rain-fed and depends heavily on the summer monsoon.

India saw sweltering temperatures in May and June 2023.

  Sanjeev Verma/Hindustan Times via Getty Images

The Indian Ocean also saw an intense, slow-moving cyclone in the Arabian Sea this year that deprived land of moisture and rainfall for weeks. Studies suggest storms can sit for longer over warmer waters, gaining strength and pulling moisture to their core, and that can deprive surrounding land masses of water, increasing the risk of droughts, wildfires and marine heat waves.

North American hurricane season up in the air

In the Atlantic, the weakening trade winds with El Niño tend to tamp down hurricane activity, but warm Atlantic temperatures can supercharge those storms. Whether the ocean heat, if it persists into fall, will override El Niño’s effects remains to be seen.

Risk of marine heat waves in South America

Marine heat waves can also have huge impacts on marine ecosystems, bleaching coral reefs and causing the death or movement of entire species. Coral-based ecosystems are nurseries for fish that provide food for 1 billion people around the world.

The reefs of the Galapagos Islands and those along the coastlines of Colombia, Panama and Ecuador are already at risk of severe bleaching and mortality from this year’s El Nino. Meanwhile, the Japan Sea and the eastern Mediterranean Sea are both losing their biodiversity to invasive species – giant jellyfish in Asia and lionfish in the Mediterranean – that can thrive in warmer waters.

These kinds of risks are increasing

Spring 2023 was exceptional, with several chaotic weather events accompanying the formation of El Niño and the exceptionally warmer temperatures in many parts of the world. At the same time, the warming of the oceans and atmosphere increase the chances for this kind of ocean warming.

To lower the risk, the world needs to reduce baseline warming by limiting excess greenhouse gas emissions, like fossil fuels, and move to a carbon-neutral planet. People will have to adapt to a warming climate in which extreme events are more likely and learn how to mitigate their impact.

This article is republished from The Conversation, an independent nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. 

It was written by: Annalisa Bracco, Georgia Institute of Technology.

Read more:

El Niño is coming, and ocean temps are already at record highs – that can spell disaster for fish and corals


Coral reefs are dying as climate change decimates ocean ecosystems vital to fish and humans

Annalisa Bracco receives funding from NSF, NOAA, DOE.

‘Unprecedented’ ocean heat wave could linger through fall

Denise Chow
Wed, June 21, 2023

An intense marine heat wave that has fueled record-warm sea surface temperatures in the world’s oceans in recent months could linger well into the fall, according to an experimental forecast produced by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Researchers with the agency’s Physical Sciences Laboratory said unusually warm conditions in the North Atlantic are all but certain to last all summer, with an up to 90% chance that the marine heat wave will persist through November.

Members of the research team are set to host a public discussion later this week to unveil the new forecast and talk about its implications.

Dillon Amaya, a research scientist at NOAA’s Physical Sciences Laboratory, called the situation in the North Atlantic “unprecedented,” adding that researchers have been trying to understand what is driving the current warm spell and its potential consequences.

“There’s only a few things that can cause the ocean to warm so much so quickly,” he said. “The main driver of ocean temperature changes like these are changes in the atmospheric circulation, and if you look at what the atmosphere has been doing over the North Atlantic in the last three months, you’ll see that the circulation has actually been fairly sluggish in that part of the world.”

Typically, there is a subtropical high-pressure system that sits over the North Atlantic that governs surface winds over that region of the planet. When those winds are weaker than normal, ocean temperatures tend to heat up, Amaya said.

But what is causing the weakening has been less clear, he added.

The consequences of such a prolonged warm spell have many scientists worried.

In addition to fueling extreme weather, warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures can accelerate the loss of polar ice, which in turn can exacerbate rising sea levels.

“This is a really startling global situation because the additional surface heating we see at this time will eventually be mixed into the ocean water column,” Craig Donlon, head of the European Space Agency's Earth Surfaces and Interior Section, said in a statement. “Some of this excess heat will find its way into the Arctic Ocean via ocean currents through the Fram Strait and Norwegian Sea further exacerbating the demise of Arctic sea ice.”

Thousands of dead fish washed ashore in Freeport, Texas on June 9, 2023. 

(Darrell Schoppe / Cover Images via AP)

Marine heat waves can also affect the availability of food for sea creatures, alter migration patterns and devastate marine ecosystems, including coral reefs and fisheries.

Earlier this month, thousands of dead fish washed up on a Gulf Coast beach in a "fish kill" that officials linked to rising ocean temperatures that caused oxygen levels to plunge.

Scientists closely track changes in atmospheric circulation and ocean temperatures because both can influence local climates and extreme weather.

In a June 16 blog post, the United Kingdom’s Met Office, the country’s national weather service, said the record-breaking global sea surface temperatures were the result of “the classic combination of the underpinning of human-caused climate change with a layer of natural variation within the climate system on top.”

The European Space Agency said Tuesday that the waters off the coast of the U.K. and Ireland have been particularly warm, with parts of the North Sea nearly 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) higher than normal for this time of year. Conditions in the Baltic Sea have been even more extreme, the agency said, with sea surface temperatures more than 14 degrees F (8 degrees C) warmer than average.

Oceans naturally absorb and store heat, which can make them important bellwethers of global warming. Studies have found that oceans have absorbed more than 90% of the heat trapped on Earth from greenhouse gas emissions since 1970.

Amaya said that it's too soon to tease out the specific fingerprints of climate change on this marine heat wave.

The return of El Niño, a naturally occurring climate pattern, also adds to concerns that the world’s oceans will remain exceptionally warm in the coming months.

El Niño occurs when changes in the strength or direction of trade winds cause waters in the central and eastern tropical Pacific Ocean to become warmer than usual. These shifts have a strong influence on global temperatures and extreme weather, including rainfall, hurricanes and other severe storms.

Amaya said he hopes the new forecast will be a valuable tool to help the public better understand marine heat waves. He also said it's a unique opportunity for scientists to study the consequences of such a pronounced anomaly.

“I’m certainly not excited for the impacts,” he said, “but I’m excited and curious to learn more about what’s going on from an intellectual and scientific perspective.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

North Atlantic temperatures are breaking records. What does it mean?

Scott Sutherland
Tue, June 20, 2023





Sea surface temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean are significantly higher now than they have been at any time in the past 42 years. What’s going on, and what impact might this have on this year’s Atlantic Hurricane Season?

Ocean temperatures have been running high ever since March, and the end of the La Niña pattern that had persisted for the past two and a half years. It was expected that the global average temperature would rise as the wide cool region of Pacific ocean surface during La Niña transitioned to warmer waters with the development of a new El Niño. However, a somewhat unexpected response was seeing the North Atlantic Ocean break temperature records over that same time period.

The situation is unprecedented. Since March 5, 2023, the average sea surface temperature of the North Atlantic has been breaking records, reaching a high of 23.1°C as of June 18. Never before in the over 42 years of record keeping have North Atlantic sea surface temperatures reached this high.

North-Atlantic-SST-18062023-ClimateReanalyzer

North Atlantic sea surface temperatures for year-to-date 2023 are shown in the above graph as a solid black line. Temperatures reached an average of 23.1C on June 18, 2023. That’s a half of a degree Celsius warmer than the previous record on that date, set back in 2010. (Climate Reanalyzer/Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine)

According to Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School, the chances of global sea surface temperatures reaching as high as they are now, simply by chance, is only 1 in 256,000.

“This is beyond extraordinary,” McNoldy said on Twitter.

What’s going on here?

There is undoubtedly a human component to this. As greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, more heat is being trapped in Earth’s climate system, and a significant portion of that heat is going into the oceans. There are other factors contributing to it, though.

One is Saharan dust, or in this case, the lack of it.

Easterly winds blowing off the Sahara Desert carry dust particles out over the ocean. Depending on the specific conditions, this dust can form a thick layer that’s easily visible from space. At times, it can even travel straight across the ocean to impact air quality along the east coast of North America.

When this dust is present, the particles reflect sunlight back into space, thus keeping the ocean surface slightly cooler.

However, when dust concentrations are very low, as they are now, more sunlight reaches the ocean unimpeded and the surface heats up more than usual.

Impacts of this heat

Besides the implications for climate change and sea level rise, these extreme ocean temperatures are having local impacts on ocean wildlife.

One example is the thousands of dead fish that washed up on Texas shorelines over the past few weeks.

The reason for this comes down to the amount of oxygen available in the water. Calm waters and cloudy skies apparently contributed to this fish kill. According to the Quintana Beach County Park, which is one of the beaches affected by this fish kill, the cloudy skies reduced the amount of sunlight available to microscopic phytoplankton, which produce some of the oxygen that gets dissolved in the water, and the lack of waves limited how much oxygen was captured by the ocean surface due to wave action.

The warmer waters played a significant role, though, as oxygen levels in the water drop as the temperature rises.

"Water can only hold so much oxygen at certain temperatures, and certainly we know that seawater temperatures are rising," Katie St. Clair, the manager of the sea life facility at Texas A&M University at Galveston told NPR. "It is concerning and something that needs to be monitored."

A similar situation is also brewing off the coasts of Ireland and the United Kingdom.
2023's Atlantic Hurricane Season

Another particular area of concern here is the Atlantic Main Development Region, which is where most North Atlantic tropical storms and hurricanes form.

According to Ben Noll, a meteorologist with New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, temperatures in this area of the Atlantic are record high right now.

With hotter sea surface temperatures in the Main Development Region, there comes a greater risk of powerful tropical cyclones spinning up.

“The MDR, a breeding ground for hurricanes, has an average temperature of 28˚C (82˚F), surpassing the previous record that was set in 2005,” Noll said. “2005 featured the second most active hurricane season on record. 2023 appears unlikely to be that active because of El Niño, but a busy season is well within the realm of possibility.”



As noted by Noll, with the newly-developed El Niño in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, there will be a tendency towards weaker tropical cyclones across the North Atlantic. During an El Niño, winds high above the Atlantic typically blow stronger than they do when there’s a La Niña pattern or when conditions are “in between” El Niño and La Niña. That has the effect of limiting how tall a tropical cyclone can grow, which in turn limits how strong the storm can become. Thus, El Niño years tend to have slightly weaker hurricane seasons, overall.

Such is not always the case, though. The 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season occurred during a weak to moderate El Niño, and it still produced a total of 28 storms. From 2005 to 2019, it remained the most active hurricane season on record, and it still holds the record for the greatest number of hurricanes (15) and the greatest number of major hurricanes (7), which included four Category 5 storms — Emily, Katrina, Rita, and Wilma.

Towards the end of May, NOAA issued their outlook for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season, forecasting a 40 per cent chance of a near-normal year for tropical storms and hurricanes. Their forecast is calling for between 12-17 named storms to develop before the season ends on November 30. Of those storms, between 5 and 9 are expected to become hurricanes, and up to 4 of those hurricanes could develop into major hurricanes (Category 3 or higher). Due to the uncertainties in how long these record-breaking ocean temperatures will last and how quickly El Niño will develop, the other 60 per cent confidence was evenly split with regards to whether this could end up as a “below average” or “above average” season.

Two-Day Atlantic June 20 2023 NHC
(NOAA/NWS National Hurricane Center)

Even up until the middle of June, the only storm detected was Tropical Storm Arlene, which developed and then died off after only three days in the Gulf of Mexico.

However, as of June 19, activity is ramping up. The NWS’s National Hurricane Center is already tracking Tropical Storm Bret in the mid-Atlantic. Another disturbance (indicated by the “1” on the above satellite image) has a 70 per cent chance of developing into a tropical cyclone in the 48 hours after this article was published.

It remains to be seen exactly how Bret and this potential cyclone develop, but activity is definitely increasing and this could be a sign of a fairly active season ahead.

(Thumbnail courtesy Climate Reanalyzer/Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine)

Watch below: Climate change is turning summer into a real bummer
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The North Atlantic is experiencing a ‘totally unprecedented’ marine heat wave


Climate Change Institute/University of Maine

Laura Paddison

CNN
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Temperatures in parts of the North Atlantic Ocean are soaring off the charts, with an “exceptional” marine heat wave happening off the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, sparking concerns about impacts on marine life.

Parts of the North Sea are experiencing a category 4 marine heat wave – defined as “extreme” – according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In some areas, water temperatures are up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 Fahrenheit) hotter than usual.

Global oceans have been exceptionally warm for months. April and May saw the highest ocean surface temperatures for those two months since records began in 1850.

The regional picture is even more stark, according to the UK Met Office: Temperatures in the North Atlantic in May were around 1.25 degrees Celsius (2.25 Fahrenheit) above average.

“The eastern Atlantic, from Iceland down to the tropics, is much warmer than average. But areas around parts of north-western Europe, including parts of the UK, have among some of the highest sea-surface temperatures relative to average,” Stephen Belcher, the Met Office’s chief scientist, said in a statement.

Many scientists are sounding the alarm.

The heatwave is “very exceptional,” said Mika Rantanen, a researcher at the Finnish Meteorological Institute. It is “currently the strongest on Earth,” he told CNN.

Richard Unsworth, an associate professor of biosciences at Swansea University in the UK and a founding director of Project-Seagrass, called the Atlantic heat wave “totally unprecedented.”

It is “way beyond the worst-case predictions for the changing climate of the region. It’s truly frightening how fast this ocean basin is changing,” he told CNN.

Risks are high for marine species, such as fish, coral and seagrass – many of which adapted to survive within certain temperature ranges. Hotter water can stress and even kill them.

“There’s a very high potential that animals such as oysters, plants and algae will be killed by this European marine heatwave, particularly within shallow waters where temperatures may super heat beyond the background levels,” Unsworth said.

Earlier this month, thousands of dead fish washed up along the Gulf Coast in Texas, a mass death which scientists believe is connected to rising ocean temperatures, as warmer water is able to hold less oxygen. And in 2021, an extreme heat wave cooked around a billion shellfish to death on Canada’s West Coast.

Scientists say there are a number of factors behind the extreme heat.

“It is the classic combination of the underpinning of human-caused climate change with a layer of natural variation within the climate system on top,” the UK Met Office said in a statement.

Planet-heating pollution rises as the world continues to burn fossil fuels, which means higher temperatures for oceans and land.

El Niño, which tends to have a warming effect globally, is expected to drive temperatures even higher this year.

And other factors may also play a role, including a lack of dust from the Sahara, which usually helps cool the region by reflecting away sunlight. “Weaker than average winds have reduced the extent of dust in the region’s atmosphere potentially leading to higher temperatures,” said Albert Klein Tank, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, in a statement.

Weaker winds may also have helped increase temperatures, as strong westerly winds typically cool the ocean surface, Rantanen said.

Another potential driver of ocean heat could be anti-pollution regulations which require ships to cut sulfur in their fuel, reducing aerosols in the atmosphere. While these aerosols have a negative impact on human health, they also have a cooling impact by reflecting away sunlight.

As climate change intensifies, marine heat waves are set to become more common. The frequency of marine heat waves has already increased more than 20-fold due to human-caused global warming, according to a 2020 study.

“While we can’t in detail predict the intensity, duration and location of severe heating events such as the current marine heatwave, we know they’re increasingly likely to be more prevalent as our climate system collapses further,” Unsworth said.

CNN.com

'Unprecedented' ocean temperatures and extreme heat waves pop up around the globe

Laura Baisas

POP SCI
Tue, June 20, 2023

Parts of the world are already baking under the summer sun.

There’s only one day to go before the official start of summer in the Northern Hemisphere—but some parts of the planet are already feeling the heat. Ocean temperatures are about nine degrees above normal in parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland, while India and parts of the southern United States are baking under record breaking heat. Here’s what you need to know.

[Related: Summer is off to an extreme start—here’s why.]

‘Unheard of’ marine heatwave

The waters off the coasts of the United Kingdom and Ireland are several degrees above normal, particularly in the North Sea and north Atlantic Ocean. Global sea surface temperatures in April and May hit an all time high for those months according to records dating back to 1850. June is also on track to hit record heat levels, with the water in some areas off the coast of England up to nine degrees Fahrenheit (5 degrees Celsius) above normal. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), parts of the North Sea are in a category four marine heatwave, which is considered “extreme.”

“The extreme and unprecedented temperatures show the power of the combination of human-induced warming and natural climate variability like El Niño,” University of Bristol earth scientist Daniela Schmidt told The Guardian. “While marine heatwaves are found in warmer seas like the Mediterranean, such anomalous temperatures in this part of the north Atlantic are unheard of. They have been linked to less dust from the Sahara but also the North Atlantic climate variability, which will need further understanding to unravel.”

This heat is putting marine organisms at risk, and events like this will only continue if carbon emissions are not dramatically cut, according to Schmidt.

Southern heatwave–and severe weather–in the US

Over the holiday weekend, heat indexes in parts of Texas soared above 120 degrees Fahrenheit, breaking records. More records are expected to fall this week as the power grid strains. Over 40 million people were affected by excessive heat warnings and heat advisories, from the border of Mexico and southwest Texas and eastward towards the border of southern Louisiana, and Mississippi.

In addition to the heat, overnight tropical humidity will trap in heat and prevent the nighttime low temperatures from dipping below 80 degrees in some places. The heat is expected to continue through the rest of this week, according to the National Weather Service.

All of this heat and humidity have fueled some June tornadoes. At least 17 tornadoes were reported over the weekend across Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Oregon, and Colorado. One person was killed and 18 others injured from the severe storms, including a reported tornado, in Jasper County, Mississippi.

“I’ve seen more tornadoes than I can count. I’ve never seen the level of decimation to a town, as I’ve seen today,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said at a news conference on Saturday, June 17 according to The Washington Post.

[Related: World set to ‘temporarily’ breach major climate threshold in next five years.]
Deadly heat wave in northern India

In India, roughly 170 people have died amid a sweltering heat wave affecting two of the country’s most populated states. Routine power outages and overwhelmed hospitals compound the already dangerous situation.

Heat-related illnesses have killed at least 119 people in In the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. In neighboring Bihar, at least 47 people have died.

“So many people are dying from the heat that we are not getting a minute’s time to rest. On Sunday, I carried 26 dead bodies,” Jitendra Kumar Yadav, a hearse driver in Deoria town, 110 68 miles from Ballia, Uttar Pradesh, told The Associated Press.

These regions of the country are known for extreme heat during the summer, but temperatures have been consistently above normal. According to the Indian Meteorological Department, high temperatures in recent days have consistently reached 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

A dire report from the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) released late in 2022, found that the past eight years were the hottest on record. Since 1993, the rate of sea level rise has doubled, with the past two and a half years alone accounting for 10 percent of the overall rise in sea level since satellite measurements began about three decades ago.

Cooking with a gas stove may be as bad as breathing secondhand cigarette smoke, study finds

WORSE ACTUALLY

Tony Briscoe
Wed, June 21, 2023 

Researchers from Stanford University and nonprofit PSE Healthy Energy tested gas and propane stoves in 87 homes across California and Colorado.

 (Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Cooking with gas-fired stoves can cause unsafe levels of toxins to accumulate inside homes, exposing people to roughly the same cancer risk as breathing secondhand cigarette smoke, according to a new study.

Researchers from Stanford University and nonprofit PSE Healthy Energy tested gas and propane stoves in 87 homes across California and Colorado and found that every appliance produced a detectable amount of cancer-causing benzene — a chemical with no safe level of exposure.

It only took 45 minutes for a single burner on high, or an oven set to 350 degrees, to boost benzene levels above well-established health base lines, according to the study, which was published last week in Environmental Science & Technology. In some cases, benzene levels exceeded concentrations found in secondhand tobacco smoke.

Scientists also found that benzene migrated well beyond kitchens, reaching unhealthy levels in other rooms and lingering within homes for hours. The toxic conditions, researchers found, were even worse in smaller homes, suggesting health risks may be worse for lower-income families with less square footage.

"That ties into it being an environmental justice issue too," said Yannai Kashtan, lead researcher and Stanford PhD candidate in earth system science. "A lot of folks either can't afford to replace their stove, or maybe are renters and their landlord doesn't want to. Also, lower-income folks are more likely to be living in smaller spaces where the same emission rate is going to translate into a higher concentration."

Gas stoves have been a fixture in American kitchens for over a century. But a growing body of research has exposed a plethora of contaminants and health consequences from cooking with gas.

The research — the first of its kind to examine benzene emissions from cooking — comes as politicians across the nation are sparring over the future of gas appliances in residential and commercial buildings.

Last year, the Los Angeles City Council voted to ban most gas appliances in new buildings, a move intended to mitigate gas energy's contribution to global warming. New York, San Francisco and Seattle have passed similar regulations.

California air regulators have been considering phasing out gas appliances as well, to meet the state's ambitious climate goals.

Just last week, however, the Republican-controlled House passed a bill that would prevent the U.S. Department of Energy from banning gas stoves, a move the American Gas Assn. hailed, saying it protects a consumer's right to choose.

Karen Harbert, president and chief executive of the American Gas Assn., a trade organization representing more than 200 local energy companies nationwide, said it is evaluating the study "to understand its methodology and the merits of its findings."

"Customers deserve access to transparent information and sound science to help make decisions about the health and safety of their families, and the natural gas industry continues to contribute objective, thorough and meticulous scientific analysis,” Harbert said in a statement.

Lately, the debate has shifted to potential health risks associated with indoor air quality. Previous studies have concluded that gas stoves produce nitrogen dioxide, a lung irritant linked to asthma and a precursor to smog. In households with gas stoves, scientists have also found a greater prevalence of childhood asthma and respiratory conditions, such as wheezing.

When methane and propane gas are fully burned, the only products are water and carbon dioxide. But when gas is only partially combusted, stoves can spew carbon monoxide; formaldehyde, a carcinogen; and benzene.

The study found that cooking at higher temperatures produced more benzene emissions. However, in an interesting twist, scientists also found that cooking with a smaller flame produced more benzene per joule of gas consumed.

Previous research by PSE Healthy Energy examined harmful emissions from stoves that were not in use.

Benzene, which is present in underground oil and gas deposits, was found to leak from gas ranges and pollute homes even when cooktop burners and the oven were turned off.

The most recent study, however, found that benzene concentrations from cooking were 70 to 640 times greater than the median leakage rates measured in idle stoves.

The researchers noted that pollutant concentrations indoors depended on ventilation conditions and home size. Many gas ranges are fitted with ventilation hoods that can reduce concentrations.

When asked to comment on the paper's findings, the National Propane Gas Assn. released a statement saying that that additional research is needed to assess indoor pollutants. It noted also that the Stanford-PSE Heathy Energy study did not address ventilation rates.

"It does not propose that gas stoves are dangerous when used according to local guidelines," an association spokesperson said. "There are no facts or data in this study to suggest that a home ventilated in accordance with state regulations and manufacturers’ recommended guidelines would be dangerous."

But researchers tested the use of ventilation hoods, finding it helped reduce concentrations, though in some cases benzene was still measured above health limits.

"It's certainly helpful," Kashtan said about ventilation hoods. "But it doesn't guarantee that the pollution issue will be taken care of.

"One could come up with scenarios where you'd get lower concentrations," he added. "Sure, if you have all the windows open. But on the other hand, we're testing single ovens or single burners, so you certainly could come up with scenarios where you get higher concentrations."

Opening windows while cooking might also help reduce the risk of exposure, so long as air quality outdoors is not poor — a big assumption for some places in California.

"I'm fortunate to live in the breezy Bay Area, where we're opening a window most of the year and it's not a big problem, except for the occasional wildfire smoke days," Kashtan said. "But ... in Bakersfield, downwind of a bunch of 'Big Ag' and some of the largest oil fields in the state. Opening a window is a whole different situation there."

Ultimately, eliminating health risks would require a transition away from gas stoves. Researchers cooked with 13 electric induction stoves and did not detect any measurable amount of benzene.

But there are also stopgap measures residents can take, even if buying an electric range isn't an option.

"It's not all or nothing," Kashtan said. "You can get very inexpensive induction [cooktops] to reduce your reliance on the gas stove. There are a bunch of electric cooking appliances, air fryers, rice cookers, etc., that are sort of intermediate steps to reduce that source without eliminating it completely."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Iran has talks with EU's Mora amid efforts to save nuclear pact



Reuters
Wed, June 21, 2023

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran met in Qatar with European Union mediator Enrique Mora as part of efforts to revive its 2015 nuclear pact with world powers, as Tehran and Washington seek to cool tensions with a mutual "understanding" to help end the deadlock.

Having failed to revive the deal in indirect talks that have stalled since September, Iranian and Western officials have met repeatedly in recent weeks to sketch out steps that could curb Iran's fast advancing nuclear work, free some U.S. and European detainees held in Iran and unfreeze some Iranian assets abroad.

"(I) had a serious and constructive meeting with Mora in Doha. We exchanged views and discussed a range of issues including negotiations on sanctions lifting," Iranian chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri Kani said on Twitter, without elaborating.

Mora tweeted that the Doha talks were "intense" and had touched on "a range of difficult bilateral, regional and international issues, including the way forward on the JCPOA" - the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, as the nuclear deal is officially called.

EU spokesperson Peter Stano said the bloc was "keeping diplomatic channels open, including through this meeting in Doha, to address all issues of concern with Iran".

Bagheri Kani said last week that he had met his British, German and French counterparts in the United Arab Emirates to discuss "a range of issues and mutual concerns".

The 2015 agreement limited Iran’s disputed uranium enrichment activity to make it harder for Tehran to develop the means to produce nuclear weapons, in return for a lifting of international sanctions against Tehran.

But then-U.S. President Donald Trump ditched the pact in 2018, calling it too lenient on Iran, and reimposed sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy.

Tehran responded by gradually moving well beyond the pact's restrictions on enrichment, rekindling U.S., European and Israeli fears that it might be seeking an atomic bomb.

The Islamic Republic has long denied seeking to weaponise the enrichment process, saying it seeks nuclear energy only for civilian uses.

The meeting between Bagheri and Mora in Qatar's capital Doha came days after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last say on all state matters such as the nuclear dossier, said a new nuclear deal with the West was possible.

(Additional reporting by Sabine Siebold in Berlin; writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Jon Boyle and Mark Heinrich)

‘Morning Joe’ Runs Down List of Shady Actions by Trump Kids After Hunter Biden Charges: ‘Do We Even Want to Talk About Kids?’ 

Andi Ortiz
Wed, June 21, 2023


With Republicans claiming that the plea deal offered to and accepted by Hunter Biden was “a sweetheart deal,” the hosts of “Morning Joe” are firing back. During Wednesday morning’s episode of the MSNBC talk show, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski ran down a laundry list of actions by the Trump kids that they argued deserved just as much criticism.

After a five-year investigation into his actions — so, yes, beginning during the Trump administration — Hunter Biden will plead guilty to tax evasion and will avoid being charged for unlawful purchase of a firearm. He also won’t face any jail time for his actions. You can read more in-depth about it here, but Republicans aren’t happy, saying Hunter Biden got nothing more than “a slap on the wrist” because he’s the president’s son.

“Just putting it out there, Ivanka and Jared, like, worked in the White House. They worked for Donald Trump,” Mika Brzezinski interjected, as she and Scarborough discussed the matter. “Billions have come in from Saudi — there’s so many [questions]. We’re gonna talk about kids? Do we even want to talk about kids?”

At that, Scarborough piled on, getting into more specific actions taken by Trump’s daughter and her husband.

“She got licenses in China to sell her goods around the same time Donald Trump was meeting with President Xi,” he said. “And Jared, a guy I’ve communicated with an awful lot, $2 billion from the Saudis. $2 billion! And, again, I mean, that’s a lot of money.”

He continued, “We haven’t said much about it here. A lot of money! And I’m just saying, if Republicans are going to say this about Hunter Biden, then where’s the other side of this? When they start talking about illegal influence-peddling.”

Meanwhile, panelist John Heilemann put his thoughts on Republican reactions a bit more bluntly: “You just look like morons.”

With Pandemic Aid Ending, Vermont’s Homeless Are Forced From Hotels

Jenna Russell
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Downtown Brattleboro, Vt., June 15, 2023. (Richard Beaven/The New York Times)

BRATTLEBORO, Vt. — As his few remaining hours with a place to live ticked by last Thursday, Scott Alexander panhandled near a McDonald’s in Brattleboro, in southern Vermont, while running through a mental checklist of the supplies he would need for a move back into the woods nearby.

He had a tent and sleeping bags for himself and his wife, a propane stove and a heater. But he needed tarps and propane, and in two hours of holding his battered cardboard sign — “Any Act of Kind Greatly Appreciate” — he had made only $3.

“It feels like a countdown,” Alexander, 41, said as he eyed the storm clouds gathering overhead. “I’ll be up all night, trying to get ready.”

In the progressive bastion of Vermont, it was a point of pride that the state moved most of its homeless residents into hotel rooms during the coronavirus pandemic, giving vulnerable people a better chance of avoiding the virus.

But this month, the state began emptying hotels of about 2,800 people living there — most of them with nowhere else to go. Driven by the recent end of pandemic-era federal funding for emergency housing, the expulsions have spawned a state budget standoff and, in some quarters, painful soul-searching about Vermont’s liberal values, and the limits of its good intentions.

The situation has also highlighted the growing importance of hotels in the housing crisis nationwide, for people whose other options are tents or sidewalks, and for local governments stymied by a paralyzing lack of affordable housing.

Between March 2020 and March 2023, Vermont spent $118 million in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and $190 million in federal money altogether, to house people in hotels, according to the state, broadly expanding a program that had long provided shelter in motels in snowy or frigid weather.

It was always clear that the emergency funding would end, but some saw a potentially transformative opportunity in the temporary program: a chance to draw people into stabler settings where they could be counted, connected with services and, ultimately, helped into longer-term housing.

The effort quickly revealed the extent of the state’s housing problem. In the first year of the expanded hotel program, the number of Vermonters counted as homeless more than doubled, to 2,590 in 2021 from 1,110 in 2020. In the most recent tally, completed in January, the total jumped again, to 3,295, in part because the hotel program made people easier to count but also because of the continuing housing crisis, with higher rents and fewer vacant apartments.

The rural state, with a population smaller than any but Wyoming, had risen to the top of two national rankings by last year: It had the second highest rate of homelessness per capita in the nation, after California — but also the lowest rate of homeless people living outdoors.

To some, it felt like a launching point. “With our smaller population, our culture and our passion, I think we felt a lot of hope that we could make real progress toward ending homelessness,” said Jess Graff, director of Franklin Grand Isle Community Action, a nonprofit agency in St. Albans, near the Canadian border.

But planning for long-term solutions faltered, hindered by a lack of housing stock, labor shortages and glacial timelines for construction. As it became clear that most hotel residents would return to homelessness, tensions rose between Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, the Democrat-dominated Legislature and advocates who were calling on the state to keep people in hotels.

The end date was postponed in March, at a cost to the state of $7 million to $10 million per month. On June 1, the expulsions began. An estimated 800 people statewide were turned out of hotel rooms that day as the Scott administration stressed the need to invest in long-term housing solutions instead.

“We will make every effort to ensure vulnerable Vermonters are sheltered,” Miranda Gray, a deputy commissioner of the state’s Department for Children and Families, said in a statement.

With waiting lists for shelter beds and transitional housing, the only option available to most of those forced from hotels this month was a free tent. Across the state, social service workers handed out camping equipment, a gesture that pained providers like Graff, who saw 28 households displaced from hotels in her area of northern Vermont on June 1.

“Even purchasing the tents is awful, because you’re in the store with a cart full of camping equipment, and people are saying, ‘Looks like a fun weekend!’” she said.

A few hotels, including the Quality Inn in Brattleboro where Alexander and his wife had lived for about a year, granted homeless guests a two-week extension, until June 16. As that deadline approached last week, residents expressed frustration and fear.

Kathleen McHenry, 55, had begun packing some belongings in her car and throwing others away. She said she was weary of the assumptions people made about her — and terrified she would be raped while sleeping outdoors.

“I’m not here because of drugs,” she said. “I’m here because I could not find a place to live.”

As a steady rain fell that night, McHenry kept dry under the hotel’s beige stucco portico, fussing over another resident’s baby before heading back inside to her two cats and her chunky Lab mix, Kirby. She said the bonds among residents, “almost like siblings,” had made the hotel feel more like a home.

Outcry over the expulsions has increased since June 1, ratcheting up pressure on legislators to act. On Tuesday, the final day of their session, they voted to extend the stays of the remaining 2,000 hotel residents who had been scheduled to leave on July 1 — a group that includes hundreds of children, and some adults who are bedridden, dependent on oxygen or take medications that require refrigeration, according to advocates.

The move averted a possible mutiny by a group of progressive lawmakers who had opposed the motel expulsions — and whose votes were needed to override the governor’s veto of the budget passed by the legislature. If unopposed by the governor, the latest extension would allow the most vulnerable Vermonters to stay in motels until April, or until they find housing, as long as they contribute 30% of their income to help pay for their stays.

Brattleboro, a riverfront town tucked into the state’s southeastern corner, has deeply liberal and empathetic instincts. But it is also wrestling with rising crime downtown, and concern that it will hurt businesses and tourism. Days after the first wave of hotel checkouts, the town’s selectboard voted to hire a private security firm to patrol some areas where drug use had increased.

The town was badly shaken by the murder in April of Leah Rosin-Pritchard, 36, at the Morningside House shelter, where she was the coordinator. A resident of the shelter was arrested and found mentally unfit to stand trial. The 30-bed shelter has remained closed since.

The town, like many in Vermont, does not allow camping on public land and has made no exceptions for the people leaving hotels.

John Potter, the town manager, said the impact of the hotel program on Brattleboro, where people had come from around the state to stay in seven hotels, could be long lasting.

“We hope it helped them,” he said, “but what it leaves us with now is potentially more people looking for a roof over their heads than we had before.” The town has asked the state for help setting up a temporary 100-bed shelter in a vacant office complex.

Other states have avoided large-scale expulsions of homeless residents from hotels. In Oregon, state leaders decided early in the pandemic to buy hotels rather than rent rooms in them for months or years. The state spent $65 million in 2020 to acquire 19 properties and convert them to permanent shelters.

A few such purchases have taken place in Vermont, but by individual nonprofit groups. In Brattleboro, Groundworks Collaborative, a nonprofit agency, worked with a local land trust to buy an old chalet-style hotel in 2020, tapping federal relief funds to convert it to 35 units of supportive housing for people leaving the motels. A similar project in northern Vermont turned a former nursing home into 23 affordable apartments, Graff said.

The state made investments too, offering incentives to developers to build affordable housing and grants for renovations of abandoned properties. But as the need kept surging, the supply was nowhere near enough.

At the Quality Inn in Brattleboro, a woman who said she had lost her housing after divorcing her abusive husband worried about keeping her full-time supermarket job while living in a tent in a state park.

She said she copes with homelessness by finding “tiny escapes” — a waterfront picnic or a trip to a Chinese restaurant buffet — “to pretend, for an hour, that this is not our life.”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

Nearly one-third of nation's homeless population lives in California, new research shows


Kayla Jimenez, USA TODAY
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Nearly one third of all people who are unhoused in the United States live in the Golden State, according to a new study released Tuesday.

The California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness also reveals 50% of all unsheltered people in the country – who may or may not have a car to sleep in – live in California. Almost 90% reported that the cost of housing was the main reason they could not escape homelessness.

"The results of the study confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing," wrote Margot Kushel, a principal investigator of the study and director at the University of California, San Francisco's Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative.

The study encompasses findings from nearly 3,200 surveys and 365 in depth interviews with adults experiencing homelessness across the state between October 2021 and November 2022. It is the "largest representative study of homelessness in the United States since the mid-1990s," according to the study, which was requested by California Governor Gavin Newsom's administration, Fortune reported.

More than one million people experience homelessness in the United States in a given year and many more are at risk of losing their homes, according to the Biden administration. Florida, New York and Washington also had high rates of homelessness last year, the Annual Homeless Assessment Report shows. The report provides data and analysis for funding decisions by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

A homeless man sits at his tent along the Interstate 110 freeway in downtown Los Angeles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom met with the mayors of some of California's largest cities to discuss the homeless situation last month.

What does the study reveal?

The study found that many people cannot afford homes in the state. Nearly all people surveyed said they "face barriers," like poor credit history, discrimination, health challenges or prior evictions, when trying to rent or buy a home. California is experiencing a housing shortage crisis, and the states is home to some of the most unaffordable places to live in the country.

The research shows "the incalculable personal costs of homelessness," Kushel wrote in the release.

California's homeless population is growing older in age with the median age of participants being 47-years-old, the new research shows, with nearly half of the state's homeless population being 50-years-old or older. An overrepresented majority are Latino (35%), Black (26%) and Native American (12%).

Micah's Way volunteers serve food and drink to Santa Ana, California residents, including veterans and others experiencing homelessness.

A vast majority of people surveyed were from or last housed in California. And about 20% of the unhoused people surveyed came straight from institutions.

Two-thirds of all participants surveyed reported struggling with mental health issues at the time they were surveyed. And 72% had experienced some type of physical violence in their lifetime, the findings show.

Many of the unhoused people the institute surveyed are looking for jobs. "Participants were disconnected from the job market and services, but almost half were looking for work," a news release attached to the study reads.

Biden administration: Unveils initiative to combat homelessness in 5 US cities, California

To combat the growing housing needs, the group is recommending six policy changes, including:

Increasing "access to housing affordable to extremely low-income households;"


Expanding "targeted homelessness prevention, such as financial supports and legal assistance;"


Providing "robust supports to match the behavioral health needs of the population;"


Upping "household incomes through evidence-based employment supports;"


Growing "outreach and service delivery to people experiencing unsheltered homelessness;" and


Embedding "a racial equity approach in all aspects of homeless system service delivery."

Angel Martinez pours water on Jerry Fullington's head to cool him off from the heat in Santa Rosa, Calif., on Wednesday, Sept. 7, 2022. The friends who used to be a couple have been homeless on and off for years but are hoping to get inside soon.

In an attempt to reduce homelessness nationwide by 25% by January 2025, the Biden administration last month unveiled an initiative called "ALL INside" to help unhoused people in cities with high homeless populations access federal services. Those cities include Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix and Seattle.

Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter at @kaylajjimenez.

Who’s unhoused in California? Largest study in decades upends myths

Sam Levin in Los Angeles
Tue, June 20, 2023 

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Nearly half of all unhoused adults in California are over the age of 50, with Black residents dramatically overrepresented, according to the largest study of the state’s homeless population in decades.

University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) research released on Tuesday also revealed that 90% of the population lost their housing in California, with 75% of them now living in the same county where they were last housed. The study further found that nearly nine out of 10 people reported that the cost of housing was the main barrier to leaving homelessness.

Related: ‘I’ve never seen so much vitriol’: activist Paul Boden on America’s homelessness crisis

The research from UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, based on a representative survey of nearly 3,200 unhoused people, contradicts several persistent myths about the population, including that most unhoused people come from out of state to take advantage of services, as well as stereotypes that homeless people are mostly young adults who prefer to live outside and don’t want help.

“People are homeless because their rent is too high. And their options are too few. And they have no cushion,” Dr Margot Kushel, initiative director and lead investigator, told the Associated Press. “And it really makes you wonder how different things would look if we could solve that underlying problem.”

California is home to more than 171,000 people experiencing homelessness, comprising 30% of the homeless population in the US and half of all Americans who are unsheltered and living outside. The crisis has become a public health catastrophe in recent years as an ageing population is forced to live in tents, cars and other makeshift shelters, with thousands dying on the streets each year. California is considered the most unaffordable state for housing, where minimum-wage earners would have to work nearly 90 hours a week to afford a one-bedroom apartment.

The study further found that among the older population, 41% said they experienced their first episode of homelessness after age 50. Most participants in the research reported that the cost of living had become unsustainable before they lost housing, reporting a monthly median household income of $960 in the six months before homelessness.

Nearly half of adults surveyed were not living on a lease in the six months before facing homelessness, meaning they were couch-surfing or had moved in with family and friends in precarious situations. Renters with leases reported a median of only 10 days’ notice that they were going to lose their housing, while people without leases reported a median of only one day of warning.

Researchers reported that participants had endured significant trauma, with two-thirds reporting mental health symptoms, more than a third experiencing physical or sexual violence during homelessness, and more than a third visiting an emergency department in the past six months. Access to care and treatment was also a major challenge cited, with one in five who use substances reporting that they wanted treatment but could not obtain it.

The study found that while Black residents make up 6% of California’s general population, they account for 26% of the unhoused population. Native American and Indigenous people were also overrepresented, accounting for 12% of the unhoused population. Latinos made up 35% of the unhoused population, fairly comparable to their proportion of the general population.

The study was done at the request of Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration, but was not funded by the state.

The researchers recommended that the state increase access to housing that is affordable to extremely low-income people, including by expanding rental subsidies; expand homelessness prevention through financial support and legal assistance, including for people leaving jails, prisons and drug treatment; expand eviction protections; increase access to treatment; and increase outreach and services for people living on the streets.

Claudine Sipili, a member of the research project’s lived expertise board, said in a statement that she hopes the research will help the state develop effective strategies that allow people to transition out of homelessness and into stable housing circumstances: “Having experienced homelessness first-hand, I vividly recall the relentless fight for survival, the pervasive shame that haunted me, and my unsuccessful endeavors to overcome homelessness on my own.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting

OHIO

College students are concerned over a strict new bill that could limit higher education: ‘You can say gravity isn’t true…’



Jane Donohue
Tue, June 20, 2023 

In recent months, the U.S. has seen a wave of conservative legislation targeting colleges and universities. A new bill in the Ohio General Assembly follows this trend by aiming to restrict what educators can teach about our changing climate.

What’s happening?

Ohio Senate Bill 83 is a proposed bill that limits discussion surrounding “controversial beliefs or policies” on college campuses.

According to the bill, one “controversial policy” involves the changing climate. The bill demands that educators “encourage students to reach their own conclusions about all controversial beliefs or policies and shall not seek to inculcate any social, political, or religious point of view.”

Among the bill’s “controversial beliefs or policies” are those surrounding “climate policies, electoral politics, foreign policy, diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, immigration policy, marriage, or abortion.”

Why is this bill concerning?

If passed, educators would have to tread carefully when discussing the planet’s changing climate despite the fact that scientific evidence has proven that human-driven environmental changes are happening. Educators and students alike worry that if the bill becomes law, they won’t be able to teach and learn accurate climate science.

Keely Fisher, a Ph.D. candidate at Ohio State University’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, worries that the bill would discourage students from studying climate change.

“We shouldn’t be pushing environmentalists and people who care about climate change away from the state,” she told Inside Climate News.

“You can say gravity isn’t true, but if you step off the cliff, you’re going down,” atmospheric scientist and educator Katharine Hayhoe told Inside Climate News. “And if you teach other people that gravity is not true, you are morally responsible for anything that happens to them if they make decisions based on the information you provided.”

What’s being done about this bill?

Students, educators, Ohio citizens, and even Ohio universities have spoken out against the bill. Demonstrators have protested by attending hearings for the bill wearing tape over their mouths to critique what they see as the bill’s infringements on free speech.

Ohio State University’s Board of Trustees released a statement criticizing the bill, writing, “Academic rigor is at the foundation of a quality education; SB 83 threatens to impair it by proposing limitations on faculty speech not ‘favoring or disfavoring’ controversial views.”

Opinion
Editorial: Sanctuary cities are working just fine, thank you

The Times Editorial Board
Wed, June 21, 2023

Ambar and her 10-year-old daughter, shown at MacArthur Park, were among the migrants bused from Texas to Los Angeles. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

When Republican Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida bused and flew migrants to Los Angeles, New York, Washington, D.C., and other so-called "sanctuary cities," they might have envisioned they were exporting the same chaos as border states have experienced as they grapple with a historic number of migrants. They wanted leaders in these cities to admit they were wrong about their immigrant-friendly policies.

Earlier this month, Abbott sent migrants on a bus to Los Angeles. And DeSantis has admitted he dispatched migrants on two chartered flights to Sacramento a few days earlier, luring them with false promises of housing, shelter and legal help.

But Abbott and DeSantis are mistaken if they think they are teaching cities with sanctuary polices any lessons with their inhumane political stunts or causing their leaders to rethink their commitment to not treating migrants as criminals.


Those governors and their political allies also seem to be confused about what it means when cities have sanctuary policies. Though policies vary, providing sanctuary means not turning migrants over to federal immigration authorities simply for being in the country illegally. It means treating them like humans in need rather than pawns.

That's what leaders in Los Angeles, Sacramento and other "sanctuary cities" did as buses and planes dumped dozens of tired and often confused migrants on their doorsteps in recent months. They rallied attention and resources, while religious and other nonprofit organizations stepped up to welcome the migrants with shelter, food and clothes. In some instances, these migrants have even found temporary jobs, illustrating the need for their labor.

Abbott and DeSantis may also not realize that sanctuary policies were designed to help law enforcement keep communities safe. Sanctuary policies were developed because police in many cities such as Los Angeles were frustrated because undocumented immigrants were not reporting crimes or stepping forward as witnesses for fear of deportation.

Critics say these sanctuary cities have laws and policies that shield criminals and obstruct federal immigration policies. But cities with sanctuary policies have lower than average crime rates, higher household incomes and lower poverty rates, according to various studies.

Local authorities did not refuse to cooperate with immigration enforcement, as critics claim. They simply limited the role of local law enforcement in immigration cases, for example, by not using local police to do immigration checks or by not holding an undocumented immigrant in custody for a few extra days to serve federal authorities' schedules.

Los Angeles is in the midst of transitioning from a “city of sanctuary” to “sanctuary city.” The difference is more than just semantics. The former designation is little more than a statement by city leaders in 2017 that they opposed then-President Trump’s dehumanizing anti-immigrant policies, which included separating young children from their parents. Some of those children have yet to be reunited with their parents years later. Earlier this month, the City Council voted to strengthen the policy by banning city personnel or resources from being used for immigration enforcement.

It's true that the transports of migrants by the Texas and Florida governors have been inconvenient to cities such as Washington and New York, which have had to scramble to find housing and other resources. But they haven't done a thing to undermine the foundation on which sanctuary policies were built.

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

Greenpeace protests mass logging of old-growth forests in Carpathian Mountains


Greenpeace activists hold a news conference in Warsaw, Poland, on Wednesday June 21, 2023 outside the office of the Polish prime minister asking him to act to reduce logging in the Carpathian Mountains. Greenpeace said in a recent report that a forested area the size of five soccer fields disappears every hour from the Carpathians, which runs through parts of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine. 

(AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski)

VANESSA GERA
Wed, June 21, 2023

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Greenpeace activists on Wednesday called on the Polish prime minister to take action to protect Poland's forests, asking the government to limit the harvesting of timber in the vast old-growth forests of the Carpathian Mountains.

During a news conference held outside the office of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Greenpeace activists held a section of a fir tree trunk that they took from the forest. It was the conclusion of a 40-day expedition to try to raise awareness about the threats to a forest which is home to bears, lynx and other wildlife. They delivered it to the prime minister's office after the conference.

According to Greenpeace, a forested area the size of five soccer fields disappears every hour from the Carpathians, which run through parts of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania and Ukraine.

Activists on the expedition witnessed up to 40 trucks full of timber per day being transported out of the Bieszczady Mountains, which form part of the Carpathians, on one road alone, said Greenpeace spokesman Marek Jozefiak.

He said the government has not fulfilled its promise to put more of the country's forests under protection by declaring them national parks.

Logging in the Carpathians is highly problematic, he added, because it is the home to the only population of brown bears in Poland and to the biggest population of lynx, wolves and others species.

“It's really mindboggling. We are talking about the most precious mountain forest that we have,” Jozefiak said.

Greenpeace says that the biggest obstacle to protecting the Polish Carpathians is the appropriation of the state forests by a party in the right-wing government.

Greenpeace argues that politicians from a party that belongs to the governing coalition led by Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro “have de facto privatized Polish forests and treat them like money-making machines.”

Jozefiak said large-scale logging is taking place in all the countries, and activists are asking governments and the European Commission to take action.

“They need to act now. If you wait a few more years, it might simply be too late," he said.