Report: 244M in U.S. Felt at Least One July Day with Temps Likely Due to Climate Change

August 3, 2023 by

Eight-in-10 people around the globe in July were exposed to one day or more of heat made at least three times more likely by climate change, and 244 million people in the U.S. experienced at least one such day in the month, according to a new report.

An analysis by Climate Central also shows that 2 billion people worldwide experienced at least that level of climate change influence on their local temperatures during each day of the month.

Global temperatures were continuously hotter than any prior recorded observations during July.

The report from the group, which focuses on communicating climate change science to the public and decisionmakers, is titled Fingerprints of climate change during Earth’s hottest month. It included climate change attribution assessments for 4,700 cities and 200 countries.

“Human-caused climate change influenced July temperatures for the vast majority of humanity,” Andrew Pershing, vice president for science at Climate Central, said in a statement. “Across the entire planet, the average person was exposed to 11 days in which carbon pollution made the local temperature at least three times more likely. Virtually no place on Earth escaped the influence of climate change last month.”

Findings in the report include:

  • People near the equator and on small islands experienced the strongest influence of human-caused climate change on temperatures in July.
  • Levels of July heat in the southern U.S., Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean would have been extremely unlikely without climate change.
  • In the U.S., 244 million people experienced at least one July day with temperatures made at least three times more likely due to climate change.
  • S. cities with the strongest climate fingerprints on July heat were: Cape Coral, Florida.; Sarasota, Florida.; Bonita Springs, Florida.; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Miami, Florida; Mesa, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Currents

A pair of Denmark researchers say a sharp weakening of the currents around the North Atlantic could occur by the end of the century. They also said a shutdown is possible.

Their research was published last week in the journal Nature Communications.

“The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is a major tipping element in the climate system and a future collapse would have severe impacts on the climate in the North Atlantic region,” the report states.

The report of a full collapse is in contrast with reports from others, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which suggest a full collapse is unlikely within the 21st century.

The AMOC has been monitored continuously since 2004, and over a period from 2004 to 2012, a decline in the AMOC was observed, according to the report.

The last time there was a major slowdown in network of ocean currents, roughly 12,800 years ago, it plunged Europe into a deep cold for over a millennium, according to an NYT.com article on the report.

Disclosures

Insurance industry trades are not happy with a new federal climate disclosure bill that would require insurers with more than $100 million in annual premiums to disclose investments and underwritings related to coal, oil and gas projects, and fossil fuels.

One of the chief arguments coming from the trades is the requirements duplicate state efforts, and this isn’t the first time the trades have made that argument against federal-level disclosure requirements under consideration.

The National Association of Mutual Insurance Companies in May aired concerns over what the group calls a “duplicative data call” issued by the Federal Insurance Office on climate change.

The concerns were expressed by NAMIC as part of a bipartisan group of nearly 40 U.S. Senators in a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. FIO in 2022 proposed a data collection effort to determine what areas of insurance coverage were most suspectable to climate-related risks.

A report out in July that examined insurer reports to state regulators based on widely used Task Force for Financial Disclosure guidelines shows U.S. insurers are adopting numerous strategies to deal with risks from climate change. That report revealed a need for more climate-related disclosures from insurers, but it showed nearly eight-in-10 of the 500 reporting companies disclosed information on more than half of the TCFD guidelines.

Sun Shade

A scientist believes a “sun umbrella” tied to asteroid could help fight climate change.

Solar radiation management is a geoengineering approach to try to reduce the amount of solar radiation absorbed by the Earth to mitigate the effects of climate change. It’s one of two strategies that fall within this category, which involve adding dust or chemicals to the planet’s atmosphere to increase the reflected fraction of sunlight or reduce incoming radiation from space with solar shades, explains the paper’s author.

The paper, Solar radiation management with a tethered sun shield, was published on July 31 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Using SRM to mitigate climate change faced criticism, author István Szapudi, with the Institute for Astronomy, University of Manoa, acknowledges.

“Nevertheless, given the severity of the problem, any avenue that might lead to the partial mitigation of a catastrophe should be investigated,” he writes. “Since modifying the Earth’s atmosphere appears riskier, we focus on space-based SRM strategies next.”

Such a sunshade would be ideally located beyond the L1 Lagrange point toward the Sun, “where the solar radiation pressure and gravity of the Earth and the Sun are in balance,” he writes. “Advances in light materials, such as graphene, could produce extremely light solar shades, similar to solar sails. These could be lifted into space at a relatively modest cost.”

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