Climate Change Has Changed: What Do We Know About Our Environment? Danielle Touma, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, says the U.S. is going through an accelerated transition
Danielle Touma is a climate scientist with the University of Texas, Austin. The climate is mostly the clothes in your closet but what you wear on a daily basis will have an affect on the weather. So in Colorado, where Touma used to live, her winter wardrobe was full of jackets and sweaters—ready for the winter climate. Sometimes it was warm enough for her to put a t-shirt in the back of a drawer.
The climate in a place is usually defined as its 30-year average of weather. So weird weather does factor in, but isn’t as important to the average as more common conditions, says Deepti Singh, a climate scientist at Washington State University. And scientists expect the variation in day-to-day weather to persist, even as climate change evolves.
Since the mid-1800s, when people started burning fossil fuels, earth’s temperature has risen by about 1.3 degrees. The pollution from that burning traps heat inside Earth’s atmosphere, slowly heating up the air, oceans, and land.
This year has kicked off with intense weather. Southern California has experienced winds of 100 mph that spread destructive fires, while the Mid-Atlantic and the South have had winter storms. Not every weather fluctuation is demonstrably affected by climate change. But, according to Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College, rising global temperatures are now detectable in various extreme weather events and many more typical weather patterns.
Singh says everything is happening in a different environment. The weather is being affected by these changes.
There are fewer days below freezing in many parts of the U.S. and beyond: states like Michigan and Ohio experience more than a week fewer freezing days now than they would in a world without climate change. And heat extremes have also increased. The number of heat waves in the U.S. has more than tripled since the 1960s.
Alex Hall is a climate scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “But once in a while there’ll be something really extreme that will occur that will be way outside the range of what the atmosphere was capable of before.”
In the past decade, scientists have developed techniques called “detection” and “attribution.” They use climate models that represent Earth’s physics to simulate how the planet’s climate and weather events would behave if humans had not burned vast quantities of fossil fuels. They can see if climate change influenced the likelihood of weather events happening when they compare the situation to the one that exists.
The 10% greater intensity of the rain caused by Hurricane Helene would not have been possible without human-caused climate change.
The hottest year 2024 in meteorology: How intense was the wind? Insights from meteorologists and analyticists
Mankin compares the method to trials in medicine. “You want to compare a distribution of medical outcomes in a population that received the drug, the treatment group, to a control group that didn’t receive the drug,” Mankin says. Only in this case, the drug is fossil fuel burning.
2025 started off with a flurry of intense weather. Southern California experienced bursts of 100-mph winds that spread record-breaking destructive wildfires. The Mid-Atlantic and South have been struck by winter storms. Climate change caused the year 2024 to be the hottest year in human history, said scientists from major meteorological associations around the world.
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Defends Donald Trump indictment in report. And, Israel-Hamas ceasefire nears: A Sierra-Wilds Outburst
The Department of Justice released today its election interference report against President-elect Donald Trump. The report suggests that the evidence would convict Trump if it was against him. Smith dropped two indictments against Trump after he became president.
A new fire broke out in Southern California last night, adding to the destruction that started last week. The wildfires have left more than 20 people dead and hundreds of thousands under evacuation orders. There is a clear physical element of the disaster, but not how it affects the mental health of the people.
Negotiators in Qatar are close to a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas. If agreed to, the initial phases of the agreement would have Hamas release 33 hostages still being held in Gaza in exchange for Israel’s release of a number of Palestinian detainees. There would be a six-week pause in fighting.
Jimmy Carter and the Voices of the Black Churches: A Memories of His Home State, Georgia (and his First Year in the White House)
When Jimmy Carter ran for president, he was barely known outside his home state of Georgia. His friendships with popular musicians like Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson and the Allman Brothers gave him momentum during his campaign and endeared him to the youth vote. Music was very important to Carter when he was growing up. His home state instilled in him the power of music and the spiritual nature of the Black churches as he grew up.
