Federal climate report warns of worsening disasters
WASHINGTON — As California’s catastrophic wildfires recede and people rebuild after two hurricanes, a massive new federal report warns extreme weather disasters are worsening in the United States. The White House report quietly issued yesterday also frequently contradicts President Trump.
The National Climate Assessment says warming charged extremes “have already become more frequent, intense, widespread or of long duration.”
The federal report says the last few years have smashed records for damaging weather in the U.S., costing nearly $400 billion since 2015. “Warmer and drier conditions have contributed to an increase in large forest fires in the western United States and interior Alaska,” according to the report.
“We are seeing the things we said would be happening, happen now in real life,” said report co-author Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University. “As a climate scientist it is almost surreal.”
And report co-author Donald Wuebbles, a University of Illinois climate scientist, said, “We’re going to continue to see severe weather events get stronger and more intense.”
The Lower 48 states have warmed 1.8 degrees since 1900 with 1.2 degrees in the last few decades, according to the report. By the end of the century, the U.S. will be 3 to 12 degrees hotter depend- ing on how much greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere, the report warns.
Trump tweeted this week about the cold weather hitting the East, including: “Brutal and Extended Cold Blast could shatter ALL RECORDS - Whatever happened to Global Warming?”
Yesterday’s report seemed to anticipate such comments, saying: “Over shorter timescales and smaller geographic regions, the influence of natural variability can be larger than the influence of human activity ... Over climate timescales of multiple decades, however, global temperature continues to steadily increase.”
Releasing the report on Black Friday “is a transparent attempt by the Trump Administration to bury this report and continue the campaign of not only denying but suppressing the best of climate science,” said study coauthor Andrew Light, an international policy expert at the World Resources Institute.