5 Climate Change Lessons from 2020

originalpunkt/Shutterstock In early January of this year, fresh off the experience of writing a year-end blog post for 2019, I started a project that I thought would make writing this year’s year-end post easier. I created a little 2020 calendar on which I planned to record the one big thing that happened in the climate […]
5 of California’s 6 Largest Fires on Record Are Burning Now: The Astonishing 2020 Wildfire Season in Context

Editor’s note: This post has been revised to reflect the most accurate data on fire acreage in the 1980s. The original relied on data from the NIFC for 1980-1983 and the updated version excludes this period, as the data are less reliable. The 1980s statistics now reflect data from MTBS and CalFire. California is a state […]
In the US West Scorched by Wildfires, We Can Barely Breathe. It’s Going to Get Worse.

Smoke over US West from wildfires Sept 2020/NASA Worldview In California, we’ve counted ourselves among the lucky this past week if the worst we’ve had to cope with is a thick layer of smoke transforming our daytime skies into eerie orange hellscapes. Compared with the trauma of losing a home or loved one, having to […]