Climate Change Might Make Sahara Desert Wetter, Could Make Hurricane Seasons Scarier

A satellite image of a bunch of dust blowing off of the
Sahara desert into the Atlantic Ocean. This dust tends
to suppress hurricanes. Recent research indicates
climate change will make the Sahara wetter, which
means less dust. That could make hurricane
seasons of the future worse. 

 We found another way that climate change could make life difficult for people - In Africa and maybe here in the United States, too. 

The Weather Channel tells us:

"New research from the University of Illinois Chicago suggests the Sahara Desert, long defined by relentless heat and extreme dryness, could receive up to 75% more rainfall by the end of the century. 

It's a dramatic shift that could ripple far beyond northern Africa, reshaping ecosystems, threatening vulnerable communities and even supercharging the Atlantic hurricane season."

Overall, the atmosphere in a warmer world can hold more moisture than the cooler air of the 20th century. Also, climate change shifts atmospheric circulations. Wet areas get drier, and drier areas get wetter.  

Scientists think the Sahara is one of those places that will get wetter with climate change. 

As is always the case with climate change, this shift will screw a lot of people. According to UIC Today, a publication from the University of Illinois/Chicago:

"'Changing rainfall patterns will affect billions of people, both in and outside Africa,' said lead author Thierry Ndetatsin Taguela, a postdoctoral climate researcher in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. 'We have to start planning to face these changes, from flood management to drought-resist net crops."

The extra rain might increase the amount of vegetation in the Sahara. We don't know what that means in terms of land use, the effects on humans, migration and a whole host of other issues. 

Saharan sand doesn't easily absorb water easily, so the obvious first effect is flooding. But there's something else that might happen. Which affects us here in the United States. 

More rain means wetter sand, which wouldn't be as easily be picked up into the air by winds as dust. 

Dust from the Sahara is often gathered by winds in great quantities and blown out over the Atlantic Ocean. The dust tends to suppress tropical storms and hurricanes. When there's a lot of Saharan dust over areas of the Atlantic where tropical systems form, there's rarely such activity. Or if there is, the storms tend to be weaker than they would be otherwise

Losing the dust increases the risk of more frequent and stronger Atlantic hurricanes. It could mean more landfalling hurricanes in the United States, according to the Weather Channel.

Which isn't great news.

Much of the Saharan dust crossing the Atlantic sifts down on the vast Amazon rain forest. The dust contains a lot of phosphorus, a critical plant nutrient. 

Each year, about 22,000 tons of phosphorus in the Amazon washes away in rain and flooding yearly. Coincidentally and fortunately, about 22,000 tons of phosphorus lands in the Amazon every year from the African dust. 

I haven't immediately found any recent research that would predict what would happen to the Amazon rainforest if the Saharan dust stopped blowing into it. But a Climate Central article from about a decade ago suggested there would be some sort of biosphere changes or plant adaptations. 

I bet this issue will be the subject of scientific research soon.  

In Many Areas, Dangerous Summer Heat Waves Now Hit In The Spring

Springtime heat waves are growing more frequent,
widespread and deadly worldwide, 
thanks to climate change 

It's a relatively cool, rainy day here in Vermont, but something weird is happening with spring around the world. 

In many cases across the Northern Hemisphere, it's no longer that pleasant, mild time of year in which everything blooms. 

Instead, increasingly, many locations are getting blasted by strangely torrid weather. 

In many other areas of the world, where extreme summer heat is now a springtime thing, too, thanks to climate change. 

It's been going on pretty much yearly in the past decade, and the phenomenon is becoming more frequent and widespread. It's not just that these spring heat waves are weird. They're dangerous. 

As Vox reports:

"Cities like Phoenix and Palm Springs, California, closed in on triple digits in March; Phoenix usually doesn't reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit until May. This month, hundreds of millions of people across India and Pakistan, experienced temperatures as high as 120 degrees Fahrenheit, triggering power outages and protests. The heat has also created conditions for thousands of wildfires in the region."

It's not just this year in which spring heat waves are popping up all over the place. 

Vox continues:

"It's part of a pattern. Last year, heat waves coursed through Africa and Europe during the spring, setting new temperature records in more than a dozen countries. Mexico experienced a series of heat waves beginning in April. A heat wave in Texas in May sent power demand to a record high for the month."

Heat waves are very often deadly, killing thousands of people every year. In some ways, these new spring heat waves might be even deadlier that ones that hit in July or August in the northern hemisphere. 

People are not acclimatized yet to hot weather and then a heat wave arrives prematurely.  The shock to the system can kill in some cases.

The spring heat waves also just make summer seemingly last forever.  The longer a heat wave goes on, the more punishing they are on the human body, unless people have access to cool rooms and plenty of water. Perhaps billions of people around the world have little or no access to air conditioning.

And spring heat - especially when they keep  going into the summer -   can cause droughts, contribute to wildfires and strain electrical grids. 

LATEST HEAT WAVES

 In the past few days, unprecedented early season heat has hit a broad area of North Africa, the Mideast, and adjacent parts of Asia. 

Climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who carefully tracks heat waves around the world is calling this huge heat wave an extraordinary event. "Thousands of stations will pulverize their records in the next days... with the hugest margins seen in climatic history," he wrote on X. 

Some examples in the past few days include 113 degrees in Gaya, Niger, the hottest temperature on record for any month in that area. 

 It was also 113 degrees in Hazeva, Israel. At Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel,  it was 104 degrees.

Kuwait gets incredibly hot in the summer, but not quite so much in the spring. Until now. It was 120 degrees in Kuwait this week, their hottest April temperatures on record. 

Saudi Arabia also saw its hottest April weather on record with temperatures as high as 115 degrees. 

In war-torn Sudan temperatures in the past week have gotten as hot as 112 during the day and failed to drop below the mid-80s at night.  Heat waves are more dangerous when it does not cool off at night, as the unrelenting temperatures never give the human body to recover from the extreme heat of the day. 

Other incredible heat examples this week include 108 in Turkmenistan, 104 in Uzbekistan, and 100 degrees in Kazakhstan.  

The Pakistan Meteorological Department has warned residents of that nation to expect more unprecedented April heat through the end of the month before cooler storms arrive in early May. 

VERMONT SPRING HEAT

Dangerous heat waves are of course less likely here in Vermont than in many other parts of the world. But heat waves have been known to kill even here.  Six Vermonters lost their lives in an intense July, 2018 heat wave for instance

Vermont, too, has been experience weird spring hot spells in recent years and decades. So far, this spring has mostly been an exception to the hot early season weather. Though we did have three days in March this year that got into the 70s, which is pretty strange.

Temperatures reaching 90 degrees in May used to be relatively rare in Vermont. But half the Mays since 2010 have gotten to 90 degrees or more in Burlington, Vermont. 

Some specific spring heat waves recently have been really something.  

On April 13 2023, the temperature in Burlington reached 88 degrees, by far the earliest on record it's been that hot. It was 89 degrees that day in Springfield, Vermont. 

On May 27, 2020, the temperature in Burlington reached a torrid 95 degrees, breaking the old record for hottest day in May by two degrees. On June 1, 2023, it was 96 in Burlington, the hottest for so early in the season. 

As We Deal With A Spring Snowstorm In Vermont/New England, Heat Blasts On Much Of Planet

 Sure, winter has just given us (hopefully!) a last big blast here in Vermont. 

A tropical feel to the atmosphere on Burlington, Vermont's
waterfront during a record heat wave in July, 2018.
We're far from any heat records here in Vermont this
week, but many all time heat records have been
broken in the past couple weeks in
many parts of the world. 

Meanwhile, much of the rest of the world is hot, hot, hot. March closed with all time monthly highs in large parts of Europe, Asia and central America, just to name a few hot spots. 

Most of the following information comes from weather historian and climatologist Maximiliano Herrera, who runs the Extreme Temperatures Around the World (@extremetemps) on X, formerly Twitter. 

Eight eastern European nations logged records for their hottest March day on record, says the Washington Post. Numerous cities in Russia, Ukraine, Greece and Turkey also set record highs. 

Tokyo and other parts of Japan was actually kind of on the cool side during March, but that all changed at the end of the month. Tokyo got up to 82.6 degrees, easily its hottest March day on record. several other cities in Japan also had all time record highs for the month. 

In the last week of March, Hong Kong also had its hottest March day on the 24th with a reading of 88.7 degrees.  On March 27, Phuket, Thailand reached 102.6 degrees, its hottest temperatures record in any month.  

Cities in Taiwan, southern China, Myanmar and the Philippines also broke heat records by large margins in late March. Record highs have been reported somewhere in Thailand every day so far this year. 

Parts of Mongolia also reported record high temperatures for March. This follows an intense spell of frigid temperatures and snow in February that killed millions of livestock. 

April seems to be picking up where March left off, with heat records falling in a whole bunch of disparate places around the world - except here in Vermont, apparently. 

Kayes, in the western African nation of Mali, reached a terrible 119 degrees on Wednesday. That was the hottest temperature on record for any date for the entire nation of Mali. It was also the hottest April day on the entire African continent. It was also the hottest temperatures on record anywhere on Earth for early April. 

Central America also got into the act as April opened. 

On Tuesday, Guatemala reached 95 degrees for a new national record for the month of April. Costa Rica also hit an April record with 104 degrees. Not to be outdone, Belize City reached 100 degrees, its hottest day on record for any time of year. 

This is only some of the hot records noted around the world in recent days. And more record heat is due over the next week in several other parts of the world. 

But not here in Vermont. 

Sure, it will warm up to seasonable temperatures for April by Monday. But no record heat is in the cards for at least two weeks, probably longer. 

However, with all the heat waves hitting in rapid succession around the world, it's only a matter of time before Vermont starts breaking record highs again, like we did in February and early March.  

Let's just hope they're all time record highs in the middle of summer. 

I can't blame the heat waves 100 percent o climate change, but it's certainly having an influence. is 

 

63 Global Weather/Climate Disasters In 2023 Cost Billions In Disturbing Upward Trend

The interior of a flood-destroyed liquor store in Johnson,
Vermont on July 12, 2023. This was just one tiny
piece of the 63 weather and climate disasters 
worldwide in 2023 that cost more than $1 
billion in damage. 

 Several days ago, I told you how the United States in 2023 endured 28 weather and climate disasters that cost at least $1 billion each.  

Needless to say, these mega-disasters are increasingly a global phenomenon, and we have more receipts.

Jeff Masters over at Yale Climate Connections has the deets: 

"The planet was besieged by a record 63 billion dollar weather disaster sin 2023, surpassing the previous record of 57 set in 2020, said insurance broker Gallagher Re in its annual report issued January 17.  The total damage wrought by weather disasters in 2023 was $301 billion."

If you want a silver lining of sorts, that $300 billion in damage is a little less than the $360 billion in damage during 2022.

Different organizations have different ways of assessing disasters, so  Gallagher Re's figures no doubt vary somewhat from other sources. 

I was simultaneously surprised/not surprised to learn which disaster was the deadliest.  It turns out it was heat waves in Europe during the summer of 2023. These heat waves killed an estimated 15,400 people.

The surprise I felt by that stat is the fact the big death toll was not really reported in the global media. But the part of me that wasn't surprised is that heat waves are the deadliest kind of weather disaster. Hot weather doesn't get the attention you see with dramatic hurricanes, floods and tornadoes. Let's face it, heat waves are not photogenic. So searing, record hot weather does not grab the attention of the media or the public. 

If you want the worst death toll from a storm, that had to be the immense flash floods that hit Libya back in September. The official death toll from that disaster is over 4,300. But it's probably much higher since some reports tell us more than 8,000 people are still missing. 

Seven nations - Mexico, Libya, Spain, Argentina, New Zealand, Greece and Uruguay - had their most expensive weather disasters on record during 2023,

Severe thunderstorm damage has been increasing at a fast pace of 9.6 percent per year since 2000. Most of that extra damage is because people keep moving into more suburban and formerly rural places. Hail causes the majority of the damage. 

Like tornadoes, damaging hail usually causes its worse misery in long, narrow swaths. This suburban sprawl gives giant hail more targets to hit, so you get a lot of extra damage. 

ROLE OF CLIMATE CHANGE

Inflation and development contribute to the rise of more and more billion dollar disasters, said Gallagher Re. Climate change, however, is a big culprit, too.

Says the insurance broker:

"We continue to witness the ongoing influence of climate change on the behavior of individual events and broader weather patterns......The fingerprints are now regularly evident. If we do not meaningfully change the status quo and subsequently reverse the growth of carbon dioxide emissions then we should no longer be surprised at the consequences of more extreme weather/climate events that are influence by warmer ocean waters and a destabilized atmosphere."

Africa has seen a horrible uptick in weather and climate related disasters in recent years.

Nearly a quarter of Africa's 30 deadliest weather/climate disasters have occurred in just the past two years, Masters writes in Yale Climate Connection. 

Masters writes:

"This ominous figure could well be a harbinger of the future, as higher vulnerability, a growing population and more extreme weather events from climate change cause an increase in deadly disasters, even without accounting for the recurring episodes of catastrophic regional drought that can take tens of thousands of African lives in a single year."

All this is even more unfair than you'd think if you consider this: Except for Antarctica, Africa has likely contributed least to the atmosphere's increasing concentration of greenhouse gases that are driving this dangerous climate change.  

Cyclone Freddy Turned Much More Tragic As It Broke Records For Longevity, Power

Satellite photo of Cyclone Freddy between Madagascar and
Mozambique.  It caused catastrophic flooding and 
will go down in history as the world's longest 
lasting tropical cyclone on record. 

 Back on March 9, I posted on a storm known as Cyclone Freddy, which was near the east coast of Africa that day. 

It was about to break records for the longest lasting tropical cyclone on record for anywhere on Earth.

So here's a followup: 

Unfortunately, since then, Freddy strengthened, and slammed into Mozambique for a second time, and in this second hit, unleaded floods that killed hundreds. 

At last check, Freddy had killed no fewer than 522 people in Mozambique, Malawi and Madagascar. 

As Al Jazeeri reports, Mozambique and Malawi were both dealing with cholera outbreaks before the storm, so this will only make things worse.

The storm finally dissipated last Wednesday inland over Mozambique as it continued to unleash its torrential rains. 

It looks like Freddy lasted 36 days, which would exceed the record by Typhoon/Hurricane John in the Pacific Ocean back in 1994. It's unusual for a tropical system to last more than a couple weeks. 

It's unclear how climate change affected Freddy's strength and longevity, but it's certainly more than plausible that had an effect.  Climate scientists warn that in many parts of the world, tropical cyclones are becoming more powerful and persistent under the influence of a warming planet. 

As Guy On Climate put it:

"It's fairly easy to see why Freddy's behavior can be blamed on climate change. They system traversed warmer than average waters on its long path across the Indian Ocean and between Madagascar and the African coast."

The World Meteorological Organization will examine the history of Freddy and later certify whether or not it was indeed the record hold for most long-lived tropical cyclone. 

New Zealand, Madagascar, Brazil Pummeled By Separate Intense Storms

Destruction in New Zealand after recent
 Cyclone Gabrielle 

The United States isn't the only place experience strong, dangerous storms lately. Intense storms have also hit New Zealand, Brazil and parts of eastern Africa. 

NEW ZEALAND

In New Zealand, at least eight deaths have been reported after Cyclone Gabrielle struck earlier this week, (MONDAY 2/13)

Reports the BBC:

"New Zealand's prime minister says he expects there to be more deaths from the violent storm which killed eight people and cut off hundreds of communities.

More than 4,500 people have yet to be contacted after Cyclone Gabrielle hit on Monday, causing significant flooding and landslides across the North Islands.

Many cities and towns are also without power and clean drinking water. A national state of emergency has been declared, only the third in New Zealand's history. 

"This is undoubtedly the biggest natural disaster that we've seen probably this century," Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said."

Most of the 4,500 people who haven't been found are almost surely alive, but are cut off from the rest of the world by cell towers and equipment that have damaged by the storm. Still, Hipkins told the nation to be prepared for the death toll to rise.

At least one body was found in an attic crawl space. The person tried to get as high as possible to avoid the water, but the inundation was so incredible it reached the attic

New Zealand's new prime minister did not mince words describing the chaos. As The Guardian reports: 

"'Cyclone Gabrielle is the most significant weather event New Zealand has seen in this century. The severity and the damage that we are seeing has not been experience in a generation,' the prime minister, Chris Hipkins, said on Tuesday. 'We are still building a picture of the effects of the cyclone as it continues to unfold. But what we do know is the impact is significant and it is widespread.'"

Just to make matters worse, a 6.0 earthquake was felt in New Zealand in the immediate aftermath of the storm, though damage from the earthquake was light. 

Before Gabrielle, Northern New Zealand, including Auckland, had its wettest day and wettest month on record in January, with serious flooding in an area usually known for its calm summer weather. (It's summer in the Southern Hemisphere, as you are probably aware). 

As Bob Henson and Jeff Masters wrote in Yale Climate Connections earlier this month: 

"Climate change is exacerbating the wet setup, as a freight train of rainmaking systems from the tropical western Pacific draws on unusually high seas surface temperature.. associated with a marine heat wave. Intensified short-term rains and warming oceans are two of the most clearly established effects of a human-warmed planet."

Speaking of those intensified short-term rains..........

BRAZIL

Flooding in parts of Brazil in the past few days have led to at nearly four dozen confirmed deaths, and at least 40 people remained missing at last report. 

Photo shows extensive damage from flooding and landslides
in Sao Sebastiao, Brazil. 

As the AP tells us: 

"Precipitation in San Sebastiao had surpassed 23.6 inches during a 24-hour period over the weekend, among the largest such downpours ever in such a short period in Brazil." 

The flooding hit a scenic area with ocean beaches flanked by mountains. The torrential downpours created walls of water that swept down the hillsides. Other slopes collapsed into landslides amid all the water. 

Many others were evacuated from near saturated hillsides as more landslides threatened amid continued downpours. 

CYCLONE FREDDY

Small but intense Cyclone Freddy shown here in a 
satellite photo heading toward Madagascar this week. 

An intense cyclone named Freddy traversed east to west across the Indian Ocean and smacked into Madagascar this week, (Hurricanes in the Indian Ocean are called cyclones). Freddy was a category 5 hurricane when it was out in the open Indian Ocean. That's the strongest possible hurricane with winds of 157 mph or more.  

Luckily, Freddy weakened to a strong Category 2 with winds of 110 mph when it made landfall in Madagascar.  Despite the fact that Madagascar averages at least one tropical cyclone per year, the infrastructure can't handle these storms all that well. 

So, Cyclone Freddy has created a path of destruction across central Madagascar, killing at least four people, creating a storm surge and blowing roofs off of numerous homes. This comes a few weeks after another cyclone killed 33 people on the island off the east coast of Africa, according to the BBC.

In one hard hit town, deaths were minimized because people living near a river were ordered out before the storm hit. 

Cyclone Freddy was at last report heading westward across the Mozambique Channel. It was expected to lash Mozambique and Zimbabwe with floods in the coming days. 

 

Glaciers Are Disappearing, Many Iconic Ones Could Be Gone Within Three Decades

Glaciers atop Mount Kilimanjero in Tanzania are among
the iconic glaciers around the world that will likely
disappear due to climate change by about 2050.

Many of the world's iconic glaciers are getting ready to disappear due to climate change, and it's very likely too late to save them even if we don't release another molecule of greenhouse gas.   

As AccuWeather reports:

"Glaciers at World Heritage sites shed around 58 billion tons of ice each year, UNESCO reports, which is equivalent to the total volume of water used annually in France and Spain combined. And these glaciers have already contributed nearly 5 percent of global sea level rise in the last 20 years."

According to the the AccuWeather report, glaciers cover around 10 percent of the world's land, which surprised me. What's supposed to happen is these glaciers can take up to 1,000 years to form. But then things get steady.  They gain mass during winter snows and cold, and lose mass in the summer as parts of them melt. 

Overall, in a perfect world, there wouldn't really be a net loss or gain of these glaciers over time. 

These glaciers will disappear whether or not effective climate change mitigation hits by 2050.

Among the glaciers expected to disappear are the last two remaining in Africa, on Mount Kenya and Mount Kilimanjaro. 

Remaining glaciers in Yellowstone and Yosemite National Parks would go poof, too. 

Other iconic glaciers that are popular with tourists in Canada, Europe, central Asia and Russia are also slated to be gone by 2050 due to climate change. 

We should worry just as much about the melting of glaciers we never heard of as much as those that are more famous. In addition to the sea level rise to which the thawing glaciers contribute, these events cause scary water problems for millions of people.

In some areas of the world, the normal summer melt from glaciers supply critical water supplies. This works only if the glaciers are fully replenished during the winter. Since that's not happening anymore, the water supply that was coming from these ice fields disappears as soon as the glacier does. 

Or, too much water melts too fast from the glaciers. That's what happened in Pakistan this past spring and summer. Part of Pakistan's problem was excessive rains from monsoons. However, another big contributing factor was the record heat during the spring.

Glaciers melted super fast, and sometimes formed temporary lakes behind obstructions like other pieces of ice or rocks.  Finally, the water pressure would get to great, and the dams made of rock and ice would suddenly collapse, causing epic flash floods downstream.

CNN reported there were 16 such incidents in Pakistan this year, compared with the five or six that would happen in each of other recent years.

No, we don't have glaciers anywhere near us Vermonters. It's still yet another climate change problem we need to pay attention to.