The Fires This Time

Even though the normal fire season has yet to begin, the huge fires raging in southern California aren't the first of the year--there have been "1,400 wildfires so far this year, double what the state would normally expect" in what officials now consider a year-round fire season.

But it's not just California.  The above map, produced by the U.S. Drought Monitor and published today in Wired, shows that fully half of the contiguous United States are in drought.

Meanwhile, a real time study concludes what other climate scientists predicted: the droughts as well as the extreme weather seen this winter (the polar vortex) are related to the climate crisis.

Another effect likely influencing today's weather is suggested in a NOAA study says that tropical cyclones of maximum intensity have been moving northward, now threatening China and Japan.

In other scientific findings about the climate crisis in the past week or so, after some scientists suggested that the East Antarctic ice may be close to a tipping point which would raise sea levels dramatically above what's been forecast so far, other researchers believe the melting of the West Antarctic has already begun and is probably unstoppable, adding 4 to 12 feet more of sea level rise.   Both of these however will take anywhere from a century to nine centuries to reach their maximum effect.

Today the droughts and storms are threatening food supplies, even food quality (less nutrition in grains) and causing other economic strains that threaten millions of people worldwide.