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The world’s largest river, the Amazon, has fallen to its lowest level on record in the past few weeks, a development that has shocked experts around the world.
Rising temperatures, fueled by global warming, seem to be the driving force behind the powerful drought. They’re parching the largest freshwater reservoir on the planet, Ana Ionova reported, and pushing the Brazilian government to take drastic measures that were once unthinkable.
But, though climate change has fueled much of the Amazon’s problems, it is also true that deforestation has gradually chipped away at the jungle’s ability to replenish its own water supplies. The forest can, in fact, create its own rain, researchers have found.
This brings to mind one of the main lessons I’ve learned from reporting on our planet’s environmental catastrophes: The price for the destruction of nature may not be immediately clear, but someone always pays it, and it’s often steeper than government leaders imagined it would be.
I wanted to share that thought with you because, after two and a half years, I am leaving the Climate Forward team for a new role. I write this with a heavy heart, but also with the hope that I helped you see how the world’s two main ecological crises, climate change and biodiversity loss, are interconnected.
Governments are increasingly aware of this. In two weeks, high-ranking officials from around the world will gather in Cali, Colombia, to discuss how countries are doing on their pledge to protect nature at a global biodiversity summit known as COP16. One of Colombia’s goals is for countries to come out of it with a commitment that addresses the biodiversity and the climate crises at the same time. But with countries falling short on both fronts, it’s a tall order.
Since I joined the Climate Forward team, my goal has been to help you see both the problems and solutions that emerge from this challenge.
We’ve introduced to you a lawyer running afoul of the Indian government to protect forests in courts, Indigenous people in Canada protecting traditions that can help keep ecological disaster at bay, and a government official who had dedicated his life to protect uncontacted tribes in Brazil.
We’ve reported on the innovative strategies trying to make the Amazon’s forests more profitable than beef and efforts to introduce nature-related risk to companies’ balance sheets, as well as the debate about how to fix the supply chains of commodities, like chocolate and palm oil, that put ecosystems at risk.
We also reported on how to think about personal decisions, whether about owning a car, talking to your neighbors or buying gifts on Christmas; and about the ways governments are rethinking their polices on taxes, fossil fuel subsidies and how we grow our food.
But some of the newsletters that I cherish the most were the ones you helped me write. You told us about the wildlife in your communities, the generational differences in your families and how some of you have addressed climate change in your jobs.
Climate Forward will continue to cover this and many other essential stories. Thank you for reading.
The latest on Hurricane Milton
Dire warnings from officials and meteorologists: The potential path of Milton continues to be a “worst-case scenario” for the Tampa Bay region southward to Sarasota, forecasters said Tuesday morning.
Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said the storm was “ferocious.” “Let’s prepare for the worst, and let’s pray that we get a weakening,” DeSantis said Tuesday morning. “But we must be prepared for a major, major impact to the west coast of Florida.”
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN on Tuesday, “I can say this without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
Veteran Florida meteorologist John Morales became emotional on air while describing the storm’s rapid intensification and discussing climate change.
The National Hurricane Center warned that “damaging winds, life-threatening storm surge, and heavy rainfall” would extend well outside Milton’s forecast cone, and said the storm “has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida.”
FEMA faces severe staffing shortage: Christopher Flavelle reports that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is running out of staff to deal with the potential devastation of Hurricane Milton as it barrels toward Tampa.
As of Monday morning, just 9 percent of FEMA’s personnel, or 1,217 people, were available to respond to the hurricane or other disasters, according to the agency’s daily operations briefing. To put that into context: Over the previous five years, one-quarter of the agency’s staff was available for deployment at this point in the hurricane season.
How record hot water is fueling Hurricane Milton: The storm gained strength over the Gulf of Mexico extremely quickly on Monday, going from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in under a day.
Much of that intensification was fueled by record warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, Austyn Gaffney and Mira Rojanasakul report. Global temperatures are rising long term because the burning of fossil fuels adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, helping trap heat near the planet’s surface. Hurricane-force winds typically stir up cooler ocean water from below the surface that can weaken a hurricane.
But the record heat is occurring not only at the surface, but at greater depths, too. The deeper warm water goes, the more energy is available for the hurricane to go farther and faster, said Hosmay Lopez, an oceanographer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
(Read more for a map of sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico.)
More resources:
Where people are evacuating in Florida
How to prepare for hurricanes and evacuations.
How to get what you deserve from insurers or FEMA
More climate news:
The Biden administration is looking into plans to bring more shuttered nuclear plants back online, Reuters reports.
Bloomberg Opinion details how the United States lost the solar power race to China.
Top officials in North Carolina and at FEMA responding to Helene are being subjected to a flurry of antisemitic attacks, The Washington Post reports. Some are worried for their safety.
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