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3 climate impacts the U.S. will see if warming goes beyond 1.5 degrees

As world leaders gather at COP28, the annual climate change negotiations held in Dubai this year, one number will be front and center: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s the amount countries have agreed to limit warming to by the end of the century.

Currently, the world is on track for just under 3 degrees Celsius of warming (more than 5 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. While a few degrees of difference may seem small, climate research shows that every tenth of a degree can have a profound effect when it comes to the dangers posed by extreme weather.

“We’re not destined for some catastrophic climate,” says Deepti Singh, who is an assistant professor at Washington State University. “We know that we can have a future that is more equitable and less volatile if we limit the warming through our actions today.”

1. At 1.5 degrees of warming worldwide, the U.S. will heat up even faster
When scientists use numbers like 1.5 degrees Celsius to measure climate change, it represents an average of all the annual temperatures worldwide. That average masks the fact that some parts of the planet are heating up faster than others.

“The U.S. has already warmed at a rate that’s higher than the global average,” says Singh. “We’re warming at a rate that’s 60% higher than that.”

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NPR.org

Listen to the NPR Morning Edition story (with transcript).

National Climate Report: 5 Trends for the Pacific Northwest

Following the release of the federal National Climate Assessment last week, experts in Washington state say that although the window for countering the negative impacts of climate change is narrowing, there’s still time.

The trend is clear: Earth is warming because of our longstanding reliance on fossil fuels.

As our cars, buildings, refineries, large industries and power plants burn fossil fuels, emitting harmful and noxious greenhouse gasses, the planet will continue to warm, according to the federal government’s latest National Climate Assessment, published last week. Like the rest of the world, the Northwest is at risk. Washington, Oregon and Idaho are home to some 14 million people and 43 Native American tribes. The region is already experiencing climate change and more will come in the decades ahead, the state’s climatologist and one of the report’s authors told The Seattle Times.

States like Washington are scrambling to cut greenhouse gas emissions as quickly and painlessly as possible, with mixed degrees of success and local opposition. Others resist the change or even lay the groundwork for the continued reliance on the fossil fuels that have brought us to this point.

The faster the U.S. and the rest of the world cuts emissions, the quicker the risks diminish, the report says. The immediate benefit — and the benefit to future generations — will “far outweigh” the costs those changes would impose.

We still have time to shape our future, for better or for worse.

“Although the window is narrowing, it’s still open,” said Deepti Singh, a climate scientist with Washington State University and one of the assessment’s many authors.

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Seattle Times
GovTech.com

New climate assessment shows stark reality of global warming

Our changing climate is affecting nearly every facet of life in every corner of the country, according to the Fifth National Climate Assessment, released by the Biden administration on Tuesday.

The expansive report details how carbon dioxide accumulating in the atmosphere, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, is warming the planet and causing more intense heat waves, wildfires and droughts.

“We have more evidence and more certainty that the changes that we’re seeing are because of human activities,” said Deepti Singh, an assistant professor at Washington State University’s School of the Environment and a contributing author of the report.

There is more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in the last 800,000 years, according to the report. That carbon acts like a blanket, trapping heat and intensifying extreme weather events.

“Many of the climate conditions and impacts people are experiencing today are unprecedented for thousands of years,” the report says.

Singh also pointed out that the Earth is seeing the “cascading and compounding” effect of multiple extreme weather events. In 2020, Oregon was rocked by unprecedented wildfires, followed by an ongoing drought, which was followed by the record-shattering heat dome of 2021.

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KGW8
KVUE
Seattle Times

Ask Dr. Universe: What is mutualism in nature?

I talked about your question with my friend Angeliqua Montoya. She’s a graduate student at Washington State University. She works on a mutualism between pea plants and bacteria.

“I study ecology, which is looking at interactions between different species,” she said. “Mutualisms are interactions where both species benefit.”

Living things interact with each other in lots of ways. When a lion kills a rabbit, that’s an interaction. When a bird builds a nest in a tree, that’s an interaction. When a bee collects pollen from a flower, that’s also an interaction.

Some interactions are good for just one individual and bad for the other. The lion gets a meal. But the rabbit becomes a meal.

Some interactions are good for one individual but neutral for the other. The bird gets a nice place to lay eggs. The tree isn’t helped or harmed.

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Ask Dr. Universe

Re-Imagined Radio presents ‘The War of the Worlds’

The simple power of sound can be strong enough to transport people’s imaginations anywhere, or convince them of just about anything — even Earth getting overrun by creepy-crawlies from another planet.

Re-Imagined Radio, a sound-art and -storytelling project based at Washington State University Vancouver, has been exploring the way such mischief was, and still is, done for the past decade.

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Re-Imagined Radio will relaunch an entirely audio Martian invasion of Earth on the night before Halloween as it stages “The War of The Worlds” at Kiggins Theatre.

“It might be harder to spook people than it was in the 1930s,” said John Barber, the founder of Re-Imagined Radio and a faculty member in WSU Vancouver’s creative media and digital culture program. “But it was so effective, in its day, it’s been legendary ever since.”

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The Columbian