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Summer 2023 was the hottest on record by a huge margin. Hundreds of millions of people suffered as heat waves cooked Europe, Japan, Texas and the Southwestern U.S. Phoenix hit 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) for a record 54 days, including a 31-day streak in July. Large parts of Canada were on fire. Lahaina, Hawaii, burned to the ground. As an atmospheric scientist, I get asked at least once a week if the wild weather we’ve been having is “caused” by climate change. This question reflects a misunderstanding of the difference between weather and climate. Consider this analogy from the world of sports: Suppose a baseball player is having a great season, and his batting average is twice what it was last year. If he hits a ball out of the park on Tuesday, we don’t ask whether he got that hit because his batting average has risen. His average has gone up because of the hits, not the other way around. Perhaps the Tuesday homer resulted from a fat...

Canada’s seemingly endless wildfires in 2023 introduced millions of people across North America to the health hazards of wildfire smoke. While Western states have contended with smoky fire seasons for years, the air quality alerts across the U.S. Midwest and Northeast this summer reached levels never seen there before. The smoke left the air so unhealthy in Philadelphia on June 7, 2023, that the Phillies-Detroit Tigers Major League Baseball game was postponed. That same week, New York City residents hunkered down indoors for several days as a smoky haze hung over the city, turning the skies orange and exposing millions of people to the worst air quality in the world. Smoke also drifted into the Midwest, triggering the highest air quality index levels in the Chicago area in at least 24 years, forcing the cancellation of numerous summer activities and leaving residents with raspy voices. In several states, people woke up to smoky skies day after day....

Images of orange groves and Spanish-themed hotels with palm tree gardens filled countless pamphlets and articles promoting Southern California and Florida in the late 19th century, promising escape from winter’s reach. This vision of an “American Italy” captured hearts and imaginations across the U.S. In it, Florida and California promised a place in the sun for industrious Americans to live the good life, with the perfect climate. But the very climates that made these semitropical playgrounds the American dream of the 20th century threaten to break their reputations in the 21st century. A postcard illustrates the latest style for Miami beach bathing around 1920. Asheville Post Card Co./Wikimedia In California, home owners now face dangerous heat waves, extended droughts that threaten the water supply, and uncontrollable wildfires. In Florida, sea level rise is worsening the risks...

Heat pumps can be used to both cool and heat homes. The 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act provides financial incentives for installing one. SciLine interviewed Theresa Pistochini of the Energy Efficiency Institute and Western Cooling Efficiency Center at the University of California, Davis. She describes how home heat pumps work; how switching to a heat pump reduces your home’s environmental impact; and when to upgrade your heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Theresa Pistochini discusses how home heat pumps affect indoor air quality. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. What is a home heat pump, and how does it work? Theresa Pistochini: This decades-old technology is similar to an air conditioner, but a home heat pump also contains a reversing valve that switches the direction the refrigerant flows when you want heating instead of air conditioning. In hea...

On Sept. 3, 1973, a fire swept through the baghouse of the Bunker Hill mine in Idaho’s Silver Valley. The building was designed to filter pollutants produced by smelting, the melting of rocks that separates metal from its ore. The gases produced in this process carried poisons, including lead. At the time, the prices of lead and silver were climbing toward all-time highs. Rather than wait for new filters and repairs, company officials kept the mine running. They increased production, bypassed the filtration steps and, for eleven months, dumped noxious gases directly into the surrounding area. Then, horses in the area began dying. When data on children’s blood lead levels began to arrive in September 1974, one year after the fire, the results were shocking. The fire became one of the largest single lead-poisoning events in U.S. history. The Bunker Hill smelter in the 1970s. The mine closed in 1991, but planning is underway...