Heat waves rise near a heat danger warning sign in Death Valley National Park, California. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)
“These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves,” said one meteorologist.
Millions of people in the United States are facing the high likelihood of extreme heat in the coming weeks, with northern states that frequently have relatively temperate summers among those where higher-than-average temperatures are expected this summer, according to federal data.
As The Guardian reported Monday, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) new predictions for the summer months state that most of New Mexico and Utah have a 60%-70% chance of hotter-than-normal weather, along with parts of Arizona, Texas, and Colorado.
Houston and the surrounding area has already experienced spiking temperatures that were tied to a heat dome that was positioned over Mexico for several weeks. The high atmospheric pressure drove record-breaking heat across Mexico and in Texas, as well as a powerful storm earlier this month that killed at least seven people and left hundreds of thousands of people in the Houston area without power.
NOAA’s Heat Risk tool showed that on Monday, a significant stretch of southern Texas was experiencing an “extreme” level of heat, defined as including “little to no overnight relief” and affecting the health and safety of “anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”
The new tool takes into consideration whether the heat is unusual for the time of the year, whether residents get relief with cooler temperatures in the evenings, and whether temperatures pose an elevated risk of health impacts like heat stroke or heat exhaustion.
NOAA found that the entire Northeast, from Maine to New Jersey and Pennsylvania, has a 40%-50% chance of having above-average temperatures from June through August.
Too hot girl summer in a hot climate summer 🥵@noaa released their heat predictions for this summer and, you guessed it, it’s gonna be HOT, hotter than normal, as it has been for the last several years of record-breaking temperatures. #ClimateActionNowpic.twitter.com/NflVEdJINZ
“We can expect another dangerous hot summer season, with daily records already being broken in parts of Texas and Florida,” Kristy Dahl, climate scientist for the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Guardian. “As we warm the planet, we are going to see climate disasters pile up and compound against each other because of the lack of resilience in our infrastructure and government systems.”
The predictions come days after the consumer advocacy group Public Citizenreleased a report, Scorched States, about state laws that protect outdoor workers from extreme heat—and those that don’t.
As many as 2,000 U.S. workers die every year from laboring in extreme heat, said Public Citizen, even though “every workplace illness, injury, and fatality caused by heat stress is avoidable, and relatively simple preventative measures—water, shade, and breaks—have proven extremely effective at protecting workers.”
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s forthcoming heat standard rules are not expected to be finalized until at least 2026, but states including Washington, Colorado, and Minnesota have issued their own labor laws to protect workers from heat-related injuries.
The Guardian pointed out that the extreme heat expected this summer will likely take hold as the Earth transitions away from El Niño—the natural phenomenon that causes ocean temperatures to rise—and toward La Niña.
“As we transition to La Niña, it still looks to be a potentially record-breaking year. That clearly suggests to me that the anthropogenic signal is there,” James Marshall Shepherd, director of the University of Georgia’s atmospheric sciences program, told The Guardian. “I am also worried about the ocean temperatures, which are very warm, particularly as we approach the Atlantic hurricane season.”
“Attribution studies are pretty decisive that heatwaves will continue to be more intense and frequent” as the planet warms, Shepherd said. “These are not your grandparents’ heatwaves.”
Last year, scientists found that neither the hot and dry conditions that led to destructive wildfires in Canada, nor extreme heatwaves that took hold in Europe and North America, would have been as likely to occur without the planetary heating that’s been linked to continued fossil fuel extraction.
NOAA (4/15/24) found temperature levels in every ocean high enough to cause coral bleaching.
Record levels of heat in the ocean are causing once-colorful coral reefs around the world to bleach a ghostly white. In April, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced the planet’s fourth mass coral-bleaching event on record—the second in the last decade.
While they might look like plants, corals are actually invertebrate animals related to jellyfish. They get their vibrant colors from tiny algae that live on them and provide them with food. But when ocean temperatures become too hot, corals get stressed and expel the algae, losing their food source and color. Starving coral can recover if their environments improve, but the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicts that even with the Paris Agreement’s allotted warming of 1.5°C over pre-industrial levels, 70–90% of the world’s coral reefs will still die.
Because coral reefs provide such vibrant ecosystems for sea life, mass coral death will impact economies and food security for humans as well. By protecting coasts, sustaining fisheries, generating tourism and creating jobs, it is estimated that coral reefs provide ecosystem services worth trillions of dollars each year (MIT Science Policy Review, 8/20/20; GCRMN, 10/5/21).
ABC News (7/25/23) reported last year that “ocean temperatures have a strong connection to climate change”—but didn’t mention what climate change is connected to.
In the past year alone, we’ve seen staggering and unprecedented ocean temperatures amid widespread heatwaves. Last summer, water temperatures of more than 100°F were recorded off the coast of Florida (ABC, 7/25/23). Scientists say the El Niño weather phenomenon, solar activity and a massive underwater volcanic eruption have played a role in recent supercharged ocean temperatures, but the biggest cause of this coral crisis is undisputed: climate change. The IPCC reports that it’s “virtually certain” ocean temperatures have risen unabated since 1970, absorbing more than 90% of excess heat from the climate system. We also know that the burning of fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity does.
Therefore, in order to give the public the most complete understanding of what’s going on—and how we can fix it—reporting on coral bleaching should not only link the phenomenon to climate change, but link climate change to its main culprit: the fossil fuel industry. While much reporting deserves credit for clearly making this connection, some reports from major outlets were still behind, implying the climate crisis might be some sort of act of God, rather than something humans have caused—and have the power to mitigate.
Good news about bad news
Coral bleaching is bad news, but I’d like to take a rare moment to highlight the good news, too: A lot of reporting on this crisis was thorough, setting a solid example of how the increasing number of climate change-related phenomena should be reported on.
Vox (4/26/24) spells it out: “Ultimately, the only real solution is reducing carbon emissions. Period.”
Vox (4/26/24) dedicated a whole piece to climate change’s effects on coral, making that fossil fuel connection. Senior environmental reporter Benji Jones wrote:
Ultimately, the only real solution is reducing carbon emissions. Period. Pretty much every marine scientist I’ve talked to agrees. “Without international cooperation to break our dependence on fossil fuels, coral bleaching events are only going to continue to increase in severity and frequency,” [NOAA marine scientist Derek] Manzello said.
The New York Times (4/15/24) made the fossil fuel connection, too, in an article by Catrin Einhorn: “Despite decades of warnings from scientists and pledges from leaders, nations are burning more fossil fuels than ever and greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise.”
NPR dedicated an episode of All Things Considered (4/17/24) to scientists’ work to breed heat-tolerant corals and algae, in hopes that they can help restore reefs. The piece, by Lauren Sommer and Ryan Kellman, outlined this work’s promise—and its limitations. Heat-tolerant algae may not share as many nutrients with the coral, potentially causing the coral to grow more slowly and reproduce later. Regulators will need to assess whether these lab-grown corals are safe for wild populations and their ecosystems as a whole. Logistically, the sheer amount of heat-tolerant coral needed to replace affected reefs is vast, and it’s only a temporary solution.
“It’s not our ‘get out of jail free’ card,” said Australian coral biologist Kate Quigley:
Maybe that gets us to 2030, 2050, for a very few number of species that we can work with. If we don’t have an ocean to put them back in that’s healthy, no amount of incredible technology or money is worth it.
The episode ended with an acknowledgment that these scientific mitigations are meant only to buy time while humans work to halt climate change, which will require “cutting heat-trapping emissions from the largest source—burning fossil fuels—and switching to alternative energy sources like solar and wind.”
All Things Considered’s coverage of the scientists’ work was impactful because it took time to explain that creating these heat-tolerant corals was an important mitigation, but that the ultimate solution is to cut fossil fuels. Without the latter, the former would be in vain.
Capable of accountability
As a media critic for an organization that’s been at this since 1986, to me it’s heartening when news outlets’ work actually improves. It’s definitely not yet time to pop the champagne—there’s still a chronic lack of clear reporting linking climate disasters to fossil fuels, as FAIR has noted in coverage of last year’s wildfires (7/18/23, 8/25/23), climate protests (9/29/23), the potential breakdown of a crucial Atlantic current (7/31/23), overstating the potential of new carbon-capture technology (1/4/24) and more. But these few coral-focused pieces offer hope that some outlets might be improving their climate reporting practices to include accountability. At the very least, it proves they are certainly capable.
Aside from the effects of the climate crisis becoming harder and harder to ignore each year, there is a commendable movement to train journalists on how best to report on climate through a number of initiatives and organizations. There’s a lot of work to do, but these stories indicate progress since Big Media was applauding Big Oil’s efforts to clean up the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 (Extra!, 3–4/90) and giving platforms to “scientists” on Big Oil’s payroll who asserted climate change was not occurring (Extra!, 11–12/04, 5–6/07).
The new denial
CNN (5/9/24) waited until the the 24th paragraph (out of 24) to tell readers that we “need to curb climate-warming carbon emissions.”
Climate denial today is more nefarious. Due to the unanimity and widespread knowledge of the scientific consensus, respectable outlets can no longer parrot views that the Earth isn’t warming. What they can do is bury or gloss over information on its primary cause, who profits off of it, and what needs to be done to prevent it from getting much worse.
In a piece on the potential of artificial reefs to mitigate this crisis that linked coral bleaching to climate change, CNN‘s Michelle Cohan (5/9/24) waited until the very last paragraph to mention the need to “curb climate-warming carbon emissions.” There’s nothing untrue about that statement, but it doesn’t tell you where those emissions come from, and leaves open the interpretation that “curbing” emissions can come from carbon capture and storage—a strategy that is largely industry greenwashing (FAIR.org, 1/4/24).
Despite likely short-form word limits, a solutions-oriented piece like this does a disservice to readers—and the scientists working on saving corals—by giving such an incomplete sketch of the necessary long-term change. It would benefit from a clear explanation that a) we need to phase out fossil fuels and b) alternative energy sources already exist, are reliable, and are more affordable than fossil fuels already. It’s not arduous or wordy to do so. All Things Considered did most of it in one sentence.
An ABC piece (4/15/24) by Leah Sarnoff and Daniel Manzo covered the coral-bleaching event, but only mentioned climate change in passing toward the end. Otherwise, “warming oceans” were just depicted as something that happened, with no clear connection or cause.
In an article expressing the dire condition of the reefs, the Washington Post‘s Rachel Pannett (4/18/24) likewise made the link to climate change only once: “Climate change is the greatest threat to the Great Barrier Reef, and coral reefs globally,” said Roger Beeden, the chief scientist of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. There was another quote from a research director with the Australian nonprofit Climate Council, who merely noted that the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef is “a disaster at our doorstep.”
It’s important to express the dire condition the reefs are in, and the devastating risks it poses to ocean and human life. But by only mentioning “climate change” in passing, and not discussing its causes, it comes across as a natural but unfortunate phenomenon. Not highlighting its causes means not highlighting its solutions, either. The result is a potentially paralyzing doomsday narrative that is more likely to dampen than galvanize necessary climate action—especially against fossil fuels.
‘Heat stress’
The word “climate” never appears in this Washington Post piece (4/15/24).
Another Washington Post piece (4/15/24), by Amudalat Ajasa, mentioned the “heat stress” on corals, but not even climate change, let alone the culpability of fossil fuels. This piece quoted NOAA’s Manzello, saying that this global event should be a wake-up call, but didn’t elaborate on what that wake-up call would be for. Wake up to do what? This piece didn’t explain.
The piece also took a grave tone, describing the ghastly reefs off the coast of Florida, Australia and the Caribbean island of Bonaire. It quoted Francesca Virdis, a chief operating officer at Reef Renewal Bonaire: “It’s hard to find a silver lining or a positive note with everything happening.”
The article explained the role of El Niño—a naturally occurring climate pattern that warms areas of the Pacific every 2–7 years—and the hope that it will soon let up and give way to La Niña, its cooler counterpart, but did not explain that the phenomenon plays a smaller role than ongoing, human-caused warming. The aforementioned Vox piece also discussed the role of El Niño, but was sure to specify that reefs have been collapsing long before this current crisis.
The feeling of alarm is justified, but journalists should remind readers that the coral bleaching crisis—and climate change as a whole—are not totally uncontrollable acts of nature. We know what is to blame. While it may be too late to avoid breaching the 1.5°C limit even if we cut emissions tomorrow, the sooner we cease burning fossil fuels, the more catastrophic impacts we’ll avoid.
The message is urgent and dire, but there’s plenty that humans—especially those in power—can do, and there’s plenty journalists can do to make the public aware.
FEATURED IMAGE: NOAA photos of a coral before and after bleaching. (This particular coral recovered from the event.)
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A bleached mound of coral at the Cheeca Rocks monitoring site in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary that had been previously tagged shows the coral skeleton. (Photo: NOAA AOML)
“We had to add additional bleaching alert levels to appropriately categorize just how hot it was,” said a coral reefs expert at the agency.
The phrase “off the charts” is no exaggeration in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s latest warning about a global coral bleaching event that scientists have linked to rising ocean temperatures and heat stress.
Derek Manzello, coordinator of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch Program, told reporters Thursday that about 60.5% of the world’s coral reefs are now experiencing heat stress severe enough to cause bleaching, which can make the reefs more vulnerable to disease and harm the biodiversity they support.
Manzello said at the press briefing that after observing the first months of the coral bleaching event, which began in early 2023, NOAA changed its existing bleaching alert system because conditions were so abnormally warm in the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea.
The agency’s new bleaching alert system categorizes heat stress for coral reefs on a scale of 1-5, with Alert Level 5 representing ocean heat that could kill “approximately 80% or more of corals on a particular reef,” Manzello said.
“We had to add additional bleaching alert levels to appropriately categorize just how hot it was,” he said, with Level 5 “analogous to a Category 5 hurricane or cyclone.”
“I hate that I have to keep using that word ‘unprecedented.’… But, again, we are seeing unprecedented patterns again this year.”
The world’s oceans, Manzello, said, are going “crazy haywire.”
In the Caribbean this year, heat stress off the coasts of Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Colombia are now at levels that in previous years weren’t seen until the summer months.
“I hate that I have to keep using that word ‘unprecedented,'” Manzello told The New York Times. “But, again, we are seeing unprecedented patterns again this year.”
The bleaching that took place last year resulted in coral mortality of at least 50% and as high as 93% in reefs off the coast of Huatulco, Mexico, according to a team of Mexican scientists.
In the Atlantic, fossil fuel-driven planetary heating has been exacerbated by El Niño—the natural phenomenon that causes warmer-than-normal ocean surface temperatures—and has caused the “most unprecedented and extreme” bleaching-level heat stress observed in the past year.
Manzello said 99.7% of reef areas in the Atlantic have experienced heat stress that could cause bleaching.
“The Atlantic Ocean has been off the charts,” he said.
Scientists have recorded four global bleaching events since 1998 and have linked all of them to warmer ocean temperatures. Since 1950, the world has lost half of its coral reefs, according to a 2021 study.
Along with serving marine life, a quarter of which rely on coral reefs at some point in their life cycles, reefs also protect coasts from storms, whose growing severity in recent years scientists have also linked to planetary heating.
The current bleaching event has affected reefs off the coasts of at least 62 countries and territories.
Scientists earlier this year confirmed that 2023 was the hottest year in human history and the warmest year on record for the world’s oceans, which absorb more than 90% of excess heat from greenhouse gas emissions.
“I am very worried about the state of the world’s coral reefs,” Manzello said. “We are seeing [ocean temperatures] play out right now that are very extreme in nature.”
A young woman protects herself from the sun in São Paulo, Brazil, on 14 November 2023. Photograph: Sebastião Moreira/EPA
Global concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide climbed to unseen levels in 2023, underlining climate crisis
The levels of the three most important heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere reached new record highs again last year, US scientists have confirmed, underlining the escalating challenge posed by the climate crisis.
The global concentration of carbon dioxide, the most important and prevalent of the greenhouse gases emitted by human activity, rose to an average of 419 parts per million in the atmosphere in 2023 while methane, a powerful if shorter-lasting greenhouse gas, rose to an average of 1922 parts per billion. Levels of nitrous oxide, the third most significant human-caused warming emission, climbed slightly to 336 parts per billion.
Through the burning of fossil fuels, animal agriculture and deforestation, the world’s CO2 levels are now more than 50% higher than they were before the era of mass industrialization. Methane, which comes from sources including oil and gas drilling and livestock, has surged even more dramatically in recent years, Noaa said, and now has atmospheric concentrations 160% larger than in pre-industrial times.
Noaa said the onward march of greenhouse gas levels was due to the continued use of fossil fuels, as well as the impact of wildfires, which spew carbon-laden smoke into the air. Nitrous oxide, meanwhile, has risen due to the widespread use of nitrogen fertilizer and the intensification of agriculture.
…
Because of a lag between CO2 levels and their impact, as well as the hundreds of years that the emissions remain in the atmosphere, the timescale of the climate crisis is enormous. Scientists have warned that governments need to rapidly slash emissions to net zero, and then start removing carbon from the atmosphere to bring down future temperature increases.
A view of major bleaching on the coral reefs of the Society Islands on May 9, 2019 in Moorea, French Polynesia. (Photo: Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images).
“It’s looking like the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere is probably going to bleach this year,” one scientist said.
Driven by sustained climate-fueled oceanic heating, the planet is on the brink of another mass coral bleaching event that marine biologists warn could kill large swaths of tropical reefs including significant areas of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.
Scientists are sounding the alarm following months of record ocean temperatures exacerbated by the planetary emergency and the El Niño climate pattern in the Pacific Ocean.
“It’s looking like the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere is probably going to bleach this year,” Derek Manzello of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Coral Reef Watch told Reuters. “We are literally sitting on the cusp of the worst bleaching event in the history of the planet.”
Accumulated heat stress (the red trajectory) is still rising rapidly throughout the #GreatBarrierReef. The central & northern regions have caught up with the south after a cooler start to summer.
7th mass coral bleaching event since 1998 is well underway, 5th in just 8 years. pic.twitter.com/YZf4cRQeqP
When water is too warm, corals will expel the algae (zooxanthellae) living in their tissues causing the coral to turn completely white. This is called coral bleaching. When a coral bleaches, it is not dead. Corals can survive a bleaching event, but they are under more stress and are subject to mortality.
In 2005, the U.S. lost half of its coral reefs in the Caribbean in one year due to a massive bleaching event. The warm waters centered around the northern Antilles near the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico expanded southward. Comparison of satellite data from the previous 20 years confirmed that thermal stress from the 2005 event was greater than the previous 20 years combined.
Following the planet’s hottest summer on record last year, the Caribbean suffered its worst recorded bleaching event. The last worldwide bleaching occurred in 2014-17, when scientists say approximately 15% of all reefs experienced major coral deaths. Nearly a third of the Great Barrier Reef’s coral perished during the bleaching.
In the Southern Hemisphere, where summer is ending and ocean temperatures are at or near their annual peaks, there is “basically bleaching all over the place,” according to Manzello.
Matthew England, a professor at the University of New South Wales in Australia who studies ocean currents, recently told TheNew York Times that “the sea ice around the Antarctic is just not growing” and “the temperature’s just going off the charts.”
“It’s like an omen of the future,” he added.
It’s a similar story in the North Atlantic, which “has been record-breakingly warm for almost a year now,” University of Miami hurricane expert Brian McNoldy told the Times. “It’s just astonishing. Like, it doesn’t seem real.”
A 2018 report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that global heating of 1.5°C is likely to result in the loss of 70-90% the planet’s coral reefs over the coming decades.
Current emissions-based forecasts have Earth on track for at least 1.5°C of warming, which researchers say is likely to trigger five climate tipping points: melting of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, mass die-off of warm-water coral reefs, thawing of Arctic permafrost, and collapse of the North Atlantic Subpolar Gyre circulation.
The European Environment Agency’s long-term forecasts for 2071-2100 predict worldwide oceanic heating of 0.5°C-3.8°C, depending on future greenhouse gas emission scenarios.
Scientists say the best way to avert worst-case outcomes for both coral reefs and the climate is to swiftly transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Reducing land-based pollution and overfishing are also critical to reef preservation.
