Extreme fire, smoke and heat continue to ravage the West. Over 2 million acres have burned in California so far, and in Oregon and Washington, nearly 250,000 homes are without power.
Journalist Emily Atkin outlined the weather’s connection to climate change in her newsletter, HEATED:
Scientists attribute the unprecedented intensity of these events to human-caused climate change. Greenhouse gas emissions have made the atmosphere in these areas much hotter and drier than it used to be. “We’re living in a fundamentally climate-altered world,” MIT Technology Review noted last month, citing a multitude of peer-reviewed research about how climate change exacerbates extreme heat and wildfire. These so-called “compound climate events” are only predicted to get worse if greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated.
In Fresno County, the Creek Fire has forced evacuations. US Forest Service Supervisor Dean Gould called that fire the “most aggressive of any” the area had experienced, according to CNN.
We head to the San Joaquin Valley to hear the latest on what’s happening.
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