Erika Spanger and Rachel Cleetus contributed to this post
This week in Danger Season:
- Climate extremes collide with Trump administration cuts
- Multiple flash flood records broken
- Wildfires make for bad air quality
- Hot all over
- Shocker: Fossil fuel industry doesn’t want their share of blame or costs
This week in Danger Season, climate hazards like wildfires and flooding are colliding with harmful policies, namely the Trump administration’s existing and proposed cuts to NOAA and FEMA, and the threat of a fossil fuel liability waiver. In our Danger Season Weekly Outlook, we take a look at these compounding hazards and the week ahead.
At this writing, more than 144 million people in the US are under a Danger Season alert. Each of the climate change-driven extremes we track (with the exception of tropical storms) is actively impacting regions of the US. In a handful of counties around the country, people are facing multiple hazards at once (see blue in the map below and online). Climate hazards are colliding. Compound climate hazards are colliding with dangerous policies and politics. And all of these together are hurting people.
Heat and floods collide in TX, the Northeast and Gulf Coast
- In Texas, the same areas devastated by flooding and loss of life (the death toll is at 134 as of this writing) on July 4 are facing continuing flash flooding amid mid-summer Texas heat, making the grueling tasks of recovering the remaining roughly 100 missing people and beginning basic clean-up so much more challenging. Extreme rainfall led to flooding across the Northeast, with areas of Vermont experiencing catastrophic flooding for the third time in three years. New Jersey, where two people were killed in the flooding, declared a state of emergency while images and videos circulated on social media showing flash flooding and standing water in New York City’s subway. And as our Danger Season map shows, multiple counties in southern MS and LA face both flood and heat alerts now and potentially in the coming days, as a storm system passes through (more below).
- This week’s disastrous flooding, as meteorologist Michael Lowry reports, also generated NWS alert-based milestones, including the most flash flood warnings in a single day on July 14. What’s more, as of July 15, more flash flood warnings have been issued this year to date than any other year since 1986, when modernized NWS record-keeping began. These metrics (pulled from Iowa Environmental Mesonet) bring into focus the tangible impacts of climate change during Danger Season, and reinforce the need to seek accountability, particularly for the largest polluters.
Wildfires and air quality
- This week has seen large fire growth in the US while wildfires in Canada continue to burn historically large areas and create poor, and even dangerous, air quality on both sides of the border.
- Two national parks—Gunnison in Colorado and Grand Canyon in Arizona—are partially closed following an uptick in US wildfire activity this week. The White Sage Fire, also in Arizona, has burned more than 58,000 acres and remains 9% contained as of writing. We are monitoring fire weather alerts in several other western states. Things are heating up.
- Starting in late May, wildfires in central Canada have led to on-and-off—and this week, very much on—dangerous air quality across the upper Midwest and in the Northeast. Wildfire smoke is particularly dangerous due to its high concentrations of particulate matter (PM2.5). Depending on the concentrations, a full day of exposure can be roughly equivalent to smoking several to an entire pack of cigarettes. Exposure to wildfire smoke has been linked to lower birth weight, risk of pre-term birth, and increased risk of mortality.
- The climate change link here is clear— our landscapes are drier and more fire prone while the increasing frequency of extreme hot, dry, windy fire weather supports rapid wildfire growth and spread. Climate change nearly doubled burned area in forests of the western US between 1984-2016, and more than a third of burned area has been traced to emissions from the largest fossil fuel producers and cement manufacturers.
- Looking ahead, both Canadian and US fire outlooks show above-normal potential for significant fire activity through the rest of the summer, with hotspots in the western US and southwestern Canada.
Politics and policies we’re watching
Despite huge swaths of the country facing down climate hazards, the current administration’s agenda continues to prioritize corporations over communities, profits over people, and impunity over accountability for major polluters.
- Cuts to agencies like NOAA and FEMA —both staff and budget cuts to date and those proposed in the President’s FY26 budget—threaten our ability to predict, respond to, and recover from extreme weather events, which are growing more frequent and intense due to climate change. Please join us in demanding that Congress protect the funding and staffing of both NOAA and FEMA.
- A drastic cut to the US Forest Service budget proposed in the President’s FY26 budget, and an executive order that calls for an abrupt consolidation of firefighting in a new ‘Federal Wildland Fire Service’ under the Department of the Interior will also pose challenges to keeping communities safe if allowed to go through. US Forest Service Chief Tom Schultz faced sharp questions during a hearing on the budget last week. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) also followed up with a letter expressing deep concern about the Forest Service’s resource and preparedness ahead of what is forecast to be a difficult wildfire season in Oregon and much of the Western US. Thankfully, the latest versions of the appropriations bills do not mirror the extreme cuts proposed by the President, although continued vigilance will be needed.
- On top of that, 16 Republican attorneys general urged the Department of Justice (DOJ) last month to support shielding the fossil fuel industry from liability–similar to the way gun manufacturers were granted protection under PLCAA in 2005. Their goal is to protect corporations that deceived the public for decades about the risks their products pose. As my colleague Kathy Mulvey highlighted in her op-ed this week in The Hill Big Oil is leveraging its deep political influence to enlist elected officials in its effort to evade the rising tide of lawsuits seeking accountability for climate deception and damages. The American Petroleum Institute is a top donor to the Republican Attorneys General Association, of which all the attorneys general who signed the letter to the DOJ are members.
Actions you can take today
- Demand fossil fuel accountability: As communities across the US continue to face threats from climate impacts and shoulder the costs of recovery and adaptation, Congress cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to be shielded from liability for its contribution to the crisis. Join our action to tell our elected officials they must seek accountability for polluters, not immunity.
- Demand heat protection for workers: The Asunción Valdivia Heat Illness, Injury, and Fatality Prevention Act, reintroduced yesterday, aims to protect workers from killer heat. See our statement on this here. A broad coalition supports this bill: the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS); the United Farm Workers; American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees; United Steelworkers; and hundreds of other organizations. Please take and share this call to action widely.
Looking ahead
- Unrelenting heat: As the week goes on, much of the eastern US is expected to see moderate and major heat risk, including my home state of Massachusetts, where many of us still lack sufficient air conditioning. Globally, July temperature records around being broken from the Arctic to Oceania, and in many places in between. Next week, hazardous US heat is likely again across the Great Plains, Southeast, and Mississippi River Valley. As we can expect with each major heat event, until we have adequate heat protections in place, this heat will endanger the most vulnerable, including outdoor workers, energy-burdened communities, and those without ready access to cooling.
- More dangerous flood risk: First, though, a storm system over the Gulf , passing over hot waters, made hotter by climate change threatens to bring significant rainfall to Louisiana—with a “reasonable worst case” of 6 to 8 inches in locations—potentially driving major flooding on top of major heat, including in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Our friends at Climate Central show that the current high Gulf of Mexico sea surface temperatures were made many times more likely by climate change (see below). So let’s look at situations like this in the context of fossil fuel accountability, described above: Ocean heat is tropical storm and hurricane fuel. Ocean heat is made worse by climate change. Climate change is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels. The fossil fuel industry has spent decades deceiving the world about this risk. The industry is now seeking legal immunity from responsibility for climate change.
With hurricane season heating up and with clear lines of accountability between climate change and the fossil fuel industry, it is hard to watch the Attorneys General from the hurricane-prone states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina join 12 others in that letter to USAG Pam Bondi requesting fossil fuel industry immunity from responsibility for climate change. As we move through Danger Season, will leaders like this realize that they’re cooking their own goose—our goose, everybody’s damn goose?
We’ll be back with updates and insights next week.