All posts tagged "Heat"

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Mone Choy is 68 and lives in the New York City neighborhood of Inwood, at the northern tip of Manhattan, on a fixed disability income of $1,901 per month. Her rent is frozen at $1,928. She lives with chronic health issues that render her unable to work. In addition to a few other intermittent gigs, Choy covers the rest of her expenses by collecting bottles from her building’s recycling and taking them to a nearby redemption center.

One luxury her budget doesn’t leave room for, even during a heat wave like the one that scorched the city last week — and remains ongoing around the world — is air conditioning. She has several AC units in her apartment (gifts from friends concerned about Choy’s health) but because she can’t afford to turn them on, they sit uninstalled....

Paris (AFP) - Last month was the hottest October on record globally, Europe's climate monitor said Wednesday, as months of exceptional heat likely to make 2023 the warmest year in history.  With temperatures soaring beyond previous averages by exceptional margins, scientists say the pressure on world leaders to curb planet-heating greenhouse gas pollution has never been more urgent as they prepare to meet in Dubai for the UNCOP28 climate conference this month.  Drought parched parts of the United States and Mexico during October, while huge swathes of the planet saw wetter than normal conditio......

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

Inflation is finally easing. Americans are paying less for gas than they were a year ago. Furniture, television, and airfare prices have all fallen since last summer. Even the used car market is cooling off after its meteoric rise. But one unsuspecting staple in many American kitchens has become a prominent outlier: olive oil. The price of the already pricey liquid fat has soared to a record high this summer.

It’s the latest chapter in the annals of heatflation — when scorching temperatures harm crops and push food prices up. A yearlong drought and a spring of extreme heat in Spain, the world’s largest olive oil producer, devastated the country’s olive groves. Spanish olive oil production fell by a half — from an estimated 1.3 million to 610,000 metric tons — over the past year. Now fears are mounting over the very real possibility that the country’s inventory will run out before the next harvest begins, in October. ...

The Iranian government has declared Wednesday and Thursday national holidays due to an "unprecedented" heatwave that has sent temperatures soaring above 40 degrees in large parts of the country, the ISNA news agency reported. Bank branches and judicial offices will be closed, while educational exams and football matches were cancelled. Hospitals were put on high alert, the agency reported. The weather service warned of air pollution and sandstorms in the south of the country, where temperatures were forecast to climb above 50 degrees this week. In the Kurdish city of Divandarreh, residents too......

This story was originally published by Grist. Sign up for Grist's weekly newsletter here.

July is expected to be the hottest month experienced on earth in 120,000 years.

In a joint report published Thursday by the World Meteorological Organization, the Copernicus Climate Change Service, and Leipzig University, the temperature for the first three weeks of July averaged 62.51 Fahrenheit, breaking the previous record of 61.93 Fahrenheit set in 2019....

Paris (AFP) - Blistering heat that has baked swathes of North America and Europe this month would have been "virtually impossible" without human-caused climate change, researchers said Tuesday, as intense temperatures spark health alerts and stoke ferocious wildfires. With tens of million people affected in the northern hemisphere and July on track to be the hottest month globally since records began, experts warn that worse is to come unless we reduce planet-heating emissions.  Severe heatwaves have gripped southern Europe, parts of the United States, Mexico and China this month, with tempera......