climate science

This post is part of WRI’s “Extreme Weather Watch” series, which explores the link between climate change and extreme events. Read our other posts in this series.

This post originally appeared on Forbes.com.

The effects of the vast drought afflicting America’s farm belt are rippling across the economy. Major companies apparently feeling the heat from rising crop prices include McDonald’s, Smithfield Foods, and Archer Daniels Midland, which processes agricultural commodities.

More than half of the nation’s pasture and rangeland is now plagued by drought – the largest natural disaster area in U.S. history. And with corn prices soaring as crops wither, other sectors are nervously watching the weather forecasts and assessing potential impacts on their business. For example:

This post is part of WRI’s “Extreme Weather Watch” series, which explores the link between climate change and extreme events. Read our other posts in this series.

Many people are understandably perplexed at the U.S.’s recent extreme weather events like record heat waves, torrential downpours, droughts, and wildfires. A new report published by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other institutions may finally offer some insight into climate change’s connection to the damaging and costly extreme events that are on the rise.

Numerous studies have shown that the Earth is warming rapidly, due in large part to human activities. While existing research focuses on climate change’s implications for the intensity and frequency of extreme events like storms and heat waves, due to scientific complexities, most scientists to date have tip-toed around attributing any single event to climate change.

Until now, that is. Last week, scientists from NOAA, the UK’s Met Office, and other institutions published a special report in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) that attributed a number of recent extreme events to human-induced climate change.

This post is part of WRI’s “Extreme Weather Watch” series, which explores the link between climate change and extreme events. Read our other posts in this series.

While many Americans set up camp to watch fireworks on July 4th, those in the Western U.S. were not as lucky. Firefighters didn’t get a holiday reprieve as they battled ongoing forest fires in Colorado. Plus, at least 40 cities in the state as well as many in neighboring states cancelled their fireworks shows due to the high risk of sparking new fires.

Disappointed fireworks fans were the least of the region’s worries, though. Colorado is experiencing its worst wildfire season in a decade, with half a dozen lives lost, more than 600 homes consumed, and more than 270 square miles (more than 10 times the size of Manhattan) burned so far. And the state isn’t alone: Wildfires have already struck across 137 square miles of Wyoming and 380 square miles of Montana as well.

Several news accounts have blamed the Colorado fires on lightning. While that may have been the trigger, much research suggests that this summer’s widespread destruction is not an anomaly, but rather part of an ominous, ongoing trend.

Last week we passed an unfortunate marker when it comes to climate change: concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere have hit 400 parts per million (ppm) near the Arctic.

What Does it Mean and Why Should We Care?

This level was discovered by scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), who have long measured CO2 concentrations at stations around the world through two ways: (1) volunteers collect air samples and send them to NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Colorado for analysis; and (2) half a dozen baseline observatories continuously monitor CO2 levels. One of these observatories is located in Barrow, Alaska. The observatory in Barrow, as well as air samples from several other northern locations including Canada, Finland, and Norway, show that 400 ppm was surpassed sometime this spring.