Posts on Climate

Paprika may be sitting quietly in your spice cabinet, but in Hungary, it’s a big deal. The bright red spice is an essential part of Hungarian cooking and culture. It gives dishes such as goulash their famous color and flavor, and strings of red peppers drying outside homes were once a familiar sight in Hungary’s countryside. But today, the farmers …

Butterflies are turning up in places they've never lived before. And they're vanishing from places they've called home for generations. Climate change seems to be a big reason why. In the largest study of its kind, an international team led by Shawan Chowdhury at Monash University in Australia combed through more than 6,000 records of butterfly movements, covering 1,758 species …

What a rockslide on a tiny Arctic island can teach us about a warming world Way up in the Arctic, about halfway between Iceland and Norway's Svalbard islands, there's a skinny little island called Jan Mayen. It's about 30 miles long. It has one volcano — a big one, Beerenberg — a handful of glaciers sliding down its sides, and …

By Holly Shaftel, contributing writer After 12 years in climate science communications, I paused my career to become an animal rights activist, targeting animal agriculture. I had spent years exposing false information about climate change. So, I thought the people in my new community would understand the science. I was wrong. Many animal rights activists think that raising animals for …

When you think about a heat wave, you probably picture sweltering afternoons, packed beaches, and air conditioners working overtime. But here's something you might not think about: extreme heat can threaten our power supply, too. That's exactly what happened in France this summer. As temperatures soared, the country temporarily shut down three nuclear reactors and reduced power at several others. …

El Niño is a natural event where the surface water in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, near the equator, gets warmer than usual. This happens every few years, and it changes weather patterns all over the world — causing things like extra rain in some places, droughts in others, and shifts in temperature. A Record-Breaking El Niño on the …

Welcome to the third part of my Fact-Checking Series, where I dig into myths about carbon dioxide and clear up misunderstandings about climate. Image of a carbon dioxide molecule. Credit: Malte Reimold via Pixabay Carbon dioxide, or CO₂, is an invisible gas that is all around us in the air. It's made up of one carbon atom and two oxygen …

Have you ever driven through a forest and seen a huge field of burned tree trunks, standing like ghosts? That's what one wildfire researcher calls "tree gravestones" — and in California, they're becoming a lot more common. A new study from UCLA looked at forest fires across the state going all the way back to 1985, and the results show …

What Is the AMOC? Picture a giant conveyor belt — like the ones at a grocery store checkout — but instead of groceries, it's moving billions of gallons of ocean water all around the planet. That's basically what the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC (say it like "AY-mock"), does. Image: A simplified illustration of the AMOC, or global “conveyor …

My good friend, George is a surfer. Recently, he walked up the beach carrying his surfboard and counted seven dead birds in a distance of just 100 feet or so. So, what's going on? A major ocean heat wave is hitting the California coast and harming wildlife — especially seabirds like pelicans, cormorants, murres, and gulls. In some places, ocean …

Have you ever noticed it's hotter in a city than in the countryside? That's not your imagination — it's a real thing called the urban heat island effect. But some people claim this means global warming isn't real, that we're just measuring hot pavement instead of an actual warming planet. It may sound convincing at first, but the evidence doesn’t …

The State Can't Be a Climate Leader While Animal Agriculture Pollutes Freely This piece was originally written for FactoryFarmWatch.org and has been simplified for a middle school audience. By Holly Shaftel, contributing writer California loves to call itself a climate leader. But how well does that reputation hold up when you zoom in? Using more than 100,000 data points, Factory …

By Holly Shaftel, contributing writer 10/5/2026 UPDATE: Plug-in solar is now legal in California! Learn more here. I’ve been a proud of solar panels since 2021. They significantly decreased my electricity bills to $11 per month, and it feels good to do my small part to help combat climate change. Then one day our bills started climbing again. I began …

You've probably heard the phrase "red flag warning" lately. It might sound like complicated weather talk — but it's actually a warning we all need to take seriously. A red flag warning means conditions are perfect for a wildfire to ignite quickly and spread even faster. All it takes is: Dry air High temperatures Strong winds One spark. That's it. …

Have you ever stepped outside on a sunny day (it's 78 today where I live!) and felt the warmth of the Sun on your skin? That sunlight is energy—and it’s what keeps our planet livable. But here’s the problem: Earth is now taking in more energy than it sends back out to space. Scientists call this an energy imbalance, and …

Scientists like Daniel Swain are studying something called megafloods, which are really, really big floods that can last for weeks and cover large parts of a region with water. These aren’t normal floods from a thunderstorm — they’re massive events caused by long periods of extreme rain and storms. I decided to write about this after three powerful storms recently …

Scientists found that part of the southern Indian Ocean, the water off the west coast of Australia, is losing a lot of salt much faster than expected. Normally this area is one of the saltiest parts of the ocean, but now it’s getting fresher (less salty) very quickly — and that seems to be connected to climate change. You might …

Did you know there are penguins in Africa? It surprises a lot of people—but it’s true! African penguins live along the coasts of South Africa and Namibia. And right now, these tuxedo-wearing birds are fighting for their lives. African penguins are facing a serious food crisis. Scientists and wildlife experts say many of them are starving because they simply can’t …

By Holly Shaftel, contributing writer Did you know that every time you Google something or give ChatGPT a command, it creates greenhouse (heat-trapping) emissions and uses a lot of water? The internet uses a lot of energy globally. If you look at the rapid growth of artificial intelligence* (AI) in particular, its data centers ("servers") use about 1.5% of the …

When people talk about climate change, two gases usually steal the spotlight: carbon dioxide (CO₂) and methane (CH₄). But there’s another greenhouse gas quietly heating up the planet—nitrous oxide (N₂O)—and most people hardly ever hear about it. I live in one of the most diverse and vibrant agricultural regions in the state. Here, winegrapes, olive trees, berries, and vegetables grow …