With the release of this year’s Climate Change Indicators report on Wednesday, the EPA acknowledges that the climate crisis, in part, is caused by human activities, and it adds that “Americans are seeing and feeling the impacts up close with increasing regularity.”
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Indicators used to come out every year, but publication was stopped in 2017, shortly after former President Donald Trump took office. Trump has long been a skeptic of human-caused climate change, at times calling it a “hoax”.
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The relaunch of the climate change website is part of the Biden administration’s efforts to use scientific data in explaining what is happening with global warming. “Climate facts are back on EPA’s website where they should be,” EPA administrator Michael Regan said in a statement.
The report is stark in its language, and to the point, presenting “compelling and clear evidence” of a climate crisis. “There is no small town, big city, or rural community that’s unaffected by the climate crisis,” said Regan, according to Business Insider.
What does the report say?
Here are some new findings, based on data from dozens of US agencies, according to Axios, and show the damage climate change has already caused.
- Heatwaves are happening more often in US cities, from two per year in the 1960s to six per year in the 2010s.
- Rising sea levels are causing coastal flooding, especially in cities along the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.
- Arctic sea ice is thinning, and the minimum extent of its coverage has been getting smaller each summer.
- Ocean temperatures also hit a record-breaking high in 2020 and the water has grown more acidic over the past decade.
- Wildfire season and pollen season are both starting earlier and lasting longer.
- Heatwaves are occurring about three times more often than in the 1960s.
- The growing season in agriculture has become longer, by an extra two weeks on average.
According to the BBC, the report offers a dire warning, saying the data “suggests disastrous times ahead if the United States and other industrialized nations do not act quickly on global warming.”
Source: Digital Journal
