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Extreme storms, like recent ones in the US, follow a recipe

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Friday, April 11, 2025

Extreme storms, like those that hit the central U.S. in early April, follow a recipe. Image via Kelly Sikkema/ Unsplash. Extreme storms form thanks to moisture and atmospheric instability. These two ingredients are common in the central U.S. in spring. Climate change means more warm air, and warm air holds more moisture, leading to wetter and stronger storms. The most significant warming occurs near the surface, while the upper atmosphere is cooling. This can increase the instability that triggers strong storms. By Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton Extreme storms have been hitting the central US A powerful storm system that stalled over states from Texas to Ohio for several days in early April 2025 wreaked havoc across the region. It brought deadly tornadoes, mudslides and flooding as rivers rose. More than a foot (30 cm) of rain fell in several areas. As a climate scientist who studies the water cycle, I often get questions about how extreme storms like these form and what climate change has to do with it. There’s a recipe for extreme storms, with two key ingredients. We’ve never needed good science more than we do right now. Support EarthSky in 2025 and help us keep it going strong. Severe storms hammered parts of the central U.S. in early April. The National Weather Service issued 309 flash flood warnings between April 2 and April 7. Image via IEM/ Matthew Cappucci. Recipe for a storm The essential conditions for storms to form with heavy downpours are moisture and atmospheric instability. First, in order for a storm to develop, the air needs to contain enough moisture. That moisture comes from water evaporating off oceans, lakes and land, and from trees and other plants. The amount of moisture the air can hold depends on its temperature. The higher the temperature, the more moisture air can hold, and the greater potential for heavy downpours. This is because at higher temperatures water molecules have more kinetic energy and therefore are more likely to exist in the vapor phase. The maximum amount of moisture possible in the air increases at about 7% per degree Celsius. Warm air also supplies storm systems with more energy. When that vapor starts to condense into water or ice as it cools, it releases large amount of energy, known as latent heat. This additional energy fuels the storm system, leading to stronger winds and greater atmospheric instability. Atmospheric instability That leads us to the second necessary condition for a storm: atmospheric instability. Atmospheric instability has two components: rising air and wind shear, which is created as wind speed changes with height. The rising air, or updraft, is essential because air cools as it moves up. And as a result, water vapor condenses to form precipitation. As the air cools at high altitudes, it starts to sink. This forms a downdraft of cool and dry air on the edge of a storm system. When there is little wind shear, the downdraft can suppress the updraft, and the storm system quickly dissipates as it exhausts the local moisture in the air. However, strong wind shear can tilt the storm system. Then the downdraft occurs at a different location, and the updraft of warm moist air can continue, supplying the storm with moisture and energy. This often leads to strong storm systems that can spawn tornadoes. Extreme downpours hit the US It is precisely a combination of these conditions that caused the prolonged, extensive precipitation that the Midwest and Southern states saw in early April. The Midwest is prone to extreme storms, particularly during spring. Spring is a transition time when the cold and dry air mass from the Arctic, which dominates the region in winter, gradually gets pushed away by warm and moist air from the Gulf that dominates the region in summer. This clash of air masses creates atmosphere instability at the boundary, where the warm and less dense air gets pushed upward above the cold and denser air, creating precipitation. A cold front forms when a cold air mass pushes away a warm air mass. A warm front forms when the warm air mass pushes to replace the cold air mass. A cold front usually moves faster than a warm front, but the speed is related to the temperature difference between the two air masses. The warm conditions before the April storm system reduced the temperature difference between these cold and warm air masses, greatly reducing the speed of the frontal movement and allowing it to stall over states from Texas to Ohio. The result was prolonged precipitation and repeated storms. The warm temperatures also led to high moisture content in the air masses, leading to more precipitation. In addition, strong wind shear led to a continuous supply of moisture into the storm systems, causing strong thunderstorms and dozens of tornadoes to form. What global warming has to do with storms As global temperatures rise, the warming air creates conditions that are more conducive to extreme precipitation. The warmer air can mean more moisture, leading to wetter and stronger storms. And since most significant warming occurs near the surface, while the upper atmosphere is cooling, this can increase wind shear and the atmospheric instability that sets the stage for strong storms. Polar regions are also warming two to three times as fast as the global average, reducing the temperature gradient between the poles and equator. That can weaken the global winds. Most of the weather systems in the continental U.S. are modulated by the polar jet stream. So a weaker jet stream can slow the movement of storms, creating conditions for prolonged precipitation events. All of these create conditions that make extreme storms and flooding much more likely in the future. Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Bottom line: Extreme storms brought tornadoes and flooding to the central U.S. in early April. Climate scientist Shuang-Ye Wu explains the recipe for severe storms and why a warming world can make them more frequent. Read more: Extreme weather: We haven’t seen the worst yet The post Extreme storms, like recent ones in the US, follow a recipe first appeared on EarthSky.

Extreme storms hit the central U.S. in early April. A climate scientist explains the recipe for severe storms and why a warming world makes them more frequent. The post Extreme storms, like recent ones in the US, follow a recipe first appeared on EarthSky.

Extreme storms: A sign showing an upcoming stoplight that is mostly underwater.
Extreme storms, like those that hit the central U.S. in early April, follow a recipe. Image via Kelly Sikkema/ Unsplash.
  • Extreme storms form thanks to moisture and atmospheric instability. These two ingredients are common in the central U.S. in spring.
  • Climate change means more warm air, and warm air holds more moisture, leading to wetter and stronger storms.
  • The most significant warming occurs near the surface, while the upper atmosphere is cooling. This can increase the instability that triggers strong storms.

By Shuang-Ye Wu, University of Dayton

Extreme storms have been hitting the central US

A powerful storm system that stalled over states from Texas to Ohio for several days in early April 2025 wreaked havoc across the region. It brought deadly tornadoes, mudslides and flooding as rivers rose. More than a foot (30 cm) of rain fell in several areas.

As a climate scientist who studies the water cycle, I often get questions about how extreme storms like these form and what climate change has to do with it. There’s a recipe for extreme storms, with two key ingredients.

We’ve never needed good science more than we do right now.
Support EarthSky in 2025 and help us keep it going strong.

Map of the US with many overlapping red rectangles near the center.
Severe storms hammered parts of the central U.S. in early April. The National Weather Service issued 309 flash flood warnings between April 2 and April 7. Image via IEM/ Matthew Cappucci.

Recipe for a storm

The essential conditions for storms to form with heavy downpours are moisture and atmospheric instability.

First, in order for a storm to develop, the air needs to contain enough moisture. That moisture comes from water evaporating off oceans, lakes and land, and from trees and other plants.

The amount of moisture the air can hold depends on its temperature. The higher the temperature, the more moisture air can hold, and the greater potential for heavy downpours. This is because at higher temperatures water molecules have more kinetic energy and therefore are more likely to exist in the vapor phase. The maximum amount of moisture possible in the air increases at about 7% per degree Celsius.

Warm air also supplies storm systems with more energy. When that vapor starts to condense into water or ice as it cools, it releases large amount of energy, known as latent heat. This additional energy fuels the storm system, leading to stronger winds and greater atmospheric instability.

Atmospheric instability

That leads us to the second necessary condition for a storm: atmospheric instability.

Atmospheric instability has two components: rising air and wind shear, which is created as wind speed changes with height. The rising air, or updraft, is essential because air cools as it moves up. And as a result, water vapor condenses to form precipitation.

As the air cools at high altitudes, it starts to sink. This forms a downdraft of cool and dry air on the edge of a storm system.

When there is little wind shear, the downdraft can suppress the updraft, and the storm system quickly dissipates as it exhausts the local moisture in the air. However, strong wind shear can tilt the storm system. Then the downdraft occurs at a different location, and the updraft of warm moist air can continue, supplying the storm with moisture and energy. This often leads to strong storm systems that can spawn tornadoes.

Extreme downpours hit the US

It is precisely a combination of these conditions that caused the prolonged, extensive precipitation that the Midwest and Southern states saw in early April.

The Midwest is prone to extreme storms, particularly during spring. Spring is a transition time when the cold and dry air mass from the Arctic, which dominates the region in winter, gradually gets pushed away by warm and moist air from the Gulf that dominates the region in summer.

This clash of air masses creates atmosphere instability at the boundary, where the warm and less dense air gets pushed upward above the cold and denser air, creating precipitation.

A cold front forms when a cold air mass pushes away a warm air mass. A warm front forms when the warm air mass pushes to replace the cold air mass. A cold front usually moves faster than a warm front, but the speed is related to the temperature difference between the two air masses.

The warm conditions before the April storm system reduced the temperature difference between these cold and warm air masses, greatly reducing the speed of the frontal movement and allowing it to stall over states from Texas to Ohio.

The result was prolonged precipitation and repeated storms. The warm temperatures also led to high moisture content in the air masses, leading to more precipitation. In addition, strong wind shear led to a continuous supply of moisture into the storm systems, causing strong thunderstorms and dozens of tornadoes to form.

What global warming has to do with storms

As global temperatures rise, the warming air creates conditions that are more conducive to extreme precipitation.

The warmer air can mean more moisture, leading to wetter and stronger storms. And since most significant warming occurs near the surface, while the upper atmosphere is cooling, this can increase wind shear and the atmospheric instability that sets the stage for strong storms.

Polar regions are also warming two to three times as fast as the global average, reducing the temperature gradient between the poles and equator. That can weaken the global winds. Most of the weather systems in the continental U.S. are modulated by the polar jet stream. So a weaker jet stream can slow the movement of storms, creating conditions for prolonged precipitation events.

All of these create conditions that make extreme storms and flooding much more likely in the future.The Conversation

Shuang-Ye Wu, Professor of Geology and Environmental Geosciences, University of Dayton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Bottom line: Extreme storms brought tornadoes and flooding to the central U.S. in early April. Climate scientist Shuang-Ye Wu explains the recipe for severe storms and why a warming world can make them more frequent.

Read more: Extreme weather: We haven’t seen the worst yet

The post Extreme storms, like recent ones in the US, follow a recipe first appeared on EarthSky.

Read the full story here.
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We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionIn January of this year, Blanch Gorriz and his team installed eight photogrammetric systems that capture images every 30 minutes, enabling the generation of 3D models of about 300 metres of the glacier front. Initial comparisons between December and June already reveal significant ice loss. Satellite images further highlight a striking retreat over just 100 days.Today, nothing seems capable of halting the glacier’s retreat. Only a series of cooler summers and wetter winters might slow the trend, but climate projections point in the opposite direction.“What we expect is that, at some point, Perito Moreno will lose contact with the Magallanes peninsula, which has historically acted as a stabilising buttress and slowed the glacier’s response to climate change. 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Seeing fewer fireflies this year? Here’s why, and how you can help.

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They measured impacts in 2023 and 2024, when the planet saw some of the most widespread and damaging drought events in recorded history. What they found is a lesson and a warning sign: Increasingly severe droughts caused by climate change are laying waste to ecosystems and economies everywhere.  “This report is a blistering reminder that climate change and punishing drought are already devastating lives, livelihoods, and food access,” said Million Belay of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems, and general coordinator of the Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa, who wasn’t involved in the research. “We need to get serious about resilience and real adaptation.” A local farmer carries vegetables near a partially dry canal of a Chinampa, or floating garden, in San Gregorio Atlapulco, on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, on May 23, 2024. Daniel Cardenas / Anadolu via Getty Images Mexico City A focal point in the analysis is Mexico, where prolonged drought conditions provoked a water crisis that has had repercussions for food affordability and access.  The situation began to intensify in 2023, when the country entered into a period of historically low rainfall. By June, the bulk of Mexico’s reservoirs dropped below 50 percent capacity. The rainy winter of 2023 brought some relief, but not enough.  By the next summer, 90 percent of the country was experiencing some level of drought, and Mexico City’s water supply system reached a record low of 39 percent capacity. Abnormally low rainfall and high temperatures, made worse by inefficient water infrastructure and overextraction of the city’s aquifer, would persist into early 2025. These struggles to obtain water have been further exacerbated by distribution needs as mandated by a water-sharing treaty Mexico has long shared with the United States.  A severe lack of water has been found to be closely linked with food insecurity, as water scarcity impacts food access through reductions in agricultural production that can fuel food shortages and higher grocery prices. Roughly 42 percent of Mexico’s population was food-insecure in 2021, according to national statistics, with consumer food inflation rates steadily climbing since then. 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Drinking water became contaminated by mass die-offs of marine life, and local communities weren’t able to eat the fish they rely on.  Supply chain transportation was also greatly affected, as the low water levels made it impossible for boats to travel in and out of certain regions. Brazil’s AirForce would be deployed to distribute food and water to several states where river supply routes were impassable.  Residents in some towns dug wells on their own properties to replace river water they would normally depend on for drinking, cooking, and cleaning, according to the U.N.-backed report. Others were stuck waiting on government aid. Disruptions to drinking water and food supplies due to low river levels continued through late 2024 as the drought persisted. By September, waterways that had previously been navigable were bone-dry.  A 2025 report released by the nonprofit ACAPS found that many communities in the Amazon region were already believed to be suffering malnutrition, making them more vulnerable to the emerging health and food insecurity effects of the drought.  Climate change plays “a critical role in food security,” said FAO economist Jung-eun Sohn, who is unaffiliated with the UNCCD report. He noted that warming not only can impact both availability of and access to food, but that natural hazards are “one of three main risks of food insecurity,” along with conflict and economic risks, in hunger hot spots.  A woman stands in a dried-out banana plantation in Ben Tre Province, Vietnam, in 2016. At the time, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta was experiencing its worst drought in 90 years. Christian Berg / Getty Images Mekong Delta  Though a central contributor to the interconnected water-and-food crisis, climate change isn’t the only factor in many hunger hot spots — failing infrastructure and inefficiencies in water delivery systems have also been flagged as critical contributors to widespread water shortages. The compounding effect of El Niño, or a naturally-occurring weather phenomena that drives above-average global heat and more intense natural disasters in parts of the planet, is another culprit.  “It’s now abundantly clear that industrial, chemical-intensive agriculture, with its high water demands and uniform crops, is deeply vulnerable to drought and intensifying the crisis,” said Belay, the IPES expert.  One study found that saltwater intrusion, much like what persistently plagues the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam, also causes a significant reduction in food production. The watershed flows through six Asian countries, and over 20 million people depend on the rice grown in the region, which is Vietnam’s most productive agricultural area. It is also the region of Vietnam that is most vulnerable to hunger, with up to half of its rural households struggling to afford enough food.  A woman looks over her spoiled watermelon field in Ben Tre Province, Vietnam, in 2016. At the time, Vietnam’s Mekong Delta was experiencing its worst drought in 90 years. Christian Berg / Getty Images So when an early heat wave struck the Mekong Delta in 2024, and an abnormally long dry spell followed suit, causing canals to dry up, excessive salinity, heat, and water scarcity killed farmers’ catch in droves, reducing what communities were able to supply and sell, which led to shortages that prompted the local government to intervene and help producers quickly sell their wares. As the drought persisted, communities undertook other desperate measures to mitigate losses; renovating ditches, constructing temporary reservoirs, digging wells, and storing fresh water. Even so, according to the report, up to 110,000 hectares of agricultural resources, including fruit crops, rice fields, and aquaculture, have been impacted in the last year by the drought and excess salinity. The situation contributed to rice shortages, prompting a widespread inflationary effect on market prices. “These instances highlight how interconnected our global economies and food supplies are,” Paula Guastello, NDMC drought impacts researcher and lead author of the report, told Grist. “Drought has widespread implications, especially when it occurs on such a large, intense scale as during the past few years. In today’s global society, it is impossible to ignore the effects of drought occurring in far-off lands.”  All told, the authors argue that without major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, rising temperatures will lead to more frequent and severe droughts by continuing to inflate heat, evaporation, and volatile precipitation patterns. All the while, urbanization, land use changes, and population growth are expected to continue to strain water resources and influence which assets and areas are most vulnerable to drought impacts. The world’s resilience to those impacts, the report denotes, ultimately depends on the fortification of ecosystems, the adoption of changes to water management, and the pursuit of equitable resource access.  “Proactive drought management is a matter of climate justice, equitable development, and good governance,” said UNCCD Deputy Executive Secretary Andrea Meza in a statement about the report. Stronger early warning systems and real-time drought impact monitoring, for example, those that assess conditions known to fuel food and water insecurity, are some of the ways countries can better fortify their systems in preparedness for the next big drought event. Others include watershed restoration, the broad revival of traditional cultivation practices, and the implementation of alternative water supply technologies to help make infrastructure more climate-resilient. Adaptation methods, however, must also account for the most vulnerable populations, the authors say, and require global cooperation, particularly along critical food trade routes.  “Drought is not just a weather event,” said report co-author and NDMC assistant director Kelly Helm Smith. “It can be a social, economic, and environmental emergency. The question is not whether this will happen again, but whether we will be better prepared next time.” This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Drought is draining water supplies and driving up food costs where you’d least expect on Jul 9, 2025.

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Provocative new book says we must persuade people to have more babies

The population is set to plummet and we don't know how to stop it, warn Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in their new book, After the Spike

A large population may enable innovation and economies of scalePHILIPPE MONTIGNY/iStockphoto/Get​ty Images After the SpikeDean Spears and Michael Geruso (Bodley Head (UK); Simon & Schuster (US)) Four-Fifths of all the humans who will ever be born may already have been born. The number of children being born worldwide each year peaked at 146 million in 2012 and has been falling overall ever since. This means that the world’s population will peak and start to fall around the 2080s. This fall won’t be gradual. With birth rates already well below replacement levels in many countries including China and India, the world’s population will plummet as fast as it rose. In three centuries, there could be fewer than 2 billion people on Earth, claims a controversial new book. “No future is more likely than that people worldwide choose to have too few children to replace their own generation. Over the long run, this would cause exponential population decline,” write economists Dean Spears and Michael Geruso in After the Spike: The risks of global depopulation and the case for people. This, you might think, could be a good thing. Won’t it help solve many environmental issues facing us today? No, say the authors. Take climate change: their argument isn’t that population size doesn’t matter, but that it changes so slowly that other factors such as how fast the world decarbonises matter far more. The window of opportunity for lowering carbon dioxide emissions by reducing population has largely passed, they write. Spears and Geruso also make the case that there are many benefits to having a large population. For instance, there is more innovation, and economies of scale make the manufacture of things like smartphones feasible. “We get to have nice phones only because we have a lot of neighbors on this planet,” they write. So, in their view, our aim should be to stabilise world population rather than letting it plummet. The problem is we don’t know how, even with the right political will. As we grow richer, we are more reluctant to abandon career and leisure opportuntiies to have children While some government policies have had short-term effects, no country has successfully changed long-term population trends, argue the authors. Take China’s one-child policy. It is widely assumed to have helped reduce population growth – but did it? Spears and Geruso show unlabelled graphs of the populations of China and its neighbours before, during and after the policy was in place, and ask the reader which is China. There is no obvious difference. Attempts to boost falling fertility rates have been no more successful, they say. Birth rates jumped after Romania banned abortion in 1966, but they soon started to fall again. Sweden has tried the carrot rather than the stick by heavily subsidising day care. But the fertility rate there has been falling even further below the replacement rate. All attempts to boost fertility by providing financial incentives are likely to fail, Spears and Geruso argue. While people might say they are having fewer children because they cannot afford larger families, the global pattern is, in fact, that as people become richer they have fewer children. Rather than affordability being the issue, it is more about people deciding that they have better things to do, the authors say. As we grow richer, we are more reluctant to abandon career and leisure opportunities to have children. Even technological advances are unlikely to reverse this, they say. On everything other than the difficulty of stabilising the population, this is a relentlessly optimistic book. For instance, say the authors, dire predictions of mass starvation as the world’s population grew have been shown to be completely wrong. The long-term trend of people living longer and healthier lives can continue, they suggest. “Fears of a depleted, overpopulated future are out of date,” they write. Really? Spears and Geruso also stress that the price of food is key to determining how many go hungry, but fail to point out that food prices are now climbing, with climate change an increasing factor. I’m not so sure things are going to keep getting better for most people. This book is also very much a polemic: with Spears and Geruso labouring their main points, it wasn’t an enjoyable read. That said, if you think that the world’s population isn’t going to fall, or that it will be easy to halt its fall, or that a falling population is a good thing, you really should read it. New Scientist book club Love reading? Come and join our friendly group of fellow book lovers. Every six weeks, we delve into an exciting new title, with members given free access to extracts from our books, articles from our authors and video interviews.

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‘This is a fight for life’: climate expert on tipping points, doomerism and using wealth as a shield

Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve GuentherClimate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed. Continue reading...

Climate breakdown can be observed across many continuous, incremental changes such as soaring carbon dioxide levels, rising seas and heating oceans. The numbers creep up year after year, fuelled by human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.But scientists have also identified at least 16 “tipping points” – thresholds where a tiny shift could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with potentially devastating effects. These shifts can interact with each other and create feedback loops that heat the planet further or disrupt weather patterns, with unknown but potentially catastrophic consequences for life on Earth. It is possible some tipping points may already have been passed.Dr Genevieve Guenther, an American climate communications specialist, is the founding director of End Climate Silence, which studies the representation of global heating in the media and public discourse. Last year, she published The Language of Climate Politics: Fossil Fuel Propaganda and How to Fight It, which was described by Bill McKibben as “a gift to the world”. In the run-up to the Global Tipping Points conference in July, Guenther talks to the Guardian about the need to discuss catastrophic risks when communicating about the climate crisis.The future of her son and all children motivates Dr Genevieve Guenther to protect the planet from further global heating. Photograph: Laila Annmarie Stevens/The GuardianThe climate crisis is pushing globally important ecosystems – ice sheets, coral reefs, ocean circulation and the Amazon rainforest – towards the point of no return. Why is it important to talk about tipping points? We need to correct a false narrative that the climate threat is under control. These enormous risks are potentially catastrophic. They would undo the connections between human and ecological systems that form the basis of all of our civilisation.How have attitudes changed towards these dangers? There was a constructive wave of global climate alarm in the wake of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on 1.5C in 2018. That was the first time scientists made it clear that the difference between 1.5C and 2C would be catastrophic for millions of people and that in order to halt global heating at a relatively safe level, we would need to start zeroing out our emissions almost immediately. Until then, I don’t think policymakers realised the timeline was that short. This prompted a flurry of activism – Greta Thunberg and Indigenous and youth activists – and a surge of media attention. All of this converged to make almost everybody feel that climate change was a terrifying and pressing problem. This prompted new pledges, new corporate sustainability targets, and new policies being passed by government.This led to a backlash by those in the climate movement who prefer to cultivate optimism. Their preferred solution was to drive capitalist investment into renewable technologies so fossil fuels could be beaten out of the marketplace. This group believed climate fear might drive away investors, so they started to argue it was counterproductive to talk about worst-case scenarios. Some commentators even argued we had averted the direst predictions and were now on a more reassuring trajectory of global warming of a little under 3C by 2100.There is a misconception that wealthier places, such as the UK, Europe (including Italy, pictured) and the US will not be affected by the climate crisis but this is wrong, says Guenther. Photograph: Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty ImagesBut it is bananas to feel reassured by that because 3C would be a totally catastrophic outcome for humanity. Even at the current level of about 1.5C, the impacts of warming are emerging on the worst side of the range of possible outcomes and there is growing concern of tipping points for the main Atlantic Ocean circulation (Amoc), Antarctic sea ice, corals and rainforests.If the risk of a plane crashing was as high as the risk of the Amoc collapsing, none of us would ever fly because they would not let the plane take off. And the idea that our little spaceship, our planet, is under the risk of essentially crashing and we’re still continuing business as usual is mindblowing. I think part of the problem is that people feel distant from the dangers and don’t realise the children we have in our homes today are threatened with a chaotic, disastrous, unliveable future. Talking about the risks of catastrophe is a very useful way to overcome this kind of false distance.In your book, you write that it’s appropriate to be scared and the more you know, the more likely you are to be worried, as is evident from the statements of scientists and the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres. Why? Some people at the centre of the media, policymaking and even research claim that climate change isn’t going to be that bad for those who live in the wealthy developed world – the UK, Europe and the United States. When you hear these messages, you are lulled into a kind of complacency and it seems reasonable to think that we can continue to live as we do now without putting ourselves, our families, our communities under threat within decades. What my book is designed to do is wake people up and raise the salience and support for phasing out fossil fuels.[It] is written for people who are already concerned about the climate crisis and are willing to entertain a level of anxiety. But the discourse of catastrophe would not be something I would recommend for people who are disengaged from the climate problem. I think that talking about catastrophe with those people can actually backfire because it’ll just either overwhelm them or make them entrench their positions. It can be too threatening.The Donnie Creek wildfire burns in British Columbia, Canada, in 2023. Photograph: Noah Berger/APA recent Yale study found that a degree of climate anxiety was not necessarily bad because it could stir people to collective action. Do you agree? It depends. I talk about three different kinds of doomerism. One is the despair that arises from misunderstanding the science and thinking we’re absolutely on the path to collapse within 20 or 30 years, no matter what we do. That is not true.Second, there’s a kind of nihilistic position taken by people who suggest they are the only ones who can look at the harsh truth. I have disdain for that position.Finally, there’s the doomerism that comes from political frustration, from believing that people who have power are just happy to burn the world down. And that to me is the most reasonable kind of doomerism. To address that kind of doomerism, you need to say: “Yes, this is scary as hell. But we must have courage and turn our fear into action by talking about climate change with others, by calling our elected officials on a regular basis, by demanding our workplaces put their money where their mouth is.”You need to acknowledge people’s feelings, meet them where they are and show how they can assuage their fear by cultivating their bravery and collective action.The most eye-opening part of your book was about the assumptions of the Nobel prize winner William Nordhaus that we’ll probably only face a very low percentage of GDP loss by the end of the century. This surely depends on ignoring tipping points? The only way Nordhaus can get the result that he does is if he fails to price the risk of catastrophe and leaves out a goodly chunk of the costs of global heating. In his models, he does not account for climate damages to labour productivity, buildings, infrastructure, transportation, non-coastal real estate, insurance, communication, government services and other sectors. But the most shocking thing he leaves out of his models is the risk that global heating could set off catastrophes, whether they are physical tipping points or wars from societal responses. That is why the percentage of global damages that he estimates is so ridiculously lowballed.The idea that climate change will just take off only a small margin of economic growth is not founded on anything empirical. It’s just a kind of quasi-religious faith in the power of capitalism to decouple itself from the planet on which it exists. That’s absurd and it’s unscientific.Some economists suggest wealth can provide almost unlimited protection from catastrophe because it is better to be in a steel and concrete building in a storm than it is to be in a wooden shack. How true is that? There’s no evidence that these protections are unlimited, though there are economists who suggest we can always substitute technologies or human-made products for ecosystems or even other planets like Mars for Earth itself. This goes back to an economic growth theorist named Robert Solow, who claims technological innovation can increase human productivity indefinitely. He stressed that it was just a theory, but the economists advising Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s took this as gospel and argued it was possible to ignore environmental externalities – the costs of our economic system, including our greenhouse gas pollution – because you could protect yourself as long as you kept increasing your wealth.Floods due to heavy rains at Porto Alegre airport left a plane stranded on the runway in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, last year. Photograph: Diego Vara/ReutersExcept when it comes to the climate crisis? Yes, the whole spectacle of our planet heating up this quickly should call all of those economic assumptions into question. But because climate change is affecting the poor first and worst, this is used as evidence that poverty is the problem. This is a misrepresentation of reality because the poor are not the only ones who are affected by the climate crisis. This is a slow-moving but accelerating crisis that will root and spread. And it could change for the worst quite dramatically as we hit tipping points.The difference between gradual warming and tipping points is similar to the difference between chronic, manageable ailments and acute, life-threatening diseases, isn’t it? Yes. When people downplay the effects of climate change, they often represent the problem as a case of planetary diabetes – as if it were a kind of illness that you can bumble along with, but still have a relatively good quality of life as long as you use your technologies, your insulin, whatever, to sustain your health. But this is not how climate scientists represent climate change. Dr Joelle Gergis, one of the lead authors on the latest IPCC report, prefers to represent climate change as a cancer – a disease that takes hold and grows and metastasises until the day when it is no longer curable and becomes terminal. You could also think of that as a tipping point.This is a fight for life. And like all fights, you need a tremendous amount of bravery to take it on. Before I started working on climate change, I didn’t think of myself as a fighter, but I became one because I felt I have a responsibility to preserve the world for my son and children everywhere. That kind of fierce protectiveness is part of the way that I love. We can draw on that to have more strength than our enemies because I don’t think they’re motivated by love. I believe love is an infinite resource and the power of it is greater than that of greed or hate. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be here.Tipping points: on the edge? – a series on our future Composite: Getty/Guardian DesignTipping points – in the Amazon, Antarctic, coral reefs and more – could cause fundamental parts of the Earth system to change dramatically, irreversibly and with devastating effects. In this series, we ask the experts about the latest science – and how it makes them feel. Tomorrow, David Obura talks about the collapse of coral reefsRead more

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