Just this week, a massive Category 5 hurricane ripped through the Caribbean, and large rainstorms Switzerland, France and Italy caused floods and landslides and killed at least seven people. Meanwhile, A severe heat wave Forecasts to put many Californians through days of triple-degree temperatures swept the West Coast.
These extreme weather events are known for their ferocity and duration, and how early climate scientists are.”Disaster season“They have come. But surprisingly they are not surprising at all.
Hurricane Beryl’s 165-mph winds this week marked the earliest point in the season that a tropical storm has reached this intensity. That’s right in line with what scientists are predicting as climate change worsens.
Ocean surface temperatures act as the engine for hurricanes and last year provided some of the warmest underwater temperatures we’ve ever seen. Typically, by early July, the ocean will not be warm enough to have the strength of a major hurricane like Beryl. But the Atlantic Ocean absorbed a lot of heat last year as the planet warmed to its highest average temperature on record.
As my colleague Umair Irfan wrote yesterday: “The Atlantic Ocean has been gathering the raw materials for a terrific hurricane season for months and is now assembling them into a major storm. Beryl is Atlantic’s first major project for 2024.”
And this is only the beginning of what is set to be an unprecedented season. In the coming months, more people around the world are likely to experience extreme conditions and climate disasters The need for adaptation and solutions is more urgent than ever. And these solutions may very well come from a place few would expect.
Some of our most effective solutions are the simplest
In recent years, there have been has been A increasing Appreciation for Aboriginal people Land stewardship and traditional knowledge. But what is overlooked is that successfully managing those lands means indigenous peoples have already survived extreme climate events and extreme weather.
Now, indigenous communities are leading the way in climate adaptation — from living alongside rapidly melting ice to building resilient coasts and community support networks.
Indigenous knowledge does not mean a return to “traditional” ways; It means to evolve, a feature that has always been a part of tribal life.
Today, we launch a new Vox Climate Project, with Our Climate Change, a limited series that explores Indigenous solutions to extreme weather rooted in history — and the future. Each month, we’ll publish a feature that focuses on an indigenous community facing extreme weather on the front lines. Our first story today, by Aquinnah Wampanoag writer Joseph Lee, explains how Alaska Natives are responding to extreme heat in places built on ice — which is warming dramatically faster than the rest of the world.
There are no easy solutions for the planet. But the natives have a simple solution deep in their knowledge. These stories will not mythologize indigenous communities with mythical, inappropriate, or mystical traditional practices and solutions. The series, instead, underscores humility as a throughline: Indigenous people understand that we cannot bend the world to our human will. We are much better and more resilient when we tune in and lean into change when possible.
Take Lee’s story in extreme heat, which we quote below. For landscapes adapted to ice, “extreme” heat means only a matter of a few degrees. Alaska is warm up Three times faster than the rest of the world, and the arctic Almost twice as warm. Annual mean temperatures have increased on the North Slope of Alaska 6 degrees since 1971. Since 1970, the United States as a whole has warmed by 2.6 degrees.
(You can read the rest of the story here.)
Bethel, Alaska, is the heart of the Kuskokwim River community, providing year-round food, transportation, employment and community.
The only way to get to Bethel is by plane, which can be very expensive — or by river. In the winter, snow machines zip through town, up and down frozen rivers to dozens of villages that depend on Bethel for food, supplies, health care and more. In the summer, people travel by boat to spend the day at their fish camps along the river, smoking salmon the rest of the year. In between, when ice forms or begins to break up, the river can be dangerous: too frozen for boats, but too unstable for snow machines and cars.
Lately, those shoulder seasons have been shifting, expanding, and becoming horribly unpredictable.
Every year, flooding and erosion are getting worse, fish are dying and winter ice is becoming more dangerous. Kevin Whitworth, Executive Director Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fisheries Commissionsaid Salmon populations are declining Especially worrying. “It is‘Hard times,” he said. “Our people are subsistence people. they are‘Not economy based people. They depend on the river as their grocery store. Their lives are rivers.”
56 percent of statewide subsistence crops are made up of fish. Beyond its cultural and community importance, subsistence is crucial for Alaska Natives because of high food prices. In a study of 261 urban communities across the country, Community and Economic Research Council It found that the three most expensive places for groceries were Juneau, Fairbanks and Anchorage. Prices are often higher in more remote communities like Bethel.
The sharp decline in salmon can be attributed to a number of factors, including warming waters and an increase in offshore trawling. Each year, ocean trawlers fish primarily for pollock, kill and catch about 141 million pounds of salmon, halibut, and other species, a tremendously wasteful practice. Tribals and other groups Alaska has been rallying against. Meanwhile, the community’s fertility is severely limited in the number of salmon it can take from the river. “Right now, salmon are crashing and we’re seeing big changes with climate,” Whitworth said.
So, faced with a growing salmon population and a dangerous river, the region’s indigenous peoples are also changing their rules. Although chinook and chum salmon are limited, sockeye salmon, a less traditionally popular and available fish, has become an increasingly viable alternative.
Traditional salmon fishing techniques make it difficult to distinguish different species of salmon, so the Whitworth and Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission is encouraging local fishermen to use dip nets, large circular nets that allow people to target sockeye.
within the commission Final report of the 2023 seasonSockeye make up about 40 percent of the estimated total salmon harvest in the lower Kuskokwim, a number that Whitworth says is much higher than it used to be.
These changes may sound like small changes in the face of global climate trends, but it’s these kinds of local adaptations that will help communities thrive in a warming world. Outside of Alaska, planting or hiring more trees to create more shade on urban heat islands Lifeguard There may be similar implications for public pools.
But these solutions are within reach and make sense—they literally save lives.
Read more here.
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