“We're seeing all around the world that heat records are being broken, and we're seeing the impacts of those severe heat events, whether it's in agriculture, in our food system, water resources, electricity generation, ecosystems, both on land and in rivers and streams, as well as in the ocean from marine heatwaves,” says Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh. 

Car makers are already poised to make the changes outlined in California’s new rule banning sales of gas-powered cars in the state by 2035. “They’re going to electric vehicles – they’re just going faster or slower, depending on the philosophy of the company,” said environmental law professor Deborah Sivas. “Who would be opposed to this? Well, there’s the ideological opposition.”

Since August 2020, when a heat wave across the West caused rolling blackouts in California, the state has pushed for more batteries to store energy and created emergency demand response programs, says Michael Wara, interim policy director of Stanford's Sustainability Accelerator.

When the right atmospheric factors come together to generate heavy precipitation, there is more water available to fall from the clouds than there had been before greenhouse-gas emissions began warming the planet, explains Stanford climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh.

Unlike flooding or drought or heat, the menace of smoke in the American West is not compartmentalized along class lines; in fact, as Stanford’s Marshall Burke and his research partners have documented, U.S. smoke exposure is largely uncorrelated with income.

"This summer, we have seem some catastrophic fires but the total area that has been burned is not as bad as it's been in the last few years and I'm optimistic that we are beginning to see some of the results of the investments made," says Chris Field.

“[What’s] not so well-appreciated is you need a well-trained force of technical people running the reactor,” explains Stanford nuclear security expert Rodney Ewing. “If their work is disrupted, if they’re kept captive, or if they’re not allowed to rest, as was the case at Chernobyl, that is a major concern."

"In order to be resilient to climate change now and in the future, its going to require updating all those sophisticated systems that we have put in place because the frequency of severe heat, how hot it gets is different now and it will be even more different in the future," says Stanford's Noah Diffenbaugh.

Research led by Ilenia Battiato could help scientists assess the fate of carbon dioxide and other gases and wastes stored in specific geological sites.

Our built world has historically been designed around a predictable climate, and that era is over. “The real question is, what will it take to design and build infrastructure to protect against flooding in a changing climate?” says Noah Diffenbaugh. “Our assumptions are obsolete.”

The legislation “is important symbolically and internationally,” says Rob Jackson. “Its biggest benefits are to provide longer-term certainty for renewables development and to promote sales of lower-cost electric vehicles. It’s critical the U.S. do something."

In a Stanford study of hospitalizations near the 2018 Camp Fire, a week of heavy smoke exposure was linked to a five percent increased risk of preterm births.

“The political reality is that climate isn’t a top priority for Democrats,” says Earth system science professor Rob Jackson. “I think it means we will zoom past 1.5 C in a couple years and hurdle toward 2 C before we know it.”

“This...makes sense only as a death knell for coal. Otherwise, it’s baffling. We’re approaching 8 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution a year from gas use alone, and that can’t continue,” says Rob Jackson in an article that also cites research on methane leaks led by Adam Brandt. 

When wildfire smoke descends, Californians are told to close windows and run air purifiers. But this advice may not be widely followed, according to a study led by Marshall Burke. And the disparity between wealthy and low-income neighborhoods is significant.