Chris Mooney

Total estimated Canada #wildfire emissions to end July already marking 2025 as 3rd most extreme year in #CopernicusAtmosphere GFAS dataset. Most extreme year for Saskatchewan & Manitoba with no sign of the number of fires reducing across the country. Read our @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social summary ⬇️

Hundreds of NASA Employees Condemn Trump Administration Cuts in Public Letter The signatories of the “Voyager Declaration” warned the space agency’s leadership about the consequences of major budget cuts that would halt many science missions.

“I’m already at risk of losing my job, and I’d rather speak out and try to save something at NASA, rather than just hide under my desk until I get laid off." NASA employees sign public letter protesting cuts. Story by @kchang.bsky.social Gift link: nyti.ms/45fBYca

E.P.A. Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm The decision comes after a Supreme Court ruling allowing the Trump administration to slash the federal work force and dismantle agencies.

E.P.A. Says It Will Eliminate Its Scientific Research Arm nyti.ms/46jxy50 3/4

The biggest black hole merger ever detected so far rocked the Universe The gravitational waves they emitted were fiercely powerful, but where did the black holes come from?

In 2023, astronomers detected a cosmic blast so powerful it released more energy than ALL THE STARS IN THE UNIVERSE COMBINED. The cause: two black holes colliding and merging… which is a problem, because they were way bigger than we thought possible.

badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/the-bigges...

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Total estimated emissions from Canadian #wildfires continue to increase rapidly with 2025 already 3rd highest year, after 2023 & 2024, as of 13 July. #CopernicusAtmosphere GFAS data based on MODIS🛰️ active fire obs ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/datasets/cam... @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int

What climate journalism means heading into a 1.5 C world Five charts and fifty-five opinions about the state of the field, and where it is going.

5/ (This graphic first appeared as part of this Substack post reportearth.substack.com/p/what-clima...)

4/ In any event, whatever's going on, jobs so far in 2025 appear static to slightly down (though it's early yet in the year, this could easily change).

Planning to keep watching these monthly, and wondering if anything can halt the ongoing decline of newspapers in the U.S.

3/ (Although the recent Reuters Institute report finds no "Trump bump" for traditional news in 2025. reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/digital-news...)

2/ Driven by the Trump administration, there’s an enormous volume of news in the current environment. I would assume that newspapers, especially national ones, are seeing more traffic to their websites.

1/ I’ve updated my newspaper jobs graphic with the latest data from the BLS.

Defense Department will stop providing crucial satellite weather data Hurricane forecasters and scientists rely on weather data collected and processed by Department of Defense satellites. The Navy has decided to stop sharing the data.

Hurricane forecasters and scientists rely on weather data collected and processed by Department of Defense satellites. The Navy has decided to stop sharing the data.

Beleaguered Weather Service defends its forecasts as Texas officials point fingers over flood warnings | CNN Texas forecasters issued a series of early-morning warnings about “life-threatening flooding” along the Guadalupe River.

As the death toll climbs in the wake of the Texas floods, lots of finger-pointing re: the NWS' forecasts and warnings. The bottom line: An agency reeling from cuts still issued timely outlooks & warnings. Lots of ?s though (1/2) www.cnn.com/2025/07/05/c...

Texas Flooding Updates: Rescuers Search for Survivors and Victims After 27 Killed The death toll included nine children. More than two dozen girls were missing from a camp on the Guadalupe River, and it is unclear how many more people are unaccounted for.

Breaking News: The death toll in the Texas floods rose to at least 27 people, including nine children. More than two dozen girls were missing from a camp on the Guadalupe River, and it is unclear how many more people are unaccounted for. Follow live updates.

There have been claims that NOAA/NWS did not foresee catastrophic TX floods--but that's simply not true. This was undoubtedly an extreme event, but messaging rapidly escalated beginning ~12 hrs prior. Flood Watch mid PM, "heads up" outlook late PM, flash flood warnings ~1am.

Madre Fire Grows to 70,800 Acres, Prompting Evacuations in California The blaze is burning in a rural area of San Luis Obispo County, in the central coast, but its smoke has spread to nearby counties.

A wildfire in California’s San Luis Obispo County rapidly expanded overnight and was covering about 70,800 acres by Friday morning, prompting evacuation orders, closing part of a highway and sending smoke billowing into neighboring counties. It is the biggest wildfire the state has seen this year.

map of canada showing active wildfires link https://ciffc.ca/

Goes - east mid-ir band ...image - white and red areas are very active fires https://rammb-slider.cira.colostate.edu/?sat=goes-19&sec=full_disk&x=7939&y=1475&z=5&angle=0&im=12&ts=1&st=0&et=0&speed=130&motion=loop&maps%5Bborders%5D=white&p%5B0%5D=band_06&opacity%5B0%5D=1&pause=0&slider=-1&hide_controls=0&mouse_draw=0&follow_feature=0&follow_hide=0&s=rammb-slider&draw_color=FFD700&draw_width=6

ECMWF quantitative prec. forecasts - white areas are expected to receive no prec. scale on the bottom in mm https://www.pivotalweather.com/model.php?m=ecmwf_full&p=qpf_acc-met&rh=2025070412&fh=loop&r=na&dpdt=&mc=

Expect lots of fire activity in central Manitoba and NWRN Ontario over the next week. Lots of out-of-control fires in the region (red and purple dots below), some active already today (GOES-East 3.9 micron band - white & red active fires) and the prec. forecast has little to no rain in the region.

Dramatic ice loss from U.S. and western Canadian glaciers It’s not just the heat. It may also be the wildfires.

Glacial ice losses have been really fast lately in the western U.S. and Canada. A surprising factor may be wildfires. My latest on Substack

Increase in total estimated emissions from Canadian #wildfires slowed through 2nd half of June but 2025 already a quite extreme year with continuing fires + two months of summer to come. #CopernicusAtmosphere GFAS data based on MODIS🛰️ active fire obs ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/datasets/cam...

Trump admin tries to kill the most indisputable evidence of human-caused climate change by shuttering observatory | CNN The Mauna Loa laboratory in Hawaii has measured atmospheric carbon dioxide, which — along with other planet-warming pollution — has led directly to climate change, driving sea level rise, superchargin...

NEW: Trump admin seeks to defund US network of labs that monitor CO2 levels in the atmosphere, including Mauna Loa, home to the famous "Keeling Curve." The moves would also affect weather forecasting centers. www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/c...

Global #wildfires #openburning intensity & emissions for June 2025 in #CopernicusAtmosphere Monitoring Service GFAS data ads.atmosphere.copernicus.eu/datasets/cam... showing continuing large-scale fires across Canada & E Russia @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social @ecmwf.int #IIFF

Website for top US climate reports goes dark The White House didn't respond to questions about the National Climate Assessments. Their disappearance is in line with the administration's past actions.

As others noted yesterday, the USGCRP website has disappeared, along with all five National Climate Assessments previously housed there. Updates on this story in the works.

www.eenews.net/articles/web...

Some 15 years into the “science must communicate in more accessible ways” effort and climate geeks still don’t get that almost nobody *knows what a watt is* much less all the other jargon wielded in posts and articles.

Tropical Storm Andrea forms in the remote central Atlantic » Yale Climate Connections The Atlantic’s first named storm of 2025 formed farther to the northeast than any June named storm on record, and is not a threat to any land areas.

The only thing unusual about the Atlantic's first named storm of 2025: it formed farther to the northeast than any other June storm on record. My post on the latest "shorty" (short-lived storm less than 2 days in duration) to grace the Atlantic:

yaleclimateconnections.org/2025/06/trop...

On the brink of exceeding the 1.5C carbon limit And a look at sea level rise over a century, solar farm carbon storage, and more.

My full piece is here reportearth.substack.com/p/nearer-and...

Bottom line: As 1.5C nears, in either a carbon budget or temperature sense, scientists have some really large communication challenges ahead.

We’re basically in stats land. People are going to apply different methods or risk tolerances, and they are going to disagree (or, appear to disagree).

But with the 1.5C budget…well, it’s much like the 1.5C temperature measurement itself. We’re getting very, very close to each. So now it becomes a weird situation of different definitions, probabilities, detections of exceedances and so on.

[The budget for 2 degrees C is much larger and possible depletion is much further out in the future. A quick calculation says that for a 50 % chance of avoidance the world still has ~25 years at current emissions. So, I think it’s still fairly informative to talk about this budget.]

And especially since emissions cannot suddenly go to zero, when you get this close to the depletion of an already uncertain budget, it becomes very hard to communicate about.

But if you’re scanning headlines, it’s very weird!

This strange situation arises because we’re within the uncertainty ranges of the 1.5C budget and, though there is no one number, it is clearly close to running out.