Indiana and New York: When 1-in-1,000-Year Rain Becomes a Real-World Risk
The Changing Meaning of “Rare”
A “500-year flood” does not mean a flood that occurs only once every 500 years. It describes an event with an estimated 0.2% chance of occurring in any given year, based on historical and statistical assumptions.
The problem is that those assumptions can become outdated as climate conditions change.
Rainfall and flooding once considered extraordinarily rare are occurring more frequently in many regions. Events that infrastructure and communities were designed to withstand only once in a century—or once in several centuries—are increasingly being challenged by rainfall extremes outside the historical range.
The summer of 2026 provides another striking example.
Indiana: Record Rainfall and a Record White River
In August 2026, central and east-central Indiana experienced a prolonged period of severe weather and extreme rainfall. A powerful derecho moved through the region on August 11, producing destructive winds, hail, and tornadoes. The storm was followed by repeated rounds of heavy thunderstorms that moved over already saturated ground.
The National Weather Service reported more than 11 inches of rain in some parts of central Indiana. New Castle recorded 11.24 inches at one observing site, while a location near New Lisbon recorded 11.50 inches over two days.
The result was catastrophic flooding.
The White River reached record levels at multiple locations. At Anderson, the river crested at 24.93 feet on August 14, breaking the previous record of 23.60 feet set during the Great Flood of 1913. At Noblesville, the river reached 24.60 feet on August 15, also breaking the 1913 record of 23.80 feet.
Roads were washed out, homes and businesses were flooded, and numerous water rescues were required. Indiana Governor Mike Braun declared a statewide disaster emergency and mobilized the Indiana National Guard.
The event was not simply a single downpour. A derecho was followed by repeated thunderstorms and persistent atmospheric moisture, allowing rainfall to accumulate over the same watersheds for several days. The National Weather Service described the resulting flooding in portions of central Indiana as catastrophic.
The Indiana Event
Location
2026 Extreme
Consequence
New Castle / Henry County
More than 11 inches in roughly two days
Severe flash flooding
Anderson
White River crest: 24.93 feet
New record, surpassing 1913
Noblesville
White River crest: 24.60 feet
New record, surpassing 1913
Central and east-central Indiana
Multiple rounds of heavy rainfall
Washed-out roads, rescues, property damage
The significance is not simply that a rainfall record was broken. The larger concern is the interaction between extreme rainfall, saturated soils, repeated storms, and river response.
Once the ground is saturated, additional rainfall increasingly becomes runoff. That runoff rapidly enters streams and rivers, turning an extreme rainfall event into an extreme flood.
New York: Another 1-in-1,000-Year Rainfall Event
Indiana was not alone.
From July 28–30, eastern New York experienced an extraordinary heavy-rain event. The National Weather Service reported widespread rainfall totals of 6 to 12 inches, with localized amounts exceeding 11 inches. Rainfall rates reached 1 to 3 inches per hour, while thunderstorms repeatedly moved over the same areas.
At Albany, 5.45 inches of rain fell on July 29, shattering the previous daily record of 1.90 inches set in 1974. It was the wettest July day in Albany’s recorded history and the second-wettest calendar day overall.
More importantly, the National Weather Service classified rainfall in parts of eastern New York as a 1-in-1,000-year precipitation event. Schodack recorded 11.79 inches, while Kinderhook received 11.47 inches.
The New York Event
Location
2026 Extreme
Consequence
Albany
5.45 inches in one day
All-time July daily rainfall record
Schodack
11.79 inches
1-in-1,000-year precipitation event
Kinderhook
11.47 inches
1-in-1,000-year precipitation event
Eastern New York
6–12 inches widespread
Major flash flooding
This distinction matters: Albany’s 5.45-inch rainfall was a record, while the 1-in-1,000-year classification applied to portions of the broader eastern New York event.
The Pattern Is Bigger Than a Single Storm
Both Indiana and New York illustrate an important feature of a warming climate: more atmospheric moisture can amplify the intensity of extreme precipitation.
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor—roughly 7% more for every 1°C of warming under the Clausius-Clapeyron relationship.
That does not mean every storm produces 7% more rain. But when atmospheric conditions concentrate and release that additional moisture, rainfall rates can become extreme.
The consequences can compound:
More atmospheric moisture
↓
Higher potential rainfall rates
↓
Repeated heavy thunderstorms
↓
Saturated soils
↓
Rapid runoff
↓
Flash flooding and river flooding
↓
Infrastructure failure and displacement
This is one mechanism through which climate energy becomes a direct physical hazard.
Indiana and New York: From Heat to Flood
The same atmospheric system that stores additional heat and moisture can contribute to seemingly contradictory extremes.
A persistent ridge or heat dome can produce oppressive heat and increase atmospheric moisture demand. When the weather pattern breaks—or when a front, upper-level disturbance, or convective system provides the mechanism for release—the accumulated moisture can produce intense rainfall.
This creates what can be described as hydroclimatic whiplash:
Heat → moisture accumulation → atmospheric instability → extreme rainfall → flooding → rapid transition to another extreme
The sequence is not necessarily a simple one-to-one causal chain. Weather systems remain complex, and individual floods cannot automatically be attributed to climate change without event-specific attribution analysis.
But the physical ingredients are becoming increasingly important: warmer air, greater atmospheric moisture, intense precipitation, saturated soils, and infrastructure designed around historical climate statistics.
New York’s August Severe Weather
The pattern continued into August.
On August 20, severe storms struck the New York metropolitan region and Long Island. A waterspout moved onshore at Atlantic Beach and became a tornado, damaging beach-club structures. Severe flooding also affected Queens and other parts of the region, while emergency responders rescued people from flooded vehicles.
These events occurred within the same summer that eastern New York had already experienced its extraordinary July rainfall.
That is important because climate risk is not simply about isolated record events. Repeated extremes can compound damage.
A community does not have to experience a 1-in-1,000-year event every year to experience a radically different risk environment. A sequence of less-extreme events can saturate soils, overwhelm drainage systems, damage infrastructure, and leave communities increasingly vulnerable when the next storm arrives.
Climate Energy Hitting the Ground
Indiana and New York demonstrate two sides of the same problem.
The atmosphere is not merely becoming warmer. A warmer atmosphere can interact with the water cycle, storm dynamics, soil moisture, rivers, infrastructure, and ecosystems in ways that amplify consequences.
The important question is therefore not simply:
“How often does a 1-in-1,000-year event occur?”
It is:
“What happens when the climate that produced our historical risk statistics is no longer the climate we are living in?”
A 1-in-1,000-year rainfall event is supposed to be extraordinarily rare.
When multiple regions begin experiencing events classified at that level, the lesson is not that every “1-in-1,000-year” event has suddenly become a once-per-year event.
The lesson is that the baseline is changing—and the consequences of that change are already reaching communities, rivers, roads, homes, farms, and public infrastructure.
That is climate energy hitting you where you live.
From Biodiversity to Monoculture: The Socio-Economic-Ecological Feedback Loop
Climate change is often described as a problem of rising temperatures, but temperature is only one expression of the additional energy entering the Earth system.
That energy moves through the atmosphere, hydrologic cycle, soils, vegetation, ecosystems, agriculture, forests, and human economies. As each system responds, it can alter the conditions experienced by the others.
This creates feedback loops.
A recent investigation by the Center for Investigative Reporting found that glyphosate is being sprayed in California forests at record levels. The U.S. Forest Service, timber companies, and other land managers use glyphosate after wildfire or timber harvest to suppress competing vegetation and improve the establishment of commercially valuable conifers.
At first glance, this may appear to be a straightforward forestry practice: kill competing plants, plant trees, and accelerate forest recovery.
But viewed through the lens of climate-system dynamics, it raises a much larger question:
What happens when our response to climate disruption further simplifies the ecosystems we depend upon for resilience?
Climate Energy Is Changing the Recovery Environment
Western forests are already experiencing a combination of higher temperatures, increasing atmospheric moisture demand, changing precipitation and snowpack, declining soil moisture, drought stress, and increasingly severe wildfire.
A forest can experience increasing stress for years without an obvious transformation. Then a threshold can be crossed.
Trees die.
Seed sources disappear.
Regeneration fails.
Shrubs and grasses occupy the landscape.
The ecosystem begins transitioning from one state to another.
As the paper explains, under moderate emissions scenarios, up to 40% of western conifer forests could convert to shrubland or grassland by 2100.
That is not simply forest damage.
It is ecosystem conversion.
And once we recognize that distinction, the economics of post-fire forest management look different.
The Economics of Reforestation
After a major wildfire, rapidly growing shrubs, grasses, ferns, and deciduous vegetation can compete with planted conifer seedlings for water, nutrients, and sunlight.
From a timber-production perspective, that competition is a problem.
Glyphosate provides an efficient way to remove it.
The Forest Service has used herbicide treatments as part of regeneration efforts because suppressing competing vegetation can improve the early survival and growth of desired seedlings. Forest research acknowledges that this is one reason herbicides have been used in reforestation.
The economic objective is therefore understandable:
But that is not necessarily the same objective as:
restore biodiversity → restore ecological function → increase climate resilience.
Those two objectives can overlap.
They can also conflict.
A Forest Is Not a Tree Farm
The distinction matters because a forest is not simply a collection of trees.
A functioning forest contains an enormous biological network:
multiple tree species
shrubs
grasses
flowering plants
fungi and mycorrhizal networks
insects and pollinators
birds
mammals
reptiles and amphibians
soil organisms
decomposers
streams and wetlands
genetic diversity
Each component participates in the functioning of the ecosystem.
When glyphosate is applied to eliminate “competing” vegetation, those plants are competitors only from the perspective of the desired crop.
From the perspective of the ecosystem, they may be food, shelter, habitat, soil cover, pollinator resources, firebreaks, nutrient sources, or participants in water and carbon cycling.
This creates a fundamental difference between restoration and production.
Production asks:
How efficiently can we produce the desired commodity?
Ecological restoration asks:
How effectively can we restore the biological relationships that make the ecosystem resilient?
Biodiversity Is Infrastructure
Biodiversity is often treated as an aesthetic or conservation issue.
It is much more than that.
Biodiversity is a form of ecological infrastructure.
Different species respond differently to drought, heat, insects, disease, fire, and changing precipitation. A diverse ecosystem therefore contains multiple biological responses to disturbance.
If one species performs poorly, another may survive.
If one food source disappears, another may remain.
If one plant cannot regenerate under new climatic conditions, another may occupy the available ecological niche.
This is one reason biological diversity can provide resilience.
A simplified ecosystem has fewer alternatives.
A diverse ecosystem has more.
That distinction becomes increasingly important as climate variability increases.
From Biodiversity to Monoculture
The problem becomes more obvious when forestry is compared with modern industrial agriculture.
Large-scale agriculture often relies on monocultures: enormous areas devoted to a single crop or a very small number of genetically similar crops. Monoculture creates economic efficiencies. Machines can plant, fertilize, spray, harvest, and transport a standardized product at enormous scale. But biological simplification creates vulnerabilities.
A pest that specializes in the crop has an enormous continuous food supply. A disease can spread rapidly through genetically similar plants. Soil nutrients can become depleted. Pollinator and insect diversity can decline. Herbicide and pesticide dependence can increase.
The economic system becomes increasingly dependent upon external inputs to maintain productivity.
The result can be a feedback loop:
biodiversity declines → ecological resistance declines → pests and disease become more consequential → chemical inputs increase → biodiversity declines further.
This is not an argument that all monoculture agriculture inevitably fails.
It is an argument that efficiency and resilience are not the same thing.
The same distinction applies to forestry.
The Forest Monoculture
When post-fire management suppresses naturally regenerating vegetation in order to establish commercially desirable conifers, the landscape can move toward a forest plantation rather than a naturally regenerating forest.
A plantation can contain thousands of trees and still possess considerably less biodiversity than the ecosystem it replaced.
This creates a dangerous semantic trap. We see trees. We call it a forest. But ecological function depends upon far more than tree cover.
A plantation of one or a few commercially valuable species can look green from above while functioning very differently from a diverse forest.
And in a warming climate, that distinction can become critical.
Ecosystem Conversion Versus Reforestation
This is where the concept of ecosystem conversion becomes important.
Suppose a severe wildfire destroys a mature conifer forest.
The original ecosystem does not necessarily return.
Under the warmer and drier conditions described in my Western U.S. Woodlands paper, grasses and shrubs may become better adapted to the post-fire environment than the trees that previously occupied it.
The second pathway is not simply allowing the ecosystem to respond to its new climate. It is imposing an economic land-use objective upon that response. That distinction should be explicit in public policy.
The Carbon Question
There is another important distinction. A green landscape is not necessarily equivalent to the forest that existed before. Grasslands and shrublands photosynthesize and absorb carbon.
So do plantations.
But carbon uptake is not the same thing as carbon storage.
A mature forest contains carbon in:
trunks
branches
roots
dead wood
forest soils
long-lived biomass
The Ecosystem Conversion paper makes this distinction explicitly:
carbon uptake ≠ carbon storage capacity
and
positive carbon flux ≠ preservation of the previous carbon stock.
A plantation may therefore satisfy a narrow definition of reforestation while failing to reproduce the carbon reservoir, biodiversity, hydrology, and ecological complexity of the original forest.
The Glyphosate Feedback
This brings us back to glyphosate. The current controversy is not simply about a herbicide. It is about the interaction between climate disruption, economic incentives, land management, biodiversity, and ecosystem resilience.
The emerging feedback looks something like this:
Climate warming
↓
Heat + drought + atmospheric moisture demand
↓
More severe wildfire
↓
Loss of mature forest
↓
Economic pressure to recover timber production
↓
Herbicide use to suppress competing vegetation
↓
Reduced vegetation diversity
↓
Simplified forest structure
↓
Greater dependence on managed inputs
↓
Potentially reduced ecological resilience
↓
Greater vulnerability to future climate disturbances
This does not mean glyphosate necessarily causes every subsequent step.
The feedback is systemic.
The larger point is that a management strategy designed to optimize one component of a complex system can unintentionally weaken other components.
The Scientific Evidence Must Be Independent
There is also a legitimate question about the evidence used to evaluate glyphosate. The recent investigation found that a study heavily relied upon by the Forest Service in assessing glyphosate safety was subsequently retracted after concerns about Monsanto’s involvement in the research process.That does not establish that every use of glyphosate is unsafe. It does establish why the underlying evidence should be independently reviewed.
When government policy determines what chemicals can be sprayed across public landscapes, the scientific foundation for those decisions should be exceptionally transparent.
Public land requires public confidence. And public confidence requires independent science.
From Wildfire Recovery to a National Policy
The issue also has a national economic dimension.
On February 18, 2026, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Promoting the National Defense by Ensuring an Adequate Supply of Elemental Phosphorus and Glyphosate-Based Herbicides.”
The order invokes the Defense Production Act and directs federal action to ensure an adequate domestic supply of glyphosate-based herbicides. That places glyphosate within a much larger economic framework involving agriculture, forestry, chemical manufacturing, supply chains, and national security.
The feedback becomes:
climate disruption → increased agricultural and forestry stress → greater dependence on chemical intervention → greater economic importance of chemical production → stronger incentives to maintain chemical availability.
The system becomes self-reinforcing.
The Bigger Problem: Optimizing the Wrong Variable
Climate change forces us to rethink what we mean by efficiency. A system can be economically efficient while being ecologically fragile. A monoculture can produce enormous quantities of a commodity while containing very little biological diversity. A plantation can produce timber while failing to reproduce the ecological functions of a natural forest. A landscape can be covered in green vegetation while holding substantially less carbon than the forest it replaced. And a post-fire intervention can accelerate tree planting while simultaneously simplifying the ecosystem that must survive the next climate shock.
The central question is therefore not:
How quickly can we replace the trees we lost?
It is:
What kind of ecosystem will survive the climate that is coming?
The Resilience Test
Climate change is increasing the importance of resilience.
A resilient ecosystem does not necessarily maximize production under ideal conditions.
It maintains function when conditions become abnormal.
That means diversity matters.
Species diversity.
Genetic diversity.
Structural diversity.
Age diversity.
Habitat diversity.
Landscape diversity.
Biological diversity is effectively a portfolio of responses to uncertainty.
Industrial systems tend to reduce that diversity because standardization creates efficiency.
Climate instability does the opposite.
It increases the value of diversity.
That creates one of the central contradictions of the climate era:
The more unstable the climate becomes, the more we need ecological diversity—and the more economic pressure we may face to simplify ecosystems for efficiency.
Climate Energy Is Hitting the Whole System
This is ultimately what I mean by How Is Climate Energy Hitting You?
Climate energy does not stop with a thermometer reading or a measurement of atmospheric carbon dioxide. It moves through the entire coupled human-Earth system.
Heat changes water demand.
Water stress changes forests.
Forest stress changes wildfire.
Wildfire changes ecosystems.
Ecosystem disruption changes economic decisions.
Economic decisions change land management.
Land management changes biodiversity.
Biodiversity changes resilience.
And declining resilience feeds back into the next disturbance.
The resulting system is not a collection of unrelated environmental problems. It is a coupled socio-economic-ecological feedback system in which changes in one component propagate through the others.
Wildfire becomes an economic loss.
Economic loss creates pressure for rapid recovery.
Rapid recovery creates demand for herbicides, machinery, labor, and planted timber.
Those interventions alter ecosystems.
Altered ecosystems influence water, biodiversity, soil, carbon storage, and future fire behavior.
Government policy can then reinforce the economic system that produced the intervention in the first place.
The feedback can therefore become self-reinforcing.
The challenge is to recognize when a short-term economic solution becomes a long-term ecological feedback.
That distinction becomes especially important when an ecosystem crosses a threshold. Restoring the trees may not be the same thing as restoring the forest.
And once biodiversity has been converted into monoculture, replanting the landscape does not necessarily recreate the ecosystem that was lost.
Climate change is not simply changing the weather.
It is changing the decisions we make about the world around us—and those decisions can become feedbacks that determine how resilient that world remains.
Sierra Nevada: Hydroclimatic Whiplash, Atmospheric Rivers, Rain-on-Snow, Droughts, Landslides, Wildfires
The Sierra Nevada is becoming a powerful example of hydroclimatic whiplash—where climate energy intensifies both extremes, shifting California’s water cycle from a relatively predictable seasonal rhythm toward rapid swings between atmospheric-river flooding, premature snowmelt, and summer drought.
Excessive winter moisture associated with El Niño can produce enormous snowfall in the Sierra Nevada. But when warmer temperatures accompany subsequent atmospheric rivers—the so-called Pineapple Express—that snowpack can melt rapidly and weeks or months ahead of schedule.
The result is a dangerous paradox: more winter water can mean less water available when California needs it most.
1. The Rain-on-Snow Flooding Trap
When a warm atmospheric river collides with an existing mountain snowpack, it can produce a rain-on-snow event.
Instead of adding to California’s frozen natural reservoir, warm tropical moisture accelerates snowmelt. Rain also adds its own runoff to the water released from the snowpack, producing a sudden surge of water flowing into rivers and valleys.
The result can be catastrophic flooding, landslides, erosion, and infrastructure damage.
This also shifts flood risk earlier in the year. A water system historically organized around gradual spring and early-summer snowmelt can instead experience major runoff events in the middle of winter.
2. The High-Altitude “Snow Eaters”
A warmer atmosphere can hold roughly 7% more water vapor for every 1°C of warming. When that additional moisture is delivered by powerful atmospheric rivers, storms can become extraordinarily wet.
But temperature determines whether that moisture falls as snow or rain.
As the baseline climate warms, the snowline rises. Elevations that once reliably accumulated snow are increasingly likely to receive rain during warm storms. Water that would have been stored for months as snow instead becomes immediate runoff.
The mountains are therefore losing part of their ability to function as California’s natural reservoir.
3. The Aquifer and Reservoir Disconnect
California’s water infrastructure was largely designed around a seasonal rhythm in which Sierra snowpack acts as a natural storage system.
Snow accumulates during winter and gradually melts during spring and early summer, releasing water over an extended period. That slow release helps sustain rivers, reservoirs, ecosystems, agriculture, and groundwater recharge.
Accelerated snowmelt disrupts that timing.
When enormous volumes of water arrive rapidly, reservoirs can fill much earlier than planned. Water managers may then have to release water to maintain flood-control capacity, even while California faces water shortages later in the year.
And rapid surface runoff is not equivalent to slow, sustained groundwater recharge. When water races through rivers and across saturated landscapes, much of it can move downstream before it has an opportunity to infiltrate deeply into aquifers.
The paradox is profound:
A landscape can experience flooding and groundwater stress within the same water year.
4. The Summer Hangover
The consequences don’t end when the floodwaters recede.
If Sierra snowpack disappears weeks or months earlier than it once did, the mountains enter summer with less stored water. Soils dry earlier. Streams decline sooner. Vegetation loses access to moisture during the hottest part of the year.
That creates a dangerous feedback:
More winter heat → more rain instead of snow → faster snowmelt → greater runoff → less summer snowpack → earlier drying → greater wildfire risk.
The same climate energy that produces extreme winter precipitation can therefore help create extreme summer dryness.
The New Sierra Water Cycle
This is the essence of hydroclimatic whiplash.
California is not simply becoming “wetter” or “drier.” The timing, intensity, and physical form of water are changing.
More atmospheric moisture can arrive in fewer, more intense storms. More precipitation can fall as rain rather than snow. Snowpack can melt earlier. Flooding can occur during winter while groundwater and surface-water supplies become increasingly stressed later in the year.
The Sierra Nevada has long served as California’s natural water tower.
Climate change is increasingly turning that water tower into a system of rapid loading and rapid discharge—delivering too much water too quickly, followed by too little stored water when the summer demand arrives.
The problem isn’t simply how much water California receives. It is when that water arrives, where it goes, and how long the landscape can hold onto it.
North Texas: Drought, Wildfire, Evacuation, Water Scarcity, Livestock Liquidation, Crop Failure
The Ross Fire: Climate Energy on the Ground
The Ross Fire has exploded across more than 50,000 acres of North Texas, triggering mandatory evacuations, school closures, and a major emergency response. Driven by triple-digit heat, exceptionally low humidity, strong winds, and severe drought, the fire is exhibiting extreme behavior and was only about 5% contained as of August 25.
The fire began in Palo Pinto County near Highway 180 and Ross Watson Road and has pushed rapidly northeast toward southern Jack County. Firefighters have reported flames reaching as high as 100 feet, making direct attacks extremely dangerous. Crews have therefore relied heavily on bulldozers and aerial support.
Evacuations and Community Disruption
Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for portions of southern Jack County, including areas near and east of Bartons Chapel and along County Road 2210 toward Highway 281.
An evacuation center has been established at the Twin Lakes Recreation Center on Highway 59 in Jacksboro.
The fire is also disrupting education. On August 25, Perrin CISD canceled all classes, while Jacksboro ISD delayed the beginning of the school day by two hours.
This is more than a wildfire. It is a demonstration of how climate energy moves through a coupled human-environment system: heat dries vegetation, drought removes water from the landscape, wind accelerates fire spread, and communities are forced to evacuate.
Texas Is Drying Out
The Ross Fire is occurring within a much larger regional drought emergency. Drought conditions across Texas have deteriorated rapidly, with approximately 77% of the state experiencing drought. Nearly 200 counties across Texas and Oklahoma have implemented active outdoor burn bans because of elevated fire danger.
A second significant brush fire has also been reported farther south in Hamilton County near Evant, forcing localized evacuations north of Highway 84.
The important point is that wildfire is not an isolated event. Fire is the visible expression of an increasingly dry and heat-loaded landscape.
When extreme heat, low humidity, depleted soil moisture, dry vegetation, and high winds occur simultaneously, their effects are not merely additive. They reinforce one another.
Climate Energy Is Reshaping Texas Agriculture
The same climate pressures driving wildfire are disrupting Texas agriculture and the cattle industry.
Texas agriculture is confronting a convergence of prolonged drought, historic heat, declining water availability, and increasingly volatile precipitation. Together, these stresses are changing the economics of farming and ranching.
The result is not simply a bad growing season.
It is structural disruption.
The Cattle Industry Under Pressure
Shrinking Herds
Depleted water supplies and increasingly parched rangelands have contributed to a major contraction in Texas cattle operations. The Texas cattle herd has fallen from approximately 13.1 million head to about 12 million.
The national beef-cow inventory has also fallen to its lowest level in decades.
Forced Liquidation
When stock ponds empty and forage disappears, ranchers face an increasingly difficult choice: purchase expensive supplemental feed or sell their cattle.
For operations already under financial pressure, purchasing enough hay to maintain a breeding herd may be impossible. Cattle are therefore being sent to auction and slaughter earlier than planned.
Higher prices do not restore the lost water or forage.
The economic consequences therefore continue long after the drought itself begins to ease.
Beef Supply Chains Under Stress
With fewer cattle available, livestock prices are rising sharply. The contraction in cattle inventories is also putting pressure on meat processors.
When there are not enough animals moving through the system, processing facilities can become economically unsustainable. Plant closures then reduce processing capacity and increase the vulnerability of the remaining supply chain.
Climate energy is therefore moving from the atmosphere to the pasture, from the pasture to the rancher’s balance sheet, and from the rancher’s balance sheet to the consumer’s grocery bill.
Crop Agriculture Under Extreme Heat and Drought
Texas is also confronting severe challenges to crop production.
Cotton Crop Failures
Texas is the nation’s leading cotton-producing state, but extreme heat and drought have caused widespread crop stress, crop failures, and abandoned fields.
Sustained triple-digit temperatures can interfere with flowering and reproductive development, reducing yields even when plants survive.
Heat Stress and Water Scarcity
As temperatures rise, crops lose water more rapidly through evapotranspiration.
At the same time, declining soil moisture and groundwater availability make irrigation increasingly difficult and expensive.
This creates another feedback:
Higher temperatures → greater atmospheric demand for water → faster soil drying → greater irrigation demand → declining water availability → higher agricultural costs.
The atmosphere is effectively pulling water out of the agricultural system faster.
Pests and Disease
Climate disruption is also changing the biological environment in which crops are grown.
Changes in temperature and seasonal conditions can allow pests and diseases to expand their ranges, survive through seasons in which they previously could not, or reproduce more rapidly.
Threats including cotton jassid, rice delphacid, and pasture mealybug illustrate how agricultural climate risk extends beyond drought and heat.
Farmers are increasingly confronting a moving target: the climate conditions under which today’s agricultural systems evolved are changing faster than the systems themselves can adapt.
Adaptation: Fighting Back Against Climate Energy
Texas farmers and ranchers are not simply waiting for conditions to improve. Many are experimenting with strategies designed to make agricultural systems more resilient.
Regenerative Ranching
Some ranching operations are adopting rotational and multi-paddock grazing systems designed to improve soil structure, maintain living root systems, and increase water infiltration.
Healthy soils can store substantially more water than degraded soils. Improving soil organic matter and root systems can therefore provide a buffer against drought by allowing more rainfall to infiltrate and remain available to plants.
Adaptation cannot stop the atmosphere from warming.
But it can increase the amount of climate stress an agricultural system can absorb before it fails.
Carbon Farming
Managed grasslands can also store carbon in soils while improving soil health and water retention.
Carbon farming therefore has the potential to provide multiple benefits: improved pasture productivity, greater drought resilience, healthier soils, and additional revenue through carbon markets where those markets are viable.
Statewide Disaster Planning
Texas is also attempting to improve its institutional response to increasingly complex agricultural hazards.
The Texas Department of Agriculture has established the Texas Agriculture Disaster Task Force to coordinate responses to threats including wildfire, freezes, drought, and biosecurity emergencies.
That kind of planning recognizes an increasingly important reality:
Climate disasters do not occur one at a time.
A drought can increase wildfire risk.
A wildfire can destroy forage.
Heat can intensify drought.
Drought can reduce crop yields.
Crop failures can increase food prices.
Water shortages can force livestock liquidation.
And all of these pressures can occur simultaneously.
The Bigger Picture: Climate Energy Is Cascading Through the System
The Ross Fire is therefore more than 50,000 acres of burning vegetation.
It is one visible manifestation of a larger climate-energy cascade.
Drought → depleted forage and water → cattle liquidation → smaller herds → constrained beef supplies → higher prices
These are not independent problems.
They are connected expressions of the same physical system.
Climate change adds energy to the atmosphere. That additional energy intensifies the hydrologic cycle, increases atmospheric demand for water, amplifies heat extremes, and changes the timing and intensity of precipitation.
The result is increasing volatility: longer dry periods interrupted by more intense rainfall, greater heat stress, rapidly drying landscapes, and wildfire conditions that can emerge with extraordinary speed.
How Is the Climate Energy Hitting You?
In North Texas, it is hitting as drought, wildfire, evacuation, water scarcity, livestock liquidation, crop failure, and rising agricultural costs.
The Ross Fire makes the process impossible to ignore.
The fire is burning on the landscape.
The drought is draining the landscape.
And the climate energy driving both is increasingly reaching the farm, the ranch, the grocery store, and the household.
Climate change is not merely changing the weather.
It is changing the systems that depend upon the weather.
Many people believe that planting trees is one of the most important ways to help save the planet and reverse climate change. Planting trees can certainly help—but planting a tree and growing a healthy, mature forest are two very different things.
The problem is that climate change is increasing the stresses that kill trees and changing where forests can survive. Rising temperatures, increasing vapor pressure deficits, drought, extreme heat, wildfire, flooding, disease, and insect outbreaks are interacting in ways that can overwhelm trees faster than forests can adapt.
Wildfire is an increasingly important part of the problem. Climate-driven increases in fire weather have contributed to substantially greater forest and tree-cover losses in many regions. Drought and extreme heat compound that damage by reducing soil moisture and increasing atmospheric demand for water. In warmer air, a higher vapor pressure deficit (VPD) increases the drying power of the atmosphere, causing trees to lose water through their leaves faster and potentially creating hydraulic stress when roots cannot keep up.
Tree mortality is also occurring through less spectacular but equally important pathways. Long-term studies have documented increasing mortality in some tropical forests, while drought, heat, insects, and disease have produced severe die-offs in temperate and boreal forests. In California, prolonged drought and heat have contributed to the death of tens of millions of trees. Elsewhere, drought and increasingly volatile weather have reduced the survival of newly planted trees and complicated reforestation efforts.
This creates a fundamental problem with the simple “plant more trees” solution.
A planted seedling must first survive. Then it must grow large enough to become ecologically significant, reproduce, and ultimately become part of a functioning forest. A tree that dies after a few years has absorbed only a fraction of the carbon it might have stored over decades—and the resources invested in planting it may accomplish little. Multiple prominent scientific studies and forestry reports confirm that replanted saplings face staggering failure rates, with mortality exceeding 70% to 80% within 5-to-10-years.
That is why tree survival matters as much as tree planting.
Multiple studies of reforestation and tree establishment have found substantial seedling mortality, particularly under drought, heat, competition, poor site conditions, and other environmental stresses. Mortality can become extremely high when newly planted trees encounter conditions outside the climate range to which they are adapted.
The question for the future, therefore, is not simply:
How many trees can we plant?
It is:
Which trees can survive long enough to become the forests of tomorrow?
That is the question behind this experiment.
Penn’s Sylvania: Penn’s Woods
On March 4, 1681, King Charles II granted William Penn a royal charter for a vast tract of land in North America. The grant contained more than 28 million acres, making it one of the largest private land grants in history. The King awarded the territory to Penn partly to settle a debt of £16,000 owed to Penn’s late father, Admiral Sir William Penn.
But the story behind the name is especially fitting for a state whose identity is so closely tied to its forests.
William Penn wanted to call his new territory “Sylvania,” from the Latin silva, meaning woodland or forest. In other words, Penn envisioned a land defined by its woods.
King Charles II, however, insisted that “Penn” be placed before Sylvania to honor Admiral William Penn. The result was Pennsylvania—literally, “Penn’s Woods.”
Penn reportedly worried that people would assume he had named the colony after himself, when the name was actually the King’s tribute to his father.
More than three centuries later, the name remains remarkably appropriate.
Penn’s Sylvania was a land of forests.
The question now is whether the forests that gave Pennsylvania its name can survive the rapidly changing climate of the land itself.
Penn’s Sylvania Experiment
Since the 1960s, I have studied trees in Pennsylvania. Over the decades, I have watched the conditions affecting our forests change—and, more recently, deteriorate rapidly. Several factors are driving this decline, including ozone pollution, hydroclimatic whiplash, and ecosystem conversion.
The goal is not simply to document what is happening, but to find ways to adapt to the conditions we have now while working to change the trajectory that is producing them.
Unfortunately, “native species” is not necessarily the answer—at least not without defining what we mean by native and, more importantly, native to when? A species that evolved in Pennsylvania under the climate of the past may not necessarily be well suited to Pennsylvania’s rapidly changing climate today.
That is the premise behind this experiment.
I transplanted trees that began sprouting naturally around my property, along with trees I obtained for free or on special occasions. Some were Arbor Day giveaways. Others were small ornamental trees purchased at post-Christmas sales. Nothing particularly scientific or selective went into acquiring them. They were simply trees that became available to me.
For several years, I have been testing these trees for climate resilience in my location.
That may be one of the most useful ways to identify the trees of the future: an evolving experiment conducted where you actually live. There is no single “best tree” for tomorrow because tomorrow’s climate is still changing—and the speed and acceleration of that change remain uncertain.
One of the most troubling findings is that many of the species we traditionally regard as Pennsylvania’s native trees are struggling under today’s conditions. Some of the old-growth species that once thrived here may no longer be capable of surviving, much less thriving, under the climate they now face.
The question, then, is not simply “What trees are native here?”
It is:
“What trees can survive here as the climate continues to change?”
by Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee
In memoriam of Anne
When Mountains Crumble to the Sea: Glacial Retreat, Permafrost Thaw, Hydrostatic Pressure, and Landslides
Mountains may look permanent. They are not.
Across Alaska, Greenland, Norway, Chile, New Zealand, and the European Alps, glaciers are retreating, permafrost is thawing, and mountain slopes that were stabilized by ice for centuries or millennia are becoming increasingly unstable.
The result is a dangerous transformation of the high mountains: rockfalls, landslides, glacier collapses, debris flows, and landslide-generated tsunamis.
These are not simply isolated geological curiosities. They are examples of a larger climate-driven interaction among the cryosphere—the frozen part of the Earth system—the hydrosphere, and the lithosphere. As ice disappears, water enters places where it previously could not. As frozen ground thaws, fractures that were once reinforced by ice can weaken. As glaciers retreat, steep slopes can lose part of the support and confinement that helped stabilize them.
The mountains can begin to crumble.
And when they do, enormous amounts of stored gravitational energy can suddenly become kinetic energy.
A Mountain Can Become a Climate Hazard
One of the clearest examples occurred in East Greenland in September 2023.
A massive rock-and-ice avalanche, involving approximately 25 million cubic meters of material, plunged into Dickson Fjord. The impact generated an initial tsunami with a runup of approximately 200 meters—about 650 feet. The confined fjord then acted like a gigantic bathtub, allowing the water to oscillate back and forth as a seiche.
That oscillation continued for nine days.
The movement was powerful enough to generate seismic waves detectable around the world. Scientists eventually determined that the mysterious nine-day signal recorded by seismometers globally was produced by the fjord’s oscillating water.
In other words, a climate-related change in a glacierized mountain landscape produced a chain reaction:
Glacial thinning → slope destabilization → rock-and-ice avalanche → tsunami → seiche → global seismic signal
This is what a climate cascade looks like.
The Mechanics of Destabilization
1. Loss of Glacial Support
Glaciers are not merely passive sheets of ice sitting on mountains. They interact mechanically with the surrounding landscape.
When glaciers occupy steep valleys, their mass and geometry influence the stresses acting on adjacent slopes. When glaciers thin and retreat, formerly ice-confined slopes can become exposed and mechanically reorganized.
Retreat can therefore contribute to slope destabilization, particularly where steep, fractured rock has been exposed or where the glacier previously helped buttress or constrain unstable terrain.
The process does not mean that every retreating glacier automatically causes a landslide. Rather, glacier retreat can remove one of several stabilizing factors from a mountain system already close to failure.
2. Permafrost Degradation
At high elevations, permafrost can exist not only in soil but within fractured bedrock.
Ice occupying those fractures can function as a natural cement, binding blocks of rock together and increasing the strength of the mountain mass.
When temperatures rise sufficiently for that ice to thaw, the mechanical properties of the rock mass can change.
The mountain has not suddenly become a pile of loose rocks. Instead, a complex system of fractures, joints, ice, water, and rock begins to respond differently to gravity.
That difference can be critical.
3. Meltwater and Hydrostatic Pressure
When ice melts, water has to go somewhere.
Meltwater can infiltrate fractures and joints in rock. Once inside a confined fracture, water can exert pressure on the surrounding rock surfaces. This is known as hydrostatic or pore-water pressure, depending on the physical setting.
Increasing water pressure can reduce the effective forces holding fractured rock surfaces together. In simplified terms, water can help pry apart a structure that was already mechanically compromised.
This is especially important when meltwater penetrates deeply into a mountain containing extensive fracture networks.
4. Freeze-Thaw Fracturing
Water entering fractures can also amplify mechanical damage through freeze-thaw processes.
When water freezes, it expands. Repeated freezing and thawing can progressively widen existing fractures and create new pathways through the rock.
At elevations where temperatures repeatedly cross the freezing point, this process can become an important agent of mechanical weathering.
The result is not necessarily one dramatic failure.
It can be thousands of small failures accumulating until the mountain reaches a critical state.
Then the failure can become very large.
From Rockfall to Megatsunami
Once a large mountain mass begins moving, the consequences can extend far beyond the slope itself.
A collapsing mountain can:
bury communities;
destroy roads and bridges;
dam rivers;
create unstable lakes;
generate debris flows;
trigger secondary landslides;
produce glacial-lake outburst flood hazards;
and, when the collapse enters a fjord or lake, generate a tsunami.
The last mechanism is particularly important because a landslide-generated tsunami does not require an earthquake.
A sufficiently large mass entering confined water can displace enormous quantities of water almost instantaneously.
Recent Examples
Greenland — 2023
A rock-and-ice avalanche entered Dickson Fjord and generated an approximately 200-meter-high tsunami. The resulting seiche continued oscillating for nine days and produced a globally detected seismic signal. Scientists concluded that climate-change-driven glacial thinning preconditioned the slope for failure.
Alaska — 2025
On August 10, 2025, a more than 64-million-cubic-meter landslide struck Tracy Arm near the terminus of South Sawyer Glacier. The event generated a tsunami with a measured maximum runup of approximately 481 meters (1,578 feet)—the second-highest landslide-tsunami runup ever documented, behind the 1958 Lituya Bay event.
The landslide was preconditioned by glacial retreat associated with climate change. The resulting tsunami generated a global seismic signal, while a landslide-induced seiche persisted for as long as 36 hours.
The danger was particularly significant because Tracy Arm is frequented by cruise ships and other vessels. More than 20 vessels, including large cruise ships, can travel through Tracy and Endicott arms during the summer. Fortunately, no large vessel was in the upper fjord when the landslide occurred.
Switzerland — 2025
On May 28, 2025, part of the Birch Glacier and the unstable slope of the Kleine Nesthorn above it collapsed in the Lötschental Valley.
The resulting rock-and-ice avalanche buried approximately 90 percent of the village of Blatten. Scientific estimates put the total volume of the moving rock and ice at roughly 20 million tonnes, with approximately 6.4 million cubic meters of rock and 2.9 million cubic meters of glacier ice involved in the main event.
The village had been evacuated nine days earlier because deformation and other warning signs had been detected. That evacuation almost certainly prevented a far greater loss of life. The debris also blocked the Lonza River, creating a temporary lake and producing a secondary flooding hazard.
Blatten demonstrates another important feature of climate-driven hazards:
The first disaster may not be the last disaster.
A landslide can dam a river. The dam can create a lake. The lake can flood surviving structures. Additional slope failures can destabilize the new landscape.
One failure can therefore create the conditions for another.
The Spitze Stei Crisis: Kandersteg, Switzerland
One of the most closely watched unstable mountain formations in Switzerland is Spitze Stei, above the Alpine village of Kandersteg in the Bernese Oberland.
Scientists estimate that approximately 15–20 million cubic meters of unstable rock could potentially move. The mountain’s instability is associated with the degradation of permafrost and the progressive weakening of the fractured rock mass.
Mountain failures are often progressive. A slope can shed smaller pieces while simultaneously becoming more unstable. Alternatively, smaller failures can reduce the amount of material available for a larger collapse.
The challenge is determining which trajectory the mountain will follow.
That is why Kandersteg is under continuous monitoring, with radar and other systems providing information about movement and deformation. Evacuation plans are part of the community’s preparedness.
The mountain is effectively being watched in real time.
The Emerging Pattern
Blatten and Kandersteg are not identical geological situations. Nor is every landslide in a warming mountain environment caused exclusively by climate change.
Mountains fail for many reasons.
Earthquakes, rainfall, erosion, geological structure, gravity, and natural weathering have always produced landslides.
The climate connection is different.
Warming can alter the background conditions under which these geological processes operate.
A retreating glacier can expose a previously confined slope.
Thawing permafrost can weaken fractured bedrock.
Increasing meltwater can infiltrate fractures.
More intense rainfall can increase pore-water pressure.
Freeze-thaw cycles can enlarge cracks.
And a warming atmosphere can alter the timing, duration, and intensity of snowmelt and precipitation.
These processes can interact.
That interaction is what makes the problem particularly difficult.
Hydroclimatic Whiplash in the Mountains
The larger story is therefore not simply “global warming causes landslides.”
The more scientifically useful description is:
Climate warming changes the physical conditions that govern mountain stability.
Those changes can interact with water, ice, rock, gravity, and topography to produce cascading hazards.
A mountain slope does not care whether the energy destabilizing it came from a warming atmosphere, melting glacier, rainfall event, or gravitational unloading.
It responds to the physical forces acting upon it.
That is the essence of climate energy.
The energy added to the climate system does not remain confined to the atmosphere.
It moves through the Earth system.
It melts ice.
It thaws frozen ground.
It changes water.
It alters pressure.
It weakens structures.
And sometimes, it converts a mountain into a landslide.
Atmospheric Rivers: More Water, Less Snow, Faster Runoff
The mountains are being reshaped not only by warming temperatures, but by a changing water cycle.
As the atmosphere warms, it can hold more water vapor. This increases the potential for powerful atmospheric rivers—long, narrow corridors of concentrated moisture that transport enormous quantities of water vapor from the oceans toward land.
The important change is not simply that atmospheric rivers may become stronger. The form in which their moisture reaches the mountains is changing.
Warmer air means more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow, particularly at elevations near the freezing level. Snowpack that once stored winter precipitation for months can instead become immediate runoff.
That changes the mountain’s hydrology.
From Snow Reservoir to Water Pulse
Historically, mountain snowpack has acted as a natural reservoir:
When a warm atmospheric river arrives on top of an existing snowpack, the consequences can become even more dramatic. Rain adds water directly to the landscape while warmer conditions accelerate snowmelt. The result can be a rain-on-snow event—a rapid release of water from both precipitation and the mountain’s frozen reservoir.
Changing Moisture Gradients
There is another piece of the puzzle: moisture gradients.
A warming atmosphere does not simply add moisture uniformly everywhere. The capacity of air to hold water increases with temperature, while ocean temperatures, atmospheric circulation, mountain barriers, and regional drying patterns redistribute that moisture.
This can sharpen contrasts between very dry and very wet conditions.
One region may experience prolonged atmospheric drying and declining snowpack while, nearby or later in the season, a moisture-rich atmospheric river delivers an extraordinary pulse of precipitation.
That is hydroclimatic whiplash:
Dry → wet → dry → extreme precipitation
The problem for mountain systems is that they must absorb these rapidly changing conditions while their physical structure is already being altered by warming.
The Mountain Feedback
This creates another cascading pathway:
Warming → more atmospheric moisture → stronger atmospheric-river potential
↓
More rain, less snow
↓
Reduced snow storage
↓
Rapid runoff and rain-on-snow events
↓
Higher pore-water pressure and erosion
↓
Greater landslide and debris-flow potential
↓
More sediment, flooding, and infrastructure damage
At the same time, warming and permafrost thaw can weaken the rock and sediment structures through which that water moves.
The result is a mountain system being hit from several directions at once:
Less frozen storage. More liquid water. Faster runoff. Greater precipitation extremes. Weaker slopes.
The atmosphere is changing the mountain’s plumbing while warming is changing the mountain itself.
That is hydroclimatic whiplash in the mountains.
And when an atmospheric river arrives at a mountain that has less snow, more meltwater, thawing permafrost, and increasingly unstable slopes, the question is no longer simply how much rain will fall?
It becomes:
What will the mountain do with it?
So, How Is Climate Energy Hitting You?
You do not have to live beneath a glacier to experience this process.
A landslide can block a highway.
A debris flow can destroy a bridge.
A mountain collapse can dam a river.
A landslide-generated tsunami can threaten vessels in a fjord.
A new glacial lake can become a flood hazard.
And a community that has existed for centuries can suddenly find itself living beneath an unstable mountain.
The most important lesson from Greenland, Alaska, and the Swiss Alps is not that every mountain is about to collapse.
It is that the frozen components that helped stabilize many high-mountain environments are changing rapidly.
The mountains are responding.
And sometimes the response is spectacular.
The ice retreats. The permafrost thaws. Water enters the fractures. Hydrostatic pressure rises. Rock begins to move. Gravity takes over.
How Is Climate Energy Hitting You?
Western U.S. Woodlands: Ecosystem Conversion or Vegetation Type Conversion
Towering woodlands across the Western U.S. are being permanently replaced by spiky shrubs as bigger and hotter wildfires sweep through forests that have not evolved to survive such high-intensity blazes and a warmer climate. Conditions “just aren’t normal anymore,” said researchers from Lehigh University. “Bigger, Hotter Fires Are Slowly Erasing America’s Great Forests” references a 2024 modeling study published in Communications Earth & Environment titled “Future transition from forests to shrublands and grasslands in the western United States is expected to reduce carbon storage”. Conducted by researchers from Lehigh University, the study projects that up to 40% of Western conifer forests could convert to shrubland or grassland by 2100 under moderate emissions scenarios.
by Daniel Brouse and Sidd Mukherjee
Introduction
Climate change is often described as a gradual increase in temperature. That description is technically correct but scientifically incomplete.
The climate system does not distribute additional energy uniformly or produce consequences that increase smoothly with temperature. Additional energy changes the behavior of the atmosphere, the hydrologic cycle, soils, vegetation, fire regimes, and biological systems. As those systems respond, their responses can feed back into the climate and into one another.
This creates a more consequential question:
What happens when an ecosystem can no longer absorb the changing climate without changing its fundamental structure?
Forests in the western United States provide an important example.
The issue is not simply that trees experience warmer temperatures. The larger problem is that warming changes the entire environmental system in which forests exist. Higher temperatures increase atmospheric moisture demand. Changes in precipitation and snowpack alter the timing and availability of water. Soil moisture is depleted more rapidly. Trees become increasingly stressed. Drought weakens regeneration. Wildfires become more severe. Severe fires remove mature trees and seed sources. Grasses and shrubs then occupy the newly opened landscape.
The result can be more than forest damage.
It can become an ecosystem transition.
The system can move from one relatively stable state—forest—to another state dominated by shrubs and grasses.
That distinction is central to understanding nonlinear climate change.
1. Climate Energy Is More Than Temperature
Temperature is one observable expression of energy within the climate system.
But biological systems do not respond to temperature alone.
They respond to a combination of:
temperature
atmospheric moisture demand
precipitation
soil moisture
snowpack
evapotranspiration
fire
growing-season conditions
carbon availability
biological competition
disturbance frequency
regeneration conditions
Consequently, a modest increase in average temperature can produce a much larger ecological response when several variables move simultaneously.
A warmer atmosphere can demand more water from vegetation and soils. Earlier snowmelt can shift water availability away from the period when forests need it most. Hotter and drier conditions can increase fire risk. Fire removes vegetation that previously stored carbon and provided shade and moisture retention.
The important variable therefore becomes not simply:
How much warmer is it?
but:
How much additional energy is moving through the system, and what does that energy do to the processes that maintain ecosystem stability?
2. The Forest Is a System, Not a Collection of Trees
A forest exists because a particular combination of environmental conditions permits trees to survive, reproduce, compete, and regenerate.
That means the persistence of a forest depends on a chain of conditions.
A simplified representation is:
Climate → water availability → tree health → regeneration → competition → disturbance resistance → forest persistence
Climate change can stress several links simultaneously.
High-severity fire removes mature trees and seed sources.
After the fire, hotter and drier conditions can prevent the forest from regenerating.
At that point, the question is no longer whether the original trees can survive.
The question becomes whether the forest state itself remains viable.
3. Hydroclimatic Stress Can Become a Threshold
One of the most important characteristics of complex systems is that their response to forcing does not have to be linear.
A forest may tolerate increasing stress for years.
Then a threshold is crossed.
Before the threshold:
More heat → more stress
After the threshold:
More heat → mortality → reduced regeneration → vegetation change
The distinction is crucial.
A forest can therefore appear relatively resilient while conditions deteriorate beneath the surface.
Trees may survive while seedlings increasingly fail.
Older trees may remain while regeneration collapses.
The landscape can therefore retain the appearance of a functioning forest even as its ability to reproduce itself is being lost.
This creates what can be described as a climate–vegetation mismatch.
The climate has changed faster than the ecosystem can reorganize.
4. Fire Can Transform a Stress Response Into a Feedback Loop
Fire is particularly important because it can convert gradual environmental stress into rapid structural change.
Consider the sequence:
Warming
↓
Greater atmospheric moisture demand
↓
Declining soil moisture
↓
Vegetation stress
↓
Greater fire susceptibility
↓
High-severity fire
↓
Loss of mature forest
↓
Reduced seed sources
↓
Poor forest regeneration
↓
Expansion of grasses and shrubs
The process does not necessarily stop there.
Grasses and shrubs can create different fuel structures from forests. In some environments, this can support more frequent burning.
The system can therefore become:
forest → fire → grass/shrub → fire → grass/shrub
The disturbance has become part of the mechanism maintaining the new ecosystem.
This is a classic positive feedback.
5. Disturbance Can Become an Ecological Accelerator
Climate change does not have to directly eliminate an ecosystem.
It can instead increase the frequency and severity of disturbances that eliminate the ecosystem’s ability to recover.
This distinction is extremely important.
Imagine a forest that normally experiences periodic fire.
If a fire occurs and the climate remains favorable, trees regenerate.
But if the same fire occurs under hotter and drier conditions, regeneration may fail.
The fire itself may therefore not be fundamentally different.
The recovery environment is different.
This means that climate change can transform a disturbance from a temporary event into a state transition.
The same principle can apply to:
drought
flooding
heatwaves
hurricanes
insect outbreaks
disease
agricultural failure
coral bleaching
wetland loss
The disturbance becomes more consequential because the background state of the system has changed.
6. The Carbon Cycle Contains a Critical Asymmetry
Forests illustrate another important feature of nonlinear climate dynamics.
A landscape can continue absorbing carbon while simultaneously losing its long-term carbon-storage capacity.
These are not the same thing.
Grasslands and shrublands can remain productive. They can photosynthesize, grow, and absorb atmospheric CO₂.
But a mature forest stores carbon in:
trunks
branches
roots
dead wood
forest soils
long-lived biomass
When a forest is replaced by lower-biomass vegetation, the ecosystem can continue to exchange carbon with the atmosphere while carrying a substantially smaller carbon reservoir.
Therefore:
carbon uptake ≠ carbon storage capacity
and:
positive carbon flux ≠ preservation of the previous carbon stock
This distinction is essential when evaluating ecosystems as natural climate buffers.
7. A Carbon Sink Can Become a Smaller Carbon Reservoir
This creates a potentially misleading observation.
Suppose a forest is replaced by grassland.
The grassland grows rapidly.
Its net ecosystem productivity may increase.
One might therefore conclude:
The ecosystem is still absorbing carbon, so the transition is not particularly important.
That conclusion would be wrong.
The relevant question is not simply how much carbon the ecosystem absorbs during a particular period.
The larger question is:
How much carbon can the ecosystem retain over the long term?
A forest can represent a large accumulated carbon reservoir.
A grassland may cycle carbon more rapidly while maintaining a much smaller standing stock.
The transition therefore represents a change in the architecture of the carbon cycle.
That is precisely the type of distinction required by a climate-energy framework.
8. The Feedback Extends Beyond the Forest
The consequences do not stop at vegetation.
Forest loss can alter:
surface energy balance
evapotranspiration
local humidity
soil temperatures
runoff
erosion
snow retention
water availability
biodiversity
carbon storage
fire behavior
The ecosystem is therefore not merely responding to climate.
It can begin changing the conditions under which the climate interacts with the landscape.
This creates another feedback structure:
Climate forcing
↓
Hydroclimatic stress
↓
Vegetation change
↓
Surface and hydrologic changes
↓
Disturbance changes
↓
Carbon-storage changes
↓
Further alteration of the climate–ecosystem relationship
The system becomes increasingly coupled.
9. Elevation Becomes a Moving Boundary
One observable consequence of warming is the movement of climate zones.
As temperatures rise, species may attempt to occupy higher elevations or move toward cooler environments.
This creates an ecological migration problem.
The climate envelope moves.
The ecosystem must follow.
But ecosystems do not move like atmospheric air masses.
Trees require:
seeds
suitable soil
time
reproduction
dispersal
successful establishment
adequate moisture
protection from subsequent disturbances
If climate conditions move faster than species can migrate, the suitable habitat effectively moves away from the organism.
This produces another form of mismatch:
The climate is moving faster than the ecosystem.
That is potentially much more important than the simple statement that temperatures are increasing.
10. The Nonlinear Acceleration Problem
This provides a useful example of why climate impacts can appear to accelerate.
Suppose warming produces only modest ecological stress during the first phase.
The system may appear stable.
But as stress accumulates:
Phase 1:
Temperature increases.
↓
Phase 2:
Moisture stress increases.
↓
Phase 3:
Tree growth and regeneration decline.
↓
Phase 4:
Fire vulnerability increases.
↓
Phase 5:
High-severity disturbances remove mature forest.
↓
Phase 6:
Regeneration fails.
↓
Phase 7:
Grass and shrub systems expand.
↓
Phase 8:
The new vegetation regime modifies future fire behavior.
The forcing has not necessarily increased eightfold.
The response pathway has changed.
That is the critical distinction.
Nonlinear acceleration can occur because each stage changes the conditions governing the next stage.
11. From Climate Change to State Change
This suggests a more useful hierarchy for understanding climate impacts.
Level 1 — Climate forcing
Greenhouse gases increase radiative forcing.
Level 2 — Physical response
Temperature, atmospheric moisture demand, precipitation patterns and snowpack change.
Level 3 — Hydroclimatic response
Soils dry more rapidly, drought stress increases and water availability becomes less synchronized with biological demand.
Level 4 — Biological stress
Growth, survival and regeneration are affected.
Level 5 — Disturbance amplification
Fire and other disturbances become more consequential.
Level 6 — Ecosystem restructuring
Forest becomes shrubland or grassland.
Level 7 — Feedback
The new ecosystem modifies carbon storage, fuels, hydrology and future disturbance behavior.
Heat + intense rainfall → infrastructure stress → flooding → system damage → reduced resilience to subsequent events.
In each case, the critical question is:
Does the system recover, or does the disturbance alter the system itself?
Conclusion
The most consequential climate impacts may not occur when a physical variable reaches an unprecedented value.
They may occur when the relationships that hold a system together begin to fail.
A forest does not need to experience a single catastrophic temperature to disappear.
It can be progressively destabilized by warming, increasing atmospheric moisture demand, declining soil moisture, altered snowpack, drought, severe fire and failed regeneration.
At some point, the system can cross a threshold.
The forest is replaced by another vegetation state.
Carbon storage declines.
Fire behavior changes.
Hydrology changes.
Biological communities change.
The ecosystem becomes different.
This is the central lesson for a climate-energy framework:
Climate change does not merely add energy to an existing system. It can change the rules governing how the system behaves.
That distinction separates ordinary climate variability from nonlinear climate-system transformation.
The important question is therefore not simply:
How much has the climate warmed?
It is:
How much additional energy has entered the system, how has that energy altered the interactions among its components, and have those interactions begun pushing the system toward a different state?
When the answer is yes, climate change is no longer merely producing stress.
Reno, Nevada: Hydroclimatic Whiplash, Flash Droughts, Extreme Winds, and Wildfires
Reno, Nevada, is experiencing some of the most pronounced climate stresses in the American West. Rapid warming is intensifying the region’s existing desert and alpine vulnerabilities, while simultaneously altering snowpack, water supplies, vegetation, wildfire conditions, and extreme precipitation.
For the Reno–Sparks region, the major climate pressures include extreme urban heat, declining Sierra Nevada snowpack, prolonged drought, abrupt swings between wet and dry conditions, extreme winds, flash flooding, and an expanding wildfire season.
These impacts do not occur independently. They interact, creating compound hazards in which one climate extreme can prepare the landscape for another.
Extreme Urban Heat and Season Shifts
Rapid Temperature Increases
Reno has experienced substantial long-term warming, with average temperatures increasing by approximately 7.9°F overall. Average summer temperatures have increased by more than 11°F since 1970, intensifying heat stress across the region.
Urban Heat Island Effect
Rapid population growth has replaced natural landscapes with pavement, buildings, roads, and other heat-absorbing surfaces. The resulting urban heat island effect can substantially increase temperatures within developed areas, placing the greatest burden on residents and communities with fewer resources to adapt.
A Later First Freeze
Reno’s autumn is warming particularly rapidly. The average date of the first winter freeze has shifted later by nearly six weeks, extending the period during which heat-sensitive ecosystems, agriculture, and disease vectors remain active.
Longer Mosquito Seasons
Warmer autumn conditions can delay the seasonal die-off of mosquitoes. In Washoe County, mosquito abundance has increased dramatically, with reports of an eight-fold increase in mosquitoes per trap.
The result is more than a warmer city. The seasonal timing of biological systems is changing.
Snowpack, Water Supply, and Flooding
Diminishing Snowpack
Warming at higher elevations is reducing the amount of winter precipitation stored as snow. Sierra Nevada snowpack has reached exceptionally low levels, at times falling to approximately 48% of the historical median.
Snowpack is not simply frozen precipitation. It is a natural reservoir that stores water through winter and releases it gradually during spring and summer.
Earlier Snowmelt
Warmer winters are shortening the snow season and causing snow to melt earlier. That shifts runoff toward earlier months, leaving less water available during the hot, dry summer period when vegetation, ecosystems, agriculture, and communities need it most.
Lake Tahoe Under Stress
Nearby Lake Tahoe is also responding to a warming climate. Increased thermal stratification can reduce mixing between surface and deeper waters, affecting oxygen distribution, water quality, and ecosystem conditions while creating opportunities for invasive species.
From Drought to Flash Flood
Climate change does not simply mean “more drought.”
A warmer atmosphere can hold more water vapor, increasing the potential for intense precipitation when storms occur. An +11°F increase in temperature equates to an approximate 43% increase in the atmosphere’s maximum capacity to hold moisture. After prolonged dry periods, intense rainfall can produce rapid runoff, flash flooding, erosion, and debris flows across steep mountain terrain.
The same landscape can therefore experience both water scarcity and dangerous excess water—sometimes within a relatively short period.
Wildfires and Public Health
The Invisible Dual Disaster
Reno increasingly faces the convergence of extreme heat and wildfire smoke.
Wildfire smoke can severely degrade outdoor and indoor air quality. During smoke events, poorly sealed buildings and certain cooling systems can allow polluted outdoor air to enter indoor spaces, creating an additional public-health burden precisely when residents are trying to escape the heat.
A Longer Fire-Weather Season
Climate change has contributed to a substantial increase in fire-weather conditions across the region, with estimates of approximately 28 additional fire-weather days annually.
A longer period of hot, dry, windy conditions creates a larger window for vegetation to dry out and fires to spread rapidly.
But temperature alone does not explain the danger.
Water availability, vegetation growth, drought, snowpack, humidity, and wind interact to determine how much fuel is available—and how quickly that fuel can burn.
The Hawk Fire: Hydroclimatic Whiplash in Action
The Hawk Fire, threatening communities northwest of Reno, illustrates how multiple climate and weather processes can converge into a rapidly escalating wildfire emergency.
The fire has expanded dramatically across the Peavine Peak area and threatened residential communities and the University of Nevada, Reno campus. It is occurring amid a broader sequence of major wildfires across northern Nevada.
The immediate fire emergency is being amplified by dry fuels, limited snowpack, extreme fire-weather conditions, and powerful, shifting winds.
This is where the concept of hydroclimatic whiplash becomes important.
Hydroclimatic Whiplash
Hydroclimatic whiplash describes rapid swings between substantially wetter and substantially drier conditions.
The danger is not simply the wet period or the dry period individually.
It is what happens when they occur in succession.
1. Priming the Landscape
An unusually wet period can produce explosive growth of grasses, brush, and other fine fuels.
2. Rapid Dry-Down
If that period is followed by an exceptionally hot and dry summer, the newly produced vegetation can cure rapidly, transforming abundant biomass into highly flammable fuel.
3. Ignition
Once the landscape is sufficiently dry, a single ignition source can rapidly transform a fuel-rich environment into a fast-moving wildfire.
The climate hazard is therefore not one isolated extreme. It is the interaction between extremes.
Extreme and Shifting Winds
Wind can turn a dangerous wildfire into an urban emergency.
Powerful red-flag conditions can push flames rapidly across foothills and directly toward residential neighborhoods. At the same time, shifting winds can cause fire behavior to change direction with little warning.
For firefighters, this creates extraordinary tactical difficulties.
Rapidly changing winds can:
accelerate fire spread;
generate intense fire runs;
loft embers ahead of the main fire;
ignite new fires across containment lines;
block access routes;
change evacuation conditions;
and place firefighters and equipment in rapidly changing danger zones.
Reports of extreme fire behavior underscore the interaction between wind, dry fuels, topography, and heat.
The result is a wildfire that does not simply spread outward.
It can surge, jump, change direction, and accelerate.
Mitigation and Policy Adaptation
Reno’s climate risks are forcing governments to rethink how cities are designed and how resources are managed.
Heat Mitigation
Nevada’s Assembly Bill 96 establishes requirements for incorporating heat-mitigation strategies into local planning. Measures can include cool roofs, exterior shading, and drought-tolerant landscaping and trees.
These interventions address an important reality: climate adaptation increasingly has to occur at the neighborhood and building scale.
Resource-Demand Feedback
The rapid increase in extreme heat is also increasing pressure on water supplies, electricity demand, energy storage, and grid reliability.
During extreme heat, demand for air conditioning and other cooling systems can rise sharply—at the same time that drought and declining water availability place additional pressure on regional water resources.
This creates a reinforcing feedback:
More heat → More cooling → More electricity demand → Greater grid stress
At the same time:
More development → More water demand → Greater pressure on limited water supplies
These pressures can compound one another. A rapidly growing population and expanding technology sector increase demand for both electricity and water, while extreme heat makes both resources more critical.
Climate adaptation, therefore, cannot be separated from infrastructure planning, resource management, and the capacity of the electric grid and water systems to withstand increasingly extreme conditions.
The Bigger Picture
Reno’s climate challenge is not simply that the city is becoming hotter.
The more important change is that multiple parts of the climate system are beginning to interact in ways that amplify risk.
A warmer atmosphere changes precipitation.
Warmer winters reduce snowpack.
Reduced snowpack changes runoff.
Earlier runoff increases summer dryness.
Summer heat dries vegetation.
Drought converts vegetation into fuel.
Wind accelerates fire.
Wildfire produces smoke.
Smoke threatens public health.
And intense rainfall following dry periods can produce flash floods and debris flows.
This is hydroclimatic whiplash: not merely more extreme weather, but increasingly abrupt transitions between opposing extremes.
For Reno, the question is therefore not simply:
How much warmer will it become?
The more consequential question is:
How will all of these changes interact—and how quickly will they compound one another?
That is how climate energy is hitting Reno.
Hotter. Drier. Windier. More volatile. And increasingly difficult to manage one hazard at a time.
Publishing scientific papers, articles, and essays is far more backward than most people realize. In many fields, authors are not paid to publish; they may actually have to pay publication or open-access fees. Scientific publishing operates very differently from the music business. A young musician may dream of getting paid to record an album and become a rock star. A young scientist, however, needs to understand the very different economic reality of academic publishing.
One example is Open Access publishing in Nature. The current Gold Open Access Article Processing Charge for an accepted primary research article is £9,390, US$12,850, or €10,850. That fee is charged only after acceptance if the authors choose to make the article freely available through the Gold Open Access model.
The larger point is that the academic publishing ecosystem contains substantial financial and institutional differences in publication, access, indexing, and visibility. Nature itself says Open Access makes research more widely available and highly discoverable.
For us, publishing 10 papers a day through that model would mean $128,500 a day in Open Access fees. That’s about $47 million a year.
This is one reason Sidd and I started the Philadelphia Spirit Experiment Publishing Company in the 1990s. We agreed we didn’t want to go that route for many reasons. We thought it would be better to do it ourselves and offer the publishing service to others working in the humanities and related fields—arts, music, science, and teaching—for free.
We also agreed that we wouldn’t apply for patents. We wanted our research, inventions, and music to remain in the public domain and be available for everyone to use.
That philosophy is still very much alive in what we’re doing today: learn, create, experiment, publish, and share. Feel free to join in and sing along.
How Is the Climate Energy Hitting You? is a collection of backyard experiments conducted in conjunction with you—the reader. The goal is simple: to look at how the increased energy in the climate system is showing up in our everyday lives.
Is it becoming more extreme, more frequent, and more persistent? Are the changes becoming stranger—or even disturbing?
The Worms Squirm experiment checks all the boxes.
It started with a simple backyard observation: an increasing number of earthworms turning up in the swimming pool. What seems like a strange and seemingly insignificant nuisance may actually be a small, visible signal of a much larger change in the way water is moving through the environment.
Sometimes, you don’t need a laboratory to see climate energy at work.
Sometimes, you just need to look in the pool.
The Worms Squirm
Climate change is altering the conditions that earthworms depend on—soil temperature, moisture, oxygen availability, and precipitation patterns. These changes can affect earthworm survival, reproduction, abundance, and geographic distribution. At the same time, earthworm activity influences soil carbon cycling and greenhouse-gas emissions, creating another connection between life in the soil and the climate system.
Temperature and Moisture Effects
Warming temperatures: Rising soil temperatures can shift the ranges of some earthworm species toward higher latitudes and elevations. However, excessive heat can reduce activity, growth, reproduction, and survival, particularly when warming is accompanied by drying.
Drought: Prolonged dry conditions can sharply reduce earthworm activity and abundance. Because earthworms breathe through their moist skin, severe soil drying can force them deeper into the soil or into a dormant, low-activity state. Extended drought can produce substantial local population losses.
Flooding: Intense rainfall can saturate soils and dramatically reduce the amount of oxygen available in pore spaces. Earthworms may respond by moving toward the surface, where oxygen is more readily available. Prolonged waterlogging, however, can become lethal.
The Climate Feedback Beneath Our Feet
Earthworms are ecosystem engineers. As they consume organic material and move through the soil, they alter soil structure, redistribute nutrients, and stimulate microbial activity. These processes can affect carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide production, although the magnitude and direction of the greenhouse-gas effect depend heavily on soil type, moisture, temperature, vegetation, and earthworm species.
Climate change can also alter where different earthworm species can survive. In some regions, warming and changing precipitation patterns may allow non-native earthworms to expand into new forests and other ecosystems. Their arrival can dramatically alter soil structure, nutrient cycling, and forest-floor communities.
And Then There Are the Worms in My Pool
Over the past five years, I’ve noticed a significant increase in drowned earthworms showing up in my swimming pool. This year has been the most dramatic.
One explanation is that increasingly intense rainfall is changing the conditions that cause earthworms to come to the surface. Earthworms commonly move toward the surface when soils become saturated, and heavy rain can produce much larger and more rapid changes in soil moisture and oxygen than a gentle, prolonged rainfall.
The swimming pool then becomes an accidental trap.
Once an earthworm reaches the pool deck, there is little it can do to escape the water. What begins as a survival response to changing soil conditions can therefore end with a dead worm in the pool.
Hydroclimate Whiplash: From Drought to Deluge
The bigger story may be hydroclimate whiplash—rapid swings between unusually dry conditions and unusually wet conditions.
A soil ecosystem experiencing prolonged drought is fundamentally different from one receiving regular, moderate rainfall. When an intense rain event arrives after an extended dry period, several processes can occur simultaneously.
1. Parched Soil Can Change How Rainwater Moves
Extended drying can cause some soils to become water-repellent, while clay-rich soils can shrink and develop large cracks. When intense rainfall arrives, water may initially run across the surface or rapidly enter cracks rather than infiltrating uniformly through the soil profile.
The result can be a sudden change in the physical environment surrounding earthworm burrows.
Rather than gradually replenishing soil moisture, an extreme rain burst can produce rapid saturation in some areas and intense surface runoff in others. The sudden loss of available oxygen in saturated soil can encourage earthworms to move toward the surface.
2. Drought Can Damage Soil Structure
Severe drying can cause soils to shrink, crack, and harden. Burrows and other soil structures can become unstable.
When intense rainfall follows, those structures may partially collapse or become flooded. Earthworms that have retreated deeper into the soil during drought can suddenly find their normal pathways altered or inundated.
That can increase surface movement at exactly the time when rainfall is producing large amounts of surface water.
3. Earthworms Depend on Moisture—but Not Too Much
Earthworms need moisture because they exchange gases through their skin. Dry conditions can therefore be dangerous, but complete saturation creates a different problem: oxygen becomes much less available in the soil.
This produces an important paradox.
Too dry → physiological stress.
Too wet → oxygen stress.
Rapidly switching between the two → repeated physiological and behavioral stress.
It is therefore more accurate to think of hydroclimate whiplash as repeatedly pushing soil organisms between environmental extremes rather than simply “more rain” or “more drought.”
4. Wet Conditions Can Trigger Reproduction and Activity
Earthworm populations also respond to favorable moisture conditions. After periods of drought, renewed moisture can allow surviving worms and newly hatched individuals to become active again.
The exact population response varies considerably by species and local conditions, so it would be too strong to assume that every drought is followed by a synchronized population explosion. But when favorable moisture arrives after a dry period, increased earthworm activity near the surface can coincide with subsequent heavy rainfall.
That creates another possible pathway to the pool:
I can’t prove that climate change is responsible for the worms in my pool.
But the observation is consistent with a changing hydroclimate.
If rainfall is becoming more intense, if dry periods are becoming more pronounced, and if the transition between those conditions is becoming more abrupt, then the soil environment is experiencing larger and faster swings in moisture and oxygen availability.
Earthworms respond to those conditions.
And sometimes, their response puts them on the surface.
Unfortunately for the worms, my swimming pool is right there.
What looks like a bizarre little nuisance at the edge of the pool may therefore be a small-scale example of a much larger climate phenomenon: extreme changes in the movement of water through the environment can produce biological responses that we encounter in surprisingly personal ways.
The climate system doesn’t just change temperature.
It changes where the water goes, how fast it moves, and how abruptly conditions change.
Sometimes, you notice that change when the worms start squirming.
Conclusion
How is the climate energy hitting the worms?
Hydroclimatic whiplash makes the worms squirm—and try to swim.
Unfortunately, worms can’t swim.
Even more unfortunately, the lesson applies to humans, too.
Climate-driven increases in extreme rainfall can amplify urban flooding, overwhelming drainage systems and turning streets, basements, and low-lying buildings into dangerous traps. People living in basement apartments can be especially vulnerable when floodwaters rise faster than they can escape.
From South Korea to New York City, deadly urban floods have demonstrated the danger of extreme rainfall in densely populated areas.
The worms may be small, but the lesson is not:
When the water comes faster and harder, there may be nowhere to go.
