Enlarge (credit: Marc Bruxelle )

"Climate breakdown has begun," declared UN Secretary-General António Guterres. Guterres is not a climate expert himself, but in this case, he's basing his opinion on the data and analyses generated by the actual experts. If you thought this year was a bit of a weather suffer-fest, it probably wasn't your imagination, as the Northern Hemisphere has just experienced its hottest summer on record, driving the year to date into the second-hottest position.

While the weather isn't climate, the climate sets limits on the sort of weather we should expect. And a growing number of analyses of this year's weather are showing that climate change has been in the driver's seat for a number of events.

Hot, hot, hot

On Wednesday, the World Meteorological Organization released its August data , showing that the month was the second hottest on record and the hottest August we have experienced since temperature records have been maintained. The only month that has ever been warmer is... the one immediately before it, July of 2023.

Enlarge / Aerial view of an abandoned boat on a desert at the site of former Lake Poopó, near Punaca Tinta Maria, Bolivia, taken on October 15, 2022. (credit: Martin Silva/AFP via Getty Images)

Water storage in many of the world’s biggest lakes has declined sharply in the last 30 years, according to a new study, with a cumulative drop of about 21.5 gigatons per year, an amount equal to the annual water consumption of the United States.

The loss of water in natural lakes can “largely be attributed to climate warming,” a team of scientists said as they published research today in Science that analyzed satellite data from 1,980 lakes and reservoirs between 1992 and 2020. When they combined the satellite images with climate data and hydrological models, they found “significant storage declines” in more than half of the bodies of water.

The combination of information from different sources also enabled the scientists to determine if the declines are related to climate factors, like increased evaporation and reduced river flows, or other impacts, including water diversions for agriculture or cities. A quarter of the world’s population lives in basins where lakes are drying up, they warned.

Enlarge (credit: chuchart duangdaw )

While it's going to be difficult for anyone to avoid any negative effects of our changing climate, the effects are going to be disproportionately felt by those least able to afford them. And this week brings more evidence that we're already at the point where the poor are suffering from the growth in heatwaves that have come with the ever-rising global temperatures.

The work comes from UCLA, where three researchers were given access to data from the utility Southern California Edison, which serves over 15 million customers in (you guessed it) Southern California. The data indicated that low-income customers were more likely to be disconnected by the utility a couple of months after hot weather—a timing in keeping with the utility's policy of giving customers time to pay. While the effect was small, it went up with each hot day, meaning extended heat waves will cause more severe problems for the poor.

Losing power

For their new paper, the researchers focused on participants in a program called the California Alternate Rates for Energy, which cuts the rate that low-income customers pay for their electricity. Keeping the lights on can be a struggle for these customers; previous studies have documented that many end up choosing between energy and food, and national surveys suggest over 10 percent of US households get a disconnection notice each year.

Enlarge / A smoggy sunrise in Krakow, Poland earlier this summer. (credit: NurPhoto via Getty Images )

On the morning news, you see the weather forecast is for high heat, and there is an “ excessive heat watch ” for later in the week. You were hoping the weather would cool down, but yet another heat wave is threatening human health and increasing the chance of wildfires. On top of these warm days and nights, air quality data has been showing unhealthy levels of pollution.

Sound familiar? This scenario is increasingly the new normal in many parts of the world.

High heat and air pollution are each problematic for human health, particularly for vulnerable populations such as older adults. But what happens when they hit at the same time?