AD READER: This episode of The Sweaty Penguin is brought to you by corgis. Want to have 30 dogs at your funeral? Breed corgis today!

WEATHERMAN: And here’s today’s report on the weather. Today’s temperature is, once again, hot. Back to you, Ethan.

ETHAN: Oh..okay, but like, can you be more specific?

WEATHERMAN: The weather is very very hot. I don’t know why you pay me to do this, just go outside. Back to you, Ethan.

ETHAN: Can we at least go to a specific location? What about Sacramento? How’s it looking there?

WEATHERMAN: Hit an all-time high of 116 degrees.

ETHAN: San Jose?

WEATHERMAN: All-time high of 109 degrees.

ETHAN: Death Valley?

WEATHERMAN: 125 degrees, missing the September world record by just one degree.

ETHAN: Oh, geez. Salt Lake City?

WEATHERMAN: Tied the all-time high of 107 degrees. Also, that’s cute that you think there’s still a lake there.

ETHAN: Coastal Alaska?

WEATHERMAN: Strongest storm in decades with 90 mile per hour winds and 35 foot waves.

ETHAN: Caribbean?

WEATHERMAN: Hurricane Fiona.

ETHAN: Is there any good news, weatherman?

WEATHERMAN: Well, my ex and I went in on a timeshare together in Vegas. I was a little skeptical, but the salesman made some really good points. Did you know that the average cost–

ETHAN: Okayyyy… that’ll be all, weatherman.

ETHAN: And good Wednesday morning, I’m Ethan Brown, and this is Tip of the Iceberg, where I will break down some environmental news and then answer a question from our listeners on the air. Submit questions via Patreon, email, or social media. Patron questions go to the front of the line, so sign up at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin.

ETHAN: The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. 

ETHAN: It has been an absolutely brutal month of extreme weather events, in the United States and around the world. Not the episode 100 celebration we were hoping for, Mother Nature. We asked for a piñata. And I know it’s hopeless for me to cover every single one in this episode, so I’m going to focus on three U.S. ones today: the heat wave in the west, the cyclone in Alaska, and Hurricane Fiona in the Caribbean. We’ll go over how these events happened, how climate change could have played a role, and some of the lessons I hope we can learn from this month as we move forward.

ETHAN: Starting with Fiona, which by the way, has completely ruined Shrek for me. I didn’t think it was possible to ruin a masterpiece like Shrek, but you know what they say, somebody once told me the world was gonna roll me. Anyway, Hurricane Fiona is the first major hurricane of the 2022 season, hitting Guadeloupe, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Turks and Caicos, and Bermuda. I am recording this about a week before you’re hearing it, so basically time travel, but at the present moment, Fiona has hit sustained winds of 115 miles per hour, rains of over 30 inches, and led to destroyed houses, battered roads and bridges, communities left without drinking water, and several deaths. Some Puerto Rican residents were quoted as saying this hurricane was as bad or worse in terms of impacts than Hurricane Maria which hit five years ago.

ETHAN: If you remember back to our episode on Tropical Cyclones, hurricanes form due to a phenomenon called the Coriolis effect. Quick review: probably my hottest take on this podcast is that Earth is a sphere, and it rotates from west to east. If you gave it a blindfold and a plastic bat, it would be a natural at the piñata. Now, picture how that rotation looks on a globe. If you’re standing on the equator, one day or one rotation of the Earth means you have to go a really long distance. But if you put your finger on, say, Nebraska and rotate your globe, that rotation is a much shorter distance since it’s closer to the top of the sphere. If you put your finger on the North Pole and rotate the globe, your finger won’t move at all. You’ll just crush some elves and end the torture that is Christmas season. Guys! It’s still September! Stop! Please stop! What all that means though is people and stuff on the equator are actually moving through space faster than stuff up north and stuff down south. Maybe that’s why the dancing is better there.

ETHAN: What does that have to do with Hurricane Fiona? Well, early on September 12th, the National Hurricane Center identified an area of low pressure near West Africa. It just finished its homework and took an edible. Now, if I’m a cloud by the equator, what am I going to do? I’m going to go north, into this area of low pressure, but because I, at the equator, am moving faster than the low pressure system by West Africa, I’m going to end up overshooting it. My momentum is going to swing me east in front of the low pressure system. And if I’m a cloud north of the low pressure system, I’m going to want to go south into the area of low pressure, but because I am moving slower than the low pressure system by West Africa, I’m going to end up undershooting it and I’ll actually swing behind the low pressure system to the west. So we’ve got clouds swinging in front from the south, clouds swinging behind from the north, and now they’re swirling together, creating counterclockwise winds. As the winds strengthened, the weather system turned into a tropical depression, not to be confused with a teenager on a family vacation. It was a depression on September 14th, and then grew into a hurricane by September 18th as it made landfall in Puerto Rico.

ETHAN: Now, it’s too early at the time I’m recording to say specifically how climate change influenced Fiona, besides the fact that it was not temperature regulated in that tower before Shrek rescued her. But we do know a few things about how climate change intensifies hurricanes more generally. (1) Hurricanes are fuelled by warm air and warm ocean temperatures. You might remember from high school physics class that heat is energy. It’s why I always eat a ghost pepper before I go for a run. So by making air and ocean temperatures warmer, climate change can add energy to hurricanes and make the winds more intense. (2) Warmer air also allows more water to evaporate, ultimately leading to hurricanes with more rainfall. And (3) by driving sea level rise, the oceans are now closer to our communities, meaning hurricanes can travel further inland than before. At this rate, hurricanes are going to find out what a runza is! So I’m sure scientists have published more analysis specific to Fiona at the time you’re listening, but it’s reasonable to expect some or all of these factors would be at play as Fiona intensified into a major hurricane.

ETHAN: Next, the heat wave. From August 30 to September 9, states west of the Rockies experienced one of the longest and hottest heat waves ever to be recorded. More than 50 million people were under extreme heat warnings, and nearly 1,000 heat records were broken. 1,000 records! Who knew heat waves loved vinyl so much? Among many other impacts, the heat wave also intensified an already brutal wildfire season, both by drying out vegetation and by making it too hot for firefighters to safely be outside to contain them. One of these fires — the Fairview Fire about 80 miles east of Los Angeles — grew by 500 acres in one hour on September 5th, leading to two deaths and 5,000 home evacuations.

ETHAN: Why did the heat wave happen? Well, once again, it was our good friend the Coriolis effect. Well, decent friend. It only ever texts me Elmo vs Rocco memes. Let’s review: the Earth is rotating from west to east. I’m a gust of wind at the equator. I’m moving really fast. If I go north, which direction is my momentum going to pull me? East, that’s right. Wow you’ve really been paying attention, great job! And because of that principle, if we look in the upper atmosphere, there is a continuous gust of wind traveling from west to east called the jet stream, not to be confused with every guy’s first pee in the morning. Like that first pee though, the jet stream doesn’t travel in a straight line. Because of mountains and because different places may have different temperatures, the jet stream is wavy, and at times, those waves can send the jet stream way north or way south, making sure it gets all over the toilet seat.

ETHAN: And that’s what happened in this heat wave. There was an area of high pressure over the American West, and the jet stream had swung way north, basically allowing the high pressure system to sit there and gradually bake in the Sun. Because of the high pressure, the air will also be forced to sink, which dries out the air, compresses it, and makes it even hotter, eventually leading to the historic heat wave earlier this month.

ETHAN: How does climate change play in? First off, it manages to turn the weather into Twitter fights so that’s fun. Having higher average temperatures is obviously going to make heat waves a little bit hotter. But there’s also research suggesting that climate change makes the jet stream wavier than it otherwise would be. Remember, the waviness is caused in part by temperature differences across regions, and climate change does not warm the planet uniformly. Some areas get hotter, some get colder, and some decide it’s a good idea to open 277 Starbucks locations! Looking at you, New York City. So creating more of this variation in the jet stream is bound to influence these heat waves as well. No studies yet on how climate change affects morning pees, but I’ll let you know as soon as I hear anything.

ETHAN: And lastly, the storm in Alaska. This one actually began as a tropical cyclone near Japan called Typhoon Merbok, but because this part of the Pacific Ocean is the warmest it’s been in recorded history going back over 100 years, it was able to pick up energy and moisture as it traveled north. This is the same exact process as how a hurricane forms, just in the Pacific instead of the Atlantic. I won’t quiz you on the Coriolis effect again, I promise. Ultimately, this storm was so strong that it made it all the way to Alaska on September 17th. Climate change warmed up the waters and melted a large amount of sea ice which would normally act as a buffer, so as a result, it turned out to be a historically bad storm for this time of year. Alaska saw hurricane-force winds, waves at or above 35 feet, and historic flooding, ripping homes from their foundations, destroying fresh water supplies, and leaving many people who had traveled for hunting and fishing season completely stranded. Remember, in Alaska, hunting and fishing aren’t sports, they’re how you feed your family. And as Merbok travels north, it also looks to be slamming into the jet stream and warping the winds in a weird way, which may send some really bizarre weather down into the continental U.S. as well.

ETHAN: Why did I want to try to cover three extreme weather events in one episode, besides to spend two days attempting to live out my dream of being Al Roker? In all three cases, I don’t think we were prepared nearly as much as we should have been. Rick Thoman of the University of Alaska Fairbanks wrote in an Op-Ed that the path of Typhoon Merbok was clear as early as September 12th — five days notice — but communities were only briefed a day or two before the storm, giving them no time to prepare. The heat wave could have seen better prep — we saw insufficient capacity at cooling centers, outdated air conditioning systems in schools, and wildfires causing evacuations and deaths, among other things.

ETHAN: And in Puerto Rico, several news stories reported that residents were “shocked” by the severity of the storm. Now, meteorologists weren’t expecting Fiona to intensify the way it did. However, Hurricane Maria was five years ago. Almost to the day. And there are still blue tarps on houses. There are still rolling blackouts, including an island-wide one earlier this year. And the areas that were quote-unquote “rebuilt” were not rebuilt well enough to handle another hurricane.

ETHAN: Even if there was an element of surprise in the formation and timing of these extreme weather events, we know Puerto Rico faces the threat of major hurricanes. We know the American West faces the threat of heat waves. We know Alaska faces the threat of storm surges. We know climate change makes all of it more intense and unpredictable. And most importantly, we know how to prepare, and we know that preparing costs less money and saves more lives than the alternative.

ETHAN: But as Idina Menzel once said, the past is in the past. So what comes next, besides belting out the most beautiful chorus in Disney history? The common thread between these three events that really stood out to me was the power grids. Like I said, Puerto Rico has still been seeing rolling blackouts five years after Maria. When Fiona hit, the entire island lost power, and two days after the storm, less than 10 percent of customers had their power restored. Without power, Puerto Ricans also have no running water. Those who could afford it bought generators after Maria, but even with that, we saw a case last week of a man dying trying to fill up his generator.

ETHAN: The bottom line is that Puerto Rico’s electric grid is nowhere close to being rebuilt following Maria, and I think it’s fair to say that the United States has done embarrassingly little to support the process. Remember, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens. They pay taxes here. They also have to defend the existence of Little Caesar’s when people from other countries ask. And yes, I looked it up, they do have Little Caesar’s in Puerto Rico. I encourage you to go back to Tip of the Iceberg episode 10 where our former sound editor and my friend Frank shared some of the sentiments on the island. I keep remembering from that conversation when he said, “we can’t take another Maria.” Well, here we are. I know creating a climate resilient electric grid is expensive and hard work, but again, it saves lives, helps communities, and is so much less expensive than the alternative.

ETHAN: In Alaska, there are remote villages that depend on electricity more than we can even fathom. This is the time of year where people are hunting and fishing. They need freezers to store that food for the winter to subsist. Some of these communities only have one grocery store. They run out of dino chicken nuggets and that’s it. In all seriousness though, if power goes out at the one and only grocery store, people are really screwed. Electricity also allows for running water, communicating with emergency officials, and more. This latest storm left many in Alaska without power, including entire towns. Again, we know these storms are coming and we know how damaging power outages can be especially in this part of the country. Even if this storm was historic, there was no reason to be caught off guard with an electric grid that couldn’t handle it.

ETHAN: On the surface, things may look better in the Western U.S. as far as electricity goes. California managed to avoid power outages during the heat wave. Barely, but they did. Credit where credit is due — California has invested heavily in clean energy, almost as much as they invested in Trey Lance. Currently, the grid has 150 times the battery capacity it did two years ago. Think about the last time you 150-tupled something in two years. Maybe armpit hair from ages 11 to 13? Embroideries from 2019 to 2021? Without that new battery capacity though, rolling blackouts in the state would have been all but a certainty. Solar energy also supplied roughly a quarter of California’s electricity during the day. And California sent text alerts to consumers asking them to conserve electricity between 4pm and 9pm, which were actually a major success. People obliged, and the lights stayed on as a result.

ETHAN: But I still have questions for The Golden State. (1) If Jimmy G wins the Super Bowl, what’s your plan? (2) Experts suggest people are only going to respond positively to an alert like that once or twice a year. How does the state avoid this emergency measure as much as possible in the future? (3) California is transitioning quickly toward electric cars, which for all their benefits, are a major suck on the grid. Can the state reach the electricity capacity needed to power vehicles during a long and intense heat wave? And (4) while clean energy proved very important in weathering this heat wave, so did natural gas. It’s like when people say their brownies are healthy because they used whole wheat flour. Yeah, you also used butter and sugar, and then dumped a bunch of chocolate chips in there! And why am I mad at you for making brownies, they’re delicious! But if California wants natural gas to continue to be a backup fuel source in these emergencies, how does that fit into a clean energy future? What does it mean for the gas industry, which would then need to remain economically viable? And if they don’t want to use natural gas, what’s the alternative? Is it batteries? Is it nuclear? Is it Jason Mantzoukas on a giant hamster wheel? Whatever it is, it has to be ready for the major electricity load required to handle these extreme events.

ETHAN: About a month ago, I came on here and said that the Atlantic hurricane season was historically quiet. I got messages from multiple friends saying I jinxed it. When Hurricane Danielle hit a few weeks ago, one friend sent me three angry emojis. And that was all in good fun, but as much as people may not have wanted to hear it, I’m glad I brought up the possibility of a bad hurricane before it happened. I wish more people had. Whether it’s an Atlantic hurricane, a storm in the North Pacific, or a heat wave, we need to acknowledge these possibilities and prepare for them. Climate change is a whole lot less stressful if we are prepared. And if people are willing to listen to Christmas music in September, I think we can get ahead on climate resilience too.

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ETHAN: The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. 

ETHAN: Welcome back to Tip of the Iceberg. Normally, this would be our Ask Me Anything segment. By the way, if you have any environmental questions, any questions about the news, do send them in. This was a really long opening segment though, so I’m going to skip Ask Me Anything this week in order to do a quick factual correction. These don’t happen much, but this was a rough one and I wanted to be sure we addressed it.

ETHAN: In the Rovuma Basin episode last month, we had said that the Rovuma Basin is a 39,767 square foot region in Northern Mozambique. That number was very incorrect. I’m not sure where it came from, but it is actually more like 64,000 square kilometers. 39,767 square feet is actually less than an acre, so that was way wrong. I’m really sorry about that one, usually I have a reason for why we got a fact wrong be it new science or something along those lines, but that was just a mistake, plain and simple. We’ll do a better job catching those moving forward.

ETHAN: By the way, if you ever catch a factual inaccuracy on the show, let me know! Doesn’t happen a lot, but I’ll always do these corrections if and when they come up. I’m more than happy to. And with that, thanks to all of you who listened to Tip of the Iceberg. Take two minutes, help out the show, and get a shoutout at the end of the show by leaving a five star rating and a review on Apple or Podcast Addict OR join our Patreon at patreon.com/thesweatypenguin. You get merch, bonus content, and your questions moved to the front of the line for Tip of the Iceberg. The Sweaty Penguin is presented by Peril and Promise: a public media initiative from The WNET Group in New York, reporting on the issues and solutions around climate change. You can learn more at pbs.org/perilandpromise. The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the host and guests. They do not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Peril and Promise or The WNET Group. Thank you all for listening, and I’ll see you on Friday for a deep dive on our fourth carbon bomb. We are heading to Texas for the Permian Basin, home to the highest emitting carbon bomb in the world. Very important episode, can’t wait to release it, so I will see you then.