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Climate Change Made South Sudan Heat Wave More Likely, Study Finds

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Friday, March 7, 2025

After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital city caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat.Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least one week of that heat wave 10 times as likely, and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new study by World Weather Attribution. Temperatures in some parts of the region soared above 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last week of February.The analysis used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed but are based on standardized methods.South Sudan, in the tropical band of East Africa, was torn apart by a civil war that led to independence from Sudan in 2011. It’s also one of the countries least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the globe. “The continent has contributed a tiny fraction of global emissions, but is bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.Heat waves are one of the deadliest extreme weather events and have become more frequent and more severe on a warming planet. But analysis methods connecting heat to mortality vary between and within countries, and death tolls can be underreported and are often unknown for months after an event.Prolonged heat is particularly dangerous for children, older adults and pregnant women. For the last three weeks, extreme heat has settled over a large region of continental Eastern Africa, including parts of Kenya and Uganda. Residents have been told to stay indoors and drink water, a difficult directive for countries where many people work outdoors, electricity is sporadic, access to clean water is difficult and modest housing means there are few cooling systems.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Years of war and food insecurity in the region made the extreme heat especially dangerous.

After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital city caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat.

Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least one week of that heat wave 10 times as likely, and 2 degrees Celsius hotter, according to a new study by World Weather Attribution. Temperatures in some parts of the region soared above 42 degrees Celsius, or 107 degrees Fahrenheit, in the last week of February.

The analysis used weather data, observations and climate models to get the results, which have not been peer reviewed but are based on standardized methods.

South Sudan, in the tropical band of East Africa, was torn apart by a civil war that led to independence from Sudan in 2011. It’s also one of the countries least responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the globe. “The continent has contributed a tiny fraction of global emissions, but is bearing the brunt of climate change,” said Joyce Kimutai, a researcher at the Center for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London.

Heat waves are one of the deadliest extreme weather events and have become more frequent and more severe on a warming planet. But analysis methods connecting heat to mortality vary between and within countries, and death tolls can be underreported and are often unknown for months after an event.

Prolonged heat is particularly dangerous for children, older adults and pregnant women. For the last three weeks, extreme heat has settled over a large region of continental Eastern Africa, including parts of Kenya and Uganda. Residents have been told to stay indoors and drink water, a difficult directive for countries where many people work outdoors, electricity is sporadic, access to clean water is difficult and modest housing means there are few cooling systems.

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America's Butterflies Are Disappearing At 'Catastrophic' Rate, Study Says

The number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, according to new research.

WASHINGTON (AP) — America’s butterflies are disappearing because of insecticides, climate change and habitat loss, with the number of the winged beauties down 22% since 2000, a new study finds.The first countrywide systematic analysis of butterfly abundance found that the number of butterflies in the Lower 48 states has been falling on average 1.3% a year since the turn of the century, with 114 species showing significant declines and only nine increasing, according to a study in Thursday’s journal Science.“Butterflies have been declining the last 20 years,” said study co-author Nick Haddad, an entomologist at Michigan State University. “And we don’t see any sign that that’s going to end.”A team of scientists combined 76,957 surveys from 35 monitoring programs and blended them for an apples-to-apples comparison and ended up counting 12.6 million butterflies over the decades. Last month an annual survey that looked just at monarch butterflies, which federal officials plan to put on the threatened species list, counted a nearly all-time low of fewer than 10,000, down from 1.2 million in 1997.Many of the species in decline fell by 40% or more.David Wagner, a University of Connecticut entomologist who wasn’t part of the study, praised its scope. And he said while the annual rate of decline may not sound significant, it is “catastrophic and saddening” when compounded over time.“In just 30 or 40 years we are talking about losing half the butterflies (and other insect life) over a continent!” Wagner said in an email. “The tree of life is being denuded at unprecedented rates.”The United States has 650 butterfly species, but 96 species were so sparse they didn’t show up in the data and another 212 species weren’t found in sufficient number to calculate trends, said study lead author Collin Edwards, an ecologist and data scientist at the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.“I’m probably most worried about the species that couldn’t even be included in the analyses” because they were so rare, said University of Wisconsin-Madison entomologist Karen Oberhauser, who wasn’t part of the research. Haddad, who specializes in rare butterflies, said in recent years he has seen just two endangered St. Francis Satyr butterflies — which only live on a bomb range at Fort Bragg in North Carolina — “so it could be extinct.” Some well-known species had large drops. The red admiral, which is so calm it lands on people, is down 44% and the American lady butterfly, with two large eyespots on its back wings, decreased by 58%, Edwards said. Even the invasive white cabbage butterfly, “a species that is well adapted to invade the world,” according to Haddad, fell by 50%. “How can that be?” Haddad wondered.Cornell University butterfly expert Anurag Agrawal said he worries most about the future of a different species: Humans.“The loss of butterflies, parrots and porpoises is undoubtedly a bad sign for us, the ecosystems we need and the nature we enjoy,” Agrawal, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email. “They are telling us that our continent’s health is not doing so well ... Butterflies are an ambassador for nature’s beauty, fragility and the interdependence of species. They have something to teach us.”Oberhauser said butterflies connect people with nature and that “calms us down, makes us healthier and happier and promotes learning.”What’s happening to butterflies in the United States is probably happening to other, less-studied insects across the continent and world, Wagner said. He said not only is this the most comprehensive butterfly study, but the most data-rich for any insect.Butterflies are also pollinators, though not as prominent as bees, and are a major source of pollination of the Texas cotton crop, Haddad said.The biggest decrease in butterflies was in the Southwest — Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma — where the number of butterflies dropped by more than half in the 20 years.“It looks like the butterflies that are in dry and warm areas are doing particularly poorly,” Edwards said. “And that kind of captures a lot of the Southwest.”Edwards said when they looked at butterfly species that lived both in the hotter South and cooler North, the ones that did better were in the cooler areas.Climate change, habitat loss and insecticides tend to work together to weaken butterfly populations, Edwards and Haddad said. Of the three, it seems that insecticides are the biggest cause, based on previous research from the U.S. Midwest, Haddad said.“It makes sense because insecticide use has changed in dramatic ways in the time since our study started,” Haddad said.Habitats can be restored and so can butterflies, so there’s hope, Haddad said.“You can make changes in your backyard and in your neighborhood and in your state,” Haddad said. “That could really improve the situation for a lot of species.”Follow Seth Borenstein on X at @borenbearsThe Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Climate
Extinction
Health

Switzerland told it must do better on climate after older women’s ECHR win

Council of Europe says Swiss government failing to respect human rights court’s ruling on emissionsEurope live – latest updatesThe Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision by the European court of human rights last year that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case. Continue reading...

The Swiss government has been told it must do more to show that its national climate plans are ambitious enough to comply with a landmark legal ruling.The Council of Europe’s committee of ministers, in a meeting this week, decided that Switzerland was not doing enough to respect a decision by the European court of human rights last year that it must do more to cut its greenhouse gas emissions and rejected the government’s plea to close the case.The KlimaSeniorinnen organisation of more than 2,000 older Swiss women successfully argued that its members’ rights to privacy and family life were being breached because they were particularly vulnerable to the health impacts of heatwaves.It was seen as a historic decision in Europe, where it was the court’s first ruling on climate, with direct ramifications for all 46 Council of Europe member states. It has also influenced climate litigation around the world.However, there was resistance within Switzerland from the start, and by the summer the Swiss federal council had rebuffed the ruling.While it acknowledged the importance of the underlying European convention on human rights, the Swiss government said the court’s interpretation was too broad in extending it to the climate crisis and in accepting a complaint from an organisation.It claimed it was already doing enough to cut national emissions, and submitted an “action report” in October rather than the required action plan. This maintained that the judgment did not require it to set specific carbon budgets and that there was no internationally recognised method for doing so.The committee of ministers, which is responsible for upholding the judgment, noted this week that Switzerland had closed some legislative gaps, including revising its CO2 act and setting goals up to 2030.But it invited Switzerland to provide more information showing how its climate framework aligned with the court’s ruling, “through a carbon budget or otherwise, of national greenhouse gas emissions limitations”. The committee took note of methodologies put forward by a broad coalition of NGOs to calculate this.Georg Klingler, a project coordinator and climate campaigner at Greenpeace, which supported the Swiss women’s case, said this essentially meant setting budgets that reflect Switzerland’s “fair share” of emission reductions in line with the Paris agreement’s goal of limiting warming to under 1.5C. That could mean toughening up existing goals, he said.The Swiss government was also told to keep the committee of ministers informed about planned adaptation measures to protect vulnerable citizens during events such as heatwaves. And it must provide “concrete examples” of citizens’ involvement in developing climate policies. Switzerland has until September to provide this information.skip past newsletter promotionThe planet's most important stories. Get all the week's environment news - the good, the bad and the essentialPrivacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.after newsletter promotionThe KlimaSeniorinnen co-president Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti welcomed the decision. She called on the Swiss federal council and parliament “to take the dangers of global warming seriously and finally take decisive action against the climate crisis”.Sébastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, said European governments had “reaffirmed the rule of law”. “The decision … makes clear that the Swiss federal council must fulfil its legal obligation to protect its citizens’ human rights by ramping up its climate ambition.”Başak Çalı, a professor of international law at the Oxford Bonavero Institute of Human Rights, said: “It is a good day for respect for European court judgments and international law. This decision also shows just how important international institutions – such as the European court – are for helping to improve the lives of people everywhere.”In a statement, the Swiss federal government said the “competent authorities” would analyse the decision and determine what further information they would submit, adding: “The aim is to demonstrate that Switzerland is complying with the climate policy requirements of the ruling.”

Climate
Government
Health

Blackbird deaths point to looming West Nile virus threat in the UK

Mosquito-borne diseases like West Nile virus could become a growing concern in the UK and other northern European nations as the climate warms, with a virus affecting blackbirds showing how these pathogens can take hold

Blackbird numbers have fallen in the UK as the Usutu virus has taken holdYtje Veenstra/Shutterstock A deadly virus is killing blackbirds across the UK. Beyond the risk to the birds, its spread indicates that mosquito-borne viruses now pose a growing threat to humans and animals in the country, in part as a result of climate change. The virus in question, Usutu, originated in South Africa in 1959 but is now widespread in Europe. It causes deadly disease in certain bird species, particularly blackbirds, and was first detected in the UK in 2020. In some parts of the country, most notably London, blackbird populations have dropped by more than 40 per cent since 2018. “We first noticed the decline at the same time as Usutu popped up,” says Hugh Hanmer at the British Trust for Ornithology.  Although devastating for bird life, Usutu poses a low risk to humans and mammals. Infections in people are rare and generally only cause a mild fever, but the arrival of the virus in the UK marked the first time a mosquito-borne viral zoonosis – a disease that can be transmitted from an animal to a human – had emerged in animal hosts in the country. Virus experts are keeping a close watch on how far and fast the disease is spreading because it could be a template for the future spread of other mosquito-borne diseases.   For example, the West Nile virus spreads in the same way as Usutu and requires the same environmental conditions. “The same mosquitoes that can transmit Usutu typically can transmit West Nile, and the same birds which act as hosts [for Usutu] can also act as hosts of West Nile,” says Arran Folly at the UK’s Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA).  Humans can also be infected by West Nile virus from a mosquito bite, but its symptoms can be more severe than those of Usutu. Around 20 per cent of those infected will experience symptoms, which include fever, headache, body aches, vomiting and diarrhoea. In rare cases, the virus can cause serious inflammation of the brain and spinal cord, which can be fatal. There is no known human vaccine. Climate change has helped accelerate the spread of West Nile virus through northern and eastern Europe, research shows, as the virus thrives in warm summer temperatures. In the Netherlands, Usutu was first detected in 2016 and West Nile virus followed in 2020. UK officials fear a similar pattern will play out in their country, with studies demonstrating that the climate there is becoming increasingly hospitable to mosquito-borne viruses. “The idea is that, if we have Usutu here, West Nile is probably going to come at some point and is likely to persist, given the right conditions,” says Folly. In response to the threat, APHA launched a project in 2023 to track the emergence and transmission pathways of Usutu and other mosquito-borne viruses in wild birds. This virus-tracing infrastructure will be vital if the country is to respond quickly to West Nile’s arrival, says Folly. “Our real goal, or drive from a governmental point of view, is to be able to detect these [new viruses] circulating in animal populations before we get transmission to humans.” Reina Sikkema at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam has been studying the emergence of Usutu and West Nile virus in the Netherlands. Although West Nile hasn’t been detected since 2022, she believes the virus is circulating at a low level, kept in check currently by the country’s relatively cool climate. “I believe it is present, but it needs the right circumstances to flare up,” she says. A UK detection of West Nile is now all but inevitable, says Sikkema, but she believes similar climatic factors could prevent the virus spreading too widely for now. But rising summer temperatures, including the increasing frequency of tropical nights – which the UK’s Met Office weather agency defines as when minimum temperatures fail to fall below 20°C – could change the picture in the UK, the Netherlands and other northern European nations in coming years, warns Sikkema. “Mosquito-borne disease is not [just] on your Spanish holiday or when you go to the South Americas,” says Folly. As well as the potential risk of West Nile virus to people, Folly says we shouldn’t forget what Usutu is doing to the UK’s blackbirds: “If 40 per cent of humans dropped dead in Greater London, you’d know about it quite quickly.”

Climate
Animals
Health

Study tells California legislators to declare war on red tape — but will they?

California needs to "facilitate new construction at an unprecedented scale" to solve housing, water and climate issues, a legislative report says.

Construction of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge and its more famous cousin, the Golden Gate Bridge, began in 1933, and both were carrying traffic by 1937. The 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake severely damaged the Bay Bridge, leading to a decision to replace its eastern section rather than merely repair or refit it. However state and local politicians argued for more than a decade over design of the new section and how to pay for it. Construction finally began in 2002 and was finished 11 years later — nearly four times as long as the entire bridge took — at a cost of $6.5 billion, the costliest public works project in California history. The Bay Bridge saga exemplifies how California, which once taught the world how to build things, lost its mojo by erecting so many political, legal and financial hurdles to getting things done. Sixty-plus years ago, the state’s water managers proposed a canal around the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to complete the state project that carries water from the northern part of the state to the southern. As the years rolled by, the project languished. Eventually it was revised to twin tunnels and more recently to a single tunnel, but construction, if it ever occurs, is still many years away. Lesser projects suffer from the same political and procedural sclerosis. It can take years, or even decades, for large-scale housing projects, electric generation facilities and desalination plants to traverse the thickets of permits from federal, state and local agencies. Even small housing projects are subject to lengthy entanglements in red tape as costs escalate. A newly released report from a special legislative committee declares that to deal with housing, homelessness, water supply and climate change issues, California “will need to facilitate new construction at an unprecedented scale. “This includes millions of housing units, thousands of gigawatts of clean energy generation, storage, and transmission capacity, a million electric vehicle chargers and thousands of miles of transit, and thousands of climate resiliency projects to address drought, flooding and sea level rise, and changing habitats.” However, it continues, “each of these projects will require a government-issued permit before they can be built — and some will require dozens! Therefore, only if governments consistently issue permits in a manner that is timely, transparent, consistent, and outcomes-oriented will we be able to address our housing and climate crises. Unfortunately, for most projects, the opposite is true. They face permitting processes that are time consuming, opaque, confusing, and favor process over outcomes.” Read Next Housing Should builders permit their own projects? Post-fire LA considers a radical idea by Ben Christopher The Legislature itself erected many of these procedural barriers — most notably by passing the California Environmental Quality Act more than a half-century ago — and the Legislature is controlled by regulation-prone Democrats, so it’s remarkable that such a report would be issued. The California Assembly Select Committee on Permitting Reform spent months talking to those who have been affected by California’s permit-happy system, as well as experts on specific kinds of projects, before reaching a conclusion that sounds like it came from conservative Republicans. “It is too damn hard to build anything in California,” Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks, an Oakland Democrat who chaired the committee, said in a statement. “Our broken permitting system is driving up the cost of housing, the cost of energy, and even the cost of inaction on climate change. “If we’re serious about making California more affordable, sustainable, and resilient, we have to make it easier to build housing, clean energy, public transportation, and climate adaptation projects. This report makes it clear: the system isn’t working, and it’s on us to fix it.” Yes it is — and we’ll see whether the report has legs or winds up in the discard bin like so many other governance reform proposals. Read More Environment California lawmakers want to cut red tape to ramp up clean energy but rural communities push back December 13, 2024December 16, 2024 Housing ‘Too damn hard to build’:  A key California Democrat’s push for speedier construction March 4, 2025March 6, 2025

Climate
Water
Government

Coral Reefs in Vietnam Face Collapse. Can Conservation Efforts Turn the Tide?

The coral reefs of Nha Trang, Vietnam, are in severe decline due to climate change, overfishing, and pollution

NHA TRANG, Vietnam (AP) — The gentle waves off the coast of central Vietnam's Nha Trang obscure an open secret: The life-giving coral reefs below are dying. The waters are eerily devoid of fish. The bounty of the ocean is coming to an end.This is why Binh Van — who fished in these waters for over two decades — now charters his boat to Vietnamese tourists wanting to experience the thrill of fishing in the deep waters of the South China Sea. But there is only squid, which is flourishing in oceans warmed by climate change, to catch. His passengers don’t mind as the boat moves away from Nha Trang’s twinkling beach resorts. But Van is pensive.It wasn't always like this. There was a time when he'd catch 70 kilograms (154 pounds) of fish, like tuna and grouper, in one night. He can't make money on the squid.“Now I usually go home empty-handed,” he said.Southeast Asia's coral reefs make up over a third of the world's coral reefs and are part of the ‘Coral Triangle', a richly biodiverse marine area that generally stretches from the Philippines to Indonesia to the Solomon Islands. But most of these are now at risk of being destroyed. Only 1% of Vietnam's reefs are still healthy, and in those cases it's because of their remoteness, according to the World Resources Institute. Reefs worldwide are at risk from warmer and more acidic waters that weaken coral reefs and result in them bleaching because they've expelled the algae that helps them survive. Bleached corals need time to recover but bleaching events — when many corals lose color at the same time — are happening more frequently because of climate change, said Clint Oakley, who studies corals at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand.“It’s a compounding problem. It takes more than a year for them to fully recover,” he said.The coral reefs of Nha Trang have also had to contend with local pressures as Vietnam’s economy boomed and coastal towns grew. Sediment from construction harms corals. Runoff from agriculture, sewage and booming aquaculture trigger algal blooms that block sunlight and choke corals. Intense overfishing killed off fishes that support reef health. By 2019, an outbreak of a predatory, thorny starfish — made likelier because of the reef's disturbed ecological balance — had killed nearly 90% by eating corals of the surviving reefs by 2019, said Konstantin S. Tkachenko, a professor of marine ecology at Russia’s Samara University who has been studying Vietnam's reefs for years.This has affected not only the local fishing industry — reefs provide food, shelter, and breeding grounds for fish — but also Vietnam’s tourism industry, especially among divers from all over the world who flock to the Southeast Asian country because of its long coastline. The underwater landscape is becoming infamous for different types of waste: Glass bottles where revelers party, nylon fishing lines where fishing boats lurk and plastic everywhere. Fish that clean reefs and keep them healthy by eating algae or parasites, like the distinctive Picasso triggerfish and the beaked Indian parrotfish, have disappeared, said Michael Blum of Rainbow Divers, a diving company in Vietnam.“When you don’t have the cleaners, the (reefs) suffocate,” he said. He and others have been diving every Friday to collect waste since October, bringing up more than 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of trash.Niecey Alexander, a tourist who began diving in December, said that it wasn't until she was underwater that she realized how small the world above water is compared to the vast ocean and the life it sustains. After her first dive to collect waste she said that it was mostly from tourism. “People not really thinking about waste when they're going into these adventures,” she said.Tourism and reefs can go hand in hand if they're well-managed, said Emma Camp, a coral expert at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. She said that there are instances of tourism supporting marine conservation and programs to help reefs recover. But unsustainable tourism practices — too many people, or people doing things like dropping their anchors on the reefs — can cause harm.“They can be very positive for an area, allowing people to fall in love with a reef by allowing them to experience it firsthand,” she said.Preserving the tourism brochure image of its natural beauty will be crucial for Vietnam as it tries to compete with its neighbors to boost post-pandemic revenue from tourism to $42 billion. It wants to attract 23 million international tourists and over 120 million visits by domestic tourists in 2025. For context, the region's most popular destination, Thailand, wants 40 million international visitors and 200 million domestic visits in 2025.And in cities like Nha Trang, its long stretches of golden sand beaches and traditional fishing villages now coexist with the rapid construction of resorts, restaurants and bars. Vietnam insists that it is making efforts to make tourism sustainable. In 2001, it established 160 square kilometers (61 square miles) of land and water as its first protected marine area. But problems have persisted, from destructive practices that used explosives or poison to excessive tourism and coastal construction, said Vietnamese state media. In 2022, local authorities paused tourism to give the reef time to recover while removing predatory starfish and cleaning the seabed. The government has also approved a coral nursery project to support the recovery of the ecosystem.But even though a marine patrol was established to protect the waters to ensure that fishermen don't enter the marine park, Blum said fishing in the protected area was continuing.“We go out in the morning, we are chasing the fishing boats away. We leave in the afternoon, and the fishing boats are coming back in,” Blum said.Tkachenko, the Russian scientist, said the Southeast Asian country could do more to protect them. It could create more marine parks where protections are actually enforced, obligate the tourism industry to restore vegetation on the coasts to reduce sediment pouring into the ocean, restore degraded reefs through coral culture and by introducing animals that balance reef ecosystems, and regulating fisheries.He pointed to the scores of fishing vessels that dot the coasts of Nha Trang. “What do you think is the chance to survive for any tiny fish or sea bottom inhabitant under such tremendous fishing pressure daily?” he said.Ghosal reported from Hanoi, Vietnam.The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.Photos You Should See - Feb. 2025

Climate
Conservation
Animals

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Climate
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