Rebecca Hersher
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Three of those states smashed their previous record by more than two degrees.
Forecasters say 2026 is very likely to clock in as one of the seven warmest years for the planet as a whole.
The Earth is rapidly warming up because humans are burning fossil fuels, which release pollution that traps extra heat in the Earth's atmosphere.
When history repeats itself 11 times...
It is no longer a coincidence.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency is supposed to help respond to weather disasters, including assisting with search and rescue operations and debris removal.
But the agency is struggling to get disaster assistance money out the door, with millions of dollars in promised disaster funding delayed.
That includes large grants that local governments rely on to pay emergency officials and local first responders.
And FEMA has lost thousands of workers since the Trump administration began.
including nearly 500 in January alone.
FEMA did not respond to questions about its readiness to respond to the latest storms.
Usually, freezing cold air is trapped up in the polar regions.
The jet stream keeps the cold air trapped up there.
But when the jet stream gets weaker, cold air can escape south, deep into the continental U.S.
That's what's expected to happen next week.
Scientists are actively trying to understand whether climate change makes such events more likely.
Some studies suggest the jet stream is getting weaker as the Earth warms, while others find no such relationship.