Equilibrium — Californians brace for ‘parade of storms’ this week

by Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin - 01/09/23 5:52 PM ET

About 90 percent of Californians were under a flood watch on Monday as they braced for an incoming “parade of storms” set to batter the state this week.

Many parts of the Golden State can’t stand to “soak up another drop of rain” after a cyclone flooded roads, knocked down trees and cut off power supplies last week, CNN reported.

Nonetheless, some 34 million Californians — or 10 percent of the entire U.S. population — were weathering Monday’s flood watch, amid heavy winds and treacherous travel conditions, according to CNN.

“Two major episodes of heavy rain and heavy mountain snow are expected to impact California in quick succession during the next couple of days,” the National Weather Service’s Weather Storm Prediction Center warned on Monday morning.

“The parade of storms affecting California and the west is indicative of an overall progressive west to east flow pattern across the Lower 48,” the National Weather Service warned in a discussion post Monday afternoon.

Forecasters have warned of several inches of rain along the coast from one of the cyclones bringing precipitation into central California.

Meanwhile, the second episode is expected to arrive on Tuesday, reaching farther south but resulting in less severe impacts.

The Sierra Nevada could receive more than 6 feet of snow by Wednesday morning, the Weather Prediction Center warned.

These incoming events follow a string of debilitating storms that hit California last week, leaving at least two people dead and causing power losses for tens of thousands of households.

Welcome to Equilibrium, a newsletter that tracks the growing global battle over the future of sustainability. We’re Saul Elbein and Sharon Udasin. Subscribe here.

Today we’ll start with federal disaster aid being sent to California. Then we’ll see why New England is contending with skyrocketing electricity prices and look at the dangers facing Pakistani children months after monsoons battered their villages.

Feds to help in Calif. flood emergency: White House

President Biden declared an emergency in California on Monday in response to the severe winter storms, flooding and mudslides that have battered the state over the past weeks.

Under assault: At least 12 people have lost their lives to the succession of atmospheric rivers that have poured over California since late December, Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) office announced on Sunday.

Statewide shortfalls: Newsom on Sunday sent President Biden an official request for aid, highlighting the strain of the “sustained force and longevity” of these weather systems, which have ravaged state resources.

State, local and tribal agencies are now facing shortfalls in a wide array of emergency services — such as the ability to evacuate, shelter or treat large groups of people during or after the storm, the governor said.
The governor specifically requested help from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in clearing “debris flows from burn scars,” addressing “levee failures” and repairing damaged roads.

What Biden’s declaration means: The emergency declaration allows for added material and logistical support from the federal government, our colleague Alex Gangitano reported.

The move unlocks federal assistance and funds to augment local response efforts in some of California’s most populous counties, like Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino.
It also authorizes the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to coordinate disaster relief efforts.

Over the past two years the federal government has invested alongside California in improving hundreds of miles of levees and dozens of flood protection projects, the governor’s office stated.

During that time California itself spent $738 million on flood investments.
The governor will announce plans for another $202 million in flood funding as part of his 2023 budget proposal on Tuesday.

Turning on the faucet: Meteorologists say the train of storms now rolling over California is being pushed into the state by an enormous “blocking pattern” of warm, dry air, SFGate reported.

A blocking pattern is a meteorological phenomenon that occurs when a large, high-pressure system gets stuck in a particular location.
That stalled system blocks or redirects the movement of other weather systems around it, causing unusual periods of rain or drought.
Last winter, for example, another stalled system caused storms to swerve away from California, worsening the drought.

Flipping the switch: “It’s possible to think of this as just the opposite extreme from what we had last year, where a big, high-pressure system kept us dry,” meteorologist Alison Bridger told SFGate.

This year, “the jet stream is set up so that it’s bringing in these storms all the way across the Pacific more or less nonstop,” Bridger said.
“We’ve got at least another week’s worth coming, maybe almost two more weeks of this coming,” she added.

New England grapples with sky-high electricity prices

New Englanders are contending with some of the highest electricity rates in the country this winter as they weather the transatlantic ripple effects of a global gas crunch.

Expensive winter ahead: Residents of New England’s six states have thus far enjoyed a relatively mild winter without rolling blackouts.

But skyrocketing rates — fueled by natural gas price surges and the war in Ukraine — are taking a toll on a region accustomed to cranking up the heat.

Record highs: “Natural gas prices have not been this high in New England since 2008 — before the fracking revolution, mortgage crisis and Great Recession caused energy prices to crash,” Tanya Bodell, an energy adviser and partner at consulting firm StoneTurn, told Equilibrium.

What happened? New England began to face fierce competition from the European Union over liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies.

The struggle began when Russia starting curtailing pipeline gas to the EU in response to sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
With an uncertain winter on the horizon, the EU became a high-stakes bidder in the global race to stockpile LNG.
The bloc’s success in staving off an impending energy crisis has hit hard across the Atlantic, where residents rely heavily on gas to both power and heat their homes.

The pipeline problem: On-land natural gas pipelines can reach “peak delivery capacity during a subset of the coldest days in winter” — a challenge New England has typically tackled by seeking relief through LNG deliveries, Bodell explained.

Now, however, demand for the resource “has skyrocketed in response to sanctions on Russian energy,” she added.

A risky ‘binge’: Sam Evans-Brown, executive director of Clean Energy New Hampshire, attributed the region’s dependence on LNG to its “decade-long binge of building natural gas fired power plants” without the construction of new pipelines.

“We are wedded, we’re handcuffed, to the most expensive fuel in the world,” Evans-Brown told Equilibrium.
“That’s what’s going to set our electricity prices all winter long,” he added.

4M Pakistani children suffering after summer floods

About 4 million children in Pakistan are still living near potentially life-threatening flood waters, more than four months after monsoon rains washed away their villages, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Infections, malnutrition: These children are facing high rates of acute respiratory infections, exacerbated by the presence of contaminated and stagnant pools of water, UNICEF reported.

The number of children suffering from severe acute malnutrition from July to December nearly doubled in comparison to the same period the year before.
About 1.5 million children are still in need of lifesaving nutrition interventions.

Millions of kids at risk: “Children living in Pakistan’s flood-affected areas have been pushed to the brink,” Abdullah Fadil, UNICEF representative in Pakistan, said in a statement.

“The rains may have ended, but the crisis for children has not,” Fadil continued.
“Severe acute malnutrition, respiratory and water-borne diseases coupled with the cold are putting millions of young lives at risk,” he added.

An ‘apocalyptic’ summer: The summer floods in Pakistan claimed 1,700 lives and “left a territory the size of Switzerland under water,” the country’s prime minister, Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif, wrote in a Friday op-ed for The Guardian.

The weather events brought “apocalyptic” conditions to 33 million people on Friday.
More than 2 million homes, 14,000 kilometers (8,700 miles) of roads and 23,000 schools and clinics were destroyed.

Cold nights: In the southern region of Jacobabad, many families have little more than cloth to protect their makeshift homes from floodwaters, UNICEF reported.

Meanwhile, temperatures regularly plunge to 7 degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) at night.
Mountainous and high-altitude areas, which were also affected by the summer floods, are now also contending with snowfall and freezing temperatures.

Providing warmth and food: Thus far, UNICEF and its partners said they have begun providing warm clothing, jackets and blankets to about 200,000 children, women and men.

They have screened about 800,000 children for malnutrition, identifying 60,000 as suffering from secretly acute cases.
Those children have been referred for treatment with “ready-to-use therapeutic food,” an energy-dense micronutrient paste made of peanuts, sugar, milk powder, oil and vitamins.

To learn about other intervention activities that have already occurred and what’s needed in the short-term, please click here.

Logging’s long shadow

Tropical forests where logging has taken place continue to release carbon for at least a decade after the chainsaws stop, a new study has found.

Checking the books: Policymakers need to reassess the role of forests in their climate math, the study’s lead author Maria Mills, a tropical ecologist working at the time for Imperial College London, said in a statement.

Forests are generally seen as continual carbon sponges, pulling carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
But heavily logged forests continued to vent carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for at least a decade after logging stopped, according to the study, published on Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

How did the scientists track this? By getting above the canopy.

The researchers took measurements from a 52-foot tower to track the balance between carbon dioxide rising from — and being absorbed into — previously logged forests on the island of Borneo in Southeast Asia.
Then they compared emissions from logged forests with those from unlogged, old growth forests — which are generally carbon neutral.
In neither case did they find that the forests were storing carbon.

Wakeup call: “We can no longer apply the blanket assumption that they are carbon sinks,” Mills added, referring to forests.

Monday Miscellanies

The ozone layer appears to be on the mend, the upside of fish parasites and Chinese Tesla owners are angry about new discounts.

Ozone layer may be recovering: UN

United Nations scientists revealed on Monday that the ozone layer — the atmospheric shield that prevents harmful ultraviolet light from reaching the Earth’s surface — is on the road to recovery, our colleague Rachel Frazin reported. The ozone layer will likely return to its 1980 levels over the next several decades, the researchers determined.

Fewer fish parasites is — bad news?

Fish parasites are in steep decline in the warming waters of the Pacific Northwest — which is good news for fish but bad news for top predators like orcas and broader ecosystems, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The parasites move energy through ecosystems in a way that ultimately supports “top apex predators,” said fisheries scientist Chelsea Wood of University of Washington.

Chinese Tesla buyers feeling remorse

Tesla showrooms across China have faced hundreds of irate owners demanding money back after the company slashed prices last month to well below what they had paid, Reuters reported. The steep discount — the second in three months — “may be a normal business practice but this is not how a responsible enterprise should behave,” one owner told Reuters.

Please visit The Hill’s Sustainability section online for more and check out other newsletters here. We’ll see you tomorrow.