SIMON: Nathan Rott, a member of NPR's climate team, thanks so much, Nate. And Scott, bad news - the world has already warmed 1.1 degrees right now. It showed that a failure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, which is what the entire world is aiming for, could result in irreversible effects like the collapse of ice sheets and the death of the world's coral reefs. A new study published this week by an international group of scientists really drove that point home.
What we definitely can say, though, is that these types of extreme events are going to happen more frequently and more intensely the more greenhouse gas emissions we release into the atmosphere. It's too soon to have any attribution science, which is where researchers basically look at a specific event and try to see if there are any linkages to human-caused warming. For this tropical storm, for the heat wave, it's definitely harder to say. ROTT: We can absolutely attribute the increase in extreme wildfires in California and the broader West, you know, at least partially to human-caused climate change. SIMON: What can you tell us about if or how these other events that we're talking about are also linked to climate change? And remember, Scott, this is all happening on a landscape that's dealing with a climate-change-fueled megadrought, the worst that scientists say that the area has experienced in at least 1,200 years. Records were broken not just here, but in other parts of the West, like Colorado and Utah. Parts of California have seen triple-digit temperatures pretty much all week. SIMON: And, of course, all this follows, really just by a few hours, an utterly brutal heat wave. And of course, there is the risk of debris flows from all of this rain over recently burnt areas. And there's still a risk of new fires starting from those downed power lines I mentioned. From what we've heard so far this morning, though, it looks like the storm actually ended up helping firefighters by delivering some much needed moisture to the area. There were some concerns Friday that the winds from the storm could actually really fan the flames of the largest fire here in Southern California, causing emergency officials to expand evacuation orders around it. SIMON: Despite all that rain, though, there are still wildfires, I gather. And that's been causing some localized flash flooding. Some of those mountain communities east of San Diego also saw just incredible amounts of rain with some places getting more than 4 inches. Power utilities were reporting issues with downed power lines and trees.
You know, wind speeds of over 100 miles per hour have been recorded on some mountaintops outside of San Diego. ROTT: Yeah, it has been an exceptional week of weather here, this tropical storm capping it off. It's not unprecedented for that kind of system to hit California, but it's rare. It's been downgraded from a tropical storm. SIMON: And let's start with that storm system, please. NATHAN ROTT, BYLINE: Yeah, happy to be here. NPR's Nathan Rott is in Southern California and joins us. Now the state contends with a tropical storm that hit the Baja peninsula yesterday. A record-setting heat wave fueled wildfires and threatened the power grid. California's weather has been extreme lately in just about every possible way.
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