(Illustration: California drought from April 2020 to April this year, and found here).

Although the Joe Biden administration is attempting a full-throttle fight against the searing, on-going, rapidly-accelerating climate-change phenomenon, the heating of the planet continues with wide-ranging consequences.
Here in California the obvious effect is water — there’s barely any, which leads to our current worsening condition of drought.
A situation dangerous not only in terms of rain and drinking water, but shitty forest fires later in the summer. Last year was the pits, literally, with 31 deaths, more than 10,000 buildings destroyed or damaged, and burned a way-massive 4.1-million acres.
And this summer is reportedly to be no cake-walk, either: ‘There’s some evidence that climate change is increasing the incidence of lightning as the atmosphere becomes hotter at the surface and less stable, boosting the risk of thunderstorms.‘
A noted igniter for those fires, next to the primary fire-starters, asshole humans, of course — forest fires are sparked usually on weekends or holidays, so what can you scream about?

In terms of the drought, we’re going to bake here in California’s Central Valley where I live (also called the San Joaquin Valley, or from old TV, “The Big Valley,” with the original kick-ass female, Barbara Stanwyck) and it’s not going to be pretty — already upon us as it’s suppose to be in the mid-90s today and we’re off to a scorching pre-summer run.
A drought update via NBCLA yesterday:

The latest U.S. Drought Monitor update released Thursday shows nearly all of California is in some stage of drought as the state braces for dry and hot summer.

The weekly report shows 97.5-percent of California is in some stage of drought. The southwest corner of the state is in a pre-drought condition that the Monitor calls abnormally dry.

At this time last year, only 41.5-percent of California was in one of the drought categories.

The most recent report show 87.95-percent of the state in severe drought and 52.86-percent in extreme drought, including most of Los Angeles, Ventura and San Bernardino counties.
A swath of the state along the Nevada border entered the most serious stage — exceptional drought.

Earlier this month, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a drought emergency in two Northern California counties in response to arid conditions affecting much of the state and the U.S. West and an abnormally dry winter.
The declaration is targeted to Mendocino and Sonoma counties, where drought conditions are especially severe.
…
About three-quarters of the American West is in what is called a megadrought, with critical waterways like the Colorado River and Rio Grande that supply millions of people and farms expected to have dismally low flows this year.

And it’s still early yet. It’s going to be a long haul to next October/November when the rainy season (?) is supposed to begin, but because of so many environmental factors, who really knows and can predict what kind of shit will happen.

Meanwhile, the world itself continues to bake, but there’s some hope — maybe:

? This @NASA animation shows how temperature anomalies have shifted over the past 70 years.

?? This year, countries must describe the actions they plan to take in the next decade to halt this trend & limit global average temperature rise to 1.5°C #COP26 #ItsPossible | @COP26 pic.twitter.com/ayyu9KYToA

— UN Climate Change (@UNFCCC) April 29, 2021

Despite the increased awareness, a partisan and divided world, especially here in the US, will make it harder to get anything done to really put a hammer on climate change — look at COVID-19 and how the entire planet can’t get its shit together, though, the problem is right in front of us.
Climate change is subtle, slow-evolving (in the past, not so now) and does’t yet demand everyone’s attention. Due to storms, floods and increased natural disasters in the last few years, people have developed a more-open respect for global warming, but will it be enough?
The bottom facts of acceleration (per NASA): ‘The planet’s average surface temperature has risen about 2.12 degrees Fahrenheit (1.18 degrees Celsius) since the late 19th century, a change driven largely by increased carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere and other human activities. Most of the warming occurred in the past 40 years, with the seven most recent years being the warmest. The years 2016 and 2020 are tied for the warmest year on record.‘

And the biggest hurdle is knowledge — no one really knows for sure what will happen in the next, few short years. One common thread I’ve witnessed in keeping up with climate-change news is the disclaimer-like phrase usually attached to studies, research and reports no matter the envirnmental subject matter, be it methane releases from under permafrost, or sea-level rise, or maybe tropical rainforsts no longer carbon sinks, and on and on — the study/report indicates the situation is worse than originally figured. Which leads to something like this from last year: ‘Worst-case global heating scenarios may need to be revised upwards in light of a better understanding of the role of clouds, scientists have said.‘

So it is today with a warning — from the Guardian this morning:

An Antarctic glacier larger than the UK is at risk of breaking up after scientists discovered more warm water flowing underneath it than previously thought.

The fate of Thwaites — nicknamed the doomsday glacier — and the massive west Antarctic ice sheet it supports are the biggest unknown factors in future global sea level rise.

Over the past few years, teams of scientists have been crisscrossing the remote and inaccessible region on Antarctica’s western edge to try to understand how fast the ice is melting and what the consequences for the rest of the world might be.

“What happens in west Antarctica is of great societal importance,” said Dr Robert Larter, a scientist with the British Antarctic Survey and principal investigator with the International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, the most ambitious research project ever carried out in Antarctica.
“This is the biggest uncertainty in future sea level rise.”
…
The worst-case scenarios for Thwaites are grim.
It is the widest glacier on the planet, more than 1km deep and holds enough ice to raise the sea level by 65cm.

Ice loss has accelerated in the last 30 years and it now contributes about 4-percent of all global sea level rise.
Experts say this could increase dramatically if the ice at the front of Thwaites breaks up, with knock-on effects for other glaciers in the area.

To heighten scientists’ concerns, west Antarctica has been one of the fastest-warming place on Earth in the past 30 years, and since 2000 it has lost more than 1tn tons of ice.
…
Ella Gilbert, a research scientist at the University of Reading, said what was happening in the polar regions demanded an urgent response from the international community.

“The polar regions are the canary in the coalmine — they are the symbol of climate change,” said Gilbert, who was a joint author of a recent study warning of the catastrophic impact of global heating on Antarctic ice.

“We really do need to minimise our emissions because if we lose the polar regions, not only are we going to amplify climate change … it will contribute to sea level rise which affects everyone around the globe.”

Key word there, ‘uncertainty.’ So onward…

(Illustration found here).