1352 21 DECEMBER 2018 • VOL 36 2 ISSUE 6421 sciencemag.org SCIENCEBREAKDOWNS OF THE YEAR What went wrong in the world of science in 2 018
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evastating wildfires in the west-
ern United States and northern
Europe. A record heat wave in
southern Europe. Hurricanes,
cyclones, and flooding in the
Americas and the eastern Pacific
Ocean. For many, this was the
year climate change hit home. Climate-
influenced disasters have grown stronger
and lasted longer. As the latest iteration of
the U.S. National Climate Assessment put
it in November: “The evidence of human-
caused climate change is overwhelming ...
[and] the impacts of climate change are
intensifying across the country.”
Several modern records will be broken
this year, as they have been inexorably year
after year. The overall temperature of the
world’s oceans—the best thermometer for
the planet itself—is the highest it has been
since record keeping began. Ocean levels
are some 8 centimeters higher than in the
1990 s—and the rise is accelerating. And
global greenhouse gas emissions will again
hit an all-time high, likely rising by more
than 2% over last year.
Yet, as the evidence—enumerated in a
series of alarming scientific reports this
fall—has mounted, the gap between what
the world needs to do and what it is doing
seems wider and starker than ever. In theUnited States, President Donald Trump
has disputed the science of human-driven
climate change, sought to roll back most
of the climate-focused policies that his
predecessor enacted, and stood firm in his
intent to pull the United States out of the
Paris agreement, the international deal to
curb greenhouse gas emissions. The White
House even tried to downplay the National
Climate Assessment, a report mandated by
Congress and endorsed by government sci-
ence agencies. “I do not believe it,” Trump
said when asked about estimated economic
impacts; his spokesperson Sarah Sanders
called the report “extreme” and “not based
on facts.” “The federal government is
constructing an alternative reality,” says
Phil Duffy, president of the Woods Hole Re-
search Center in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
“They’re in la-la land.”
The United States is not alone. “Each
year that goes by with lack of action and
leadership in the U.S., more and more coun-
tries around the world have an excuse for
stepping back,” says Kelly Sims Gallagher,
director of Tufts University’s Center for In-
ternational Environment & Resource Policy
in Medford, Massachusetts. For example,
Brazil’s incoming president, Jair Bolsonaro,
has promised to open Amazonian rainfor-
est for development, potentially releasinga rush of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions.
China is once again focusing more on prob-
lems such as clean air rather than carbon
emissions, and even the European Union is
distracted by internal upheavals.
The costs of decades of little or no action
are becoming manifest as the “natural” is
slowly drained from natural disasters. The
consequences are worst where human influ-
ence on the climate slams into the human
predilection to live in risk-prone places.
Take the record wildfires in California, such
as the Camp Fire, which killed at least
86 people and reduced the town of Paradise
to ash. Warming temperatures and a down-
turn in summer rainfall are drying out the
western United States, prolonging torrid
droughts that turn forests and brush to
tinder. Large wildfires there now burn twice
the area they did in 1970 ; by mid-
century, the area burned by all wildfires in
the region is projected to increase as much
as sixfold. “These bigger fires, fires that
move faster, and a longer fire season—it’s
clearly, clearly here,” Duffy says.
On the East Coast, low-lying cities such
as Norfolk, Virginia, are experiencing
flooding at high tide thanks to a combi-
nation of sea-level rise and subsidence
linked to the long-ago retreat of the ice
sheets. And when there’s not sunny-dayClimate-fueled disasters rise, political action stalls
PHOTO:^NATIONAL^ OCEANICAND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION2018 BREAKTHROUGH OF THE YEAR^
Four hurricanes churn in the Atlantic Ocean in September, the first such lineup in a decade.Published by AAASon December 24, 2018^http://science.sciencemag.org/Downloaded from