UpFront – August 13, 2026

Good morning. It is Thursday, August 13, 2006. This is Up Front. I am your guest host, Kat Brooks, standing in for Brian Edwards Tickard. On today's show, fires, hurricanes, heat dromes, El Niño. Climate change is here. The Earth is active. Joining us to discuss is Eugene Cordero, Professor Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose University. That is what we're talking about today. when we come back right after these news headlines. I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Rescue teams in Columbia are continuing their efforts to reach people trapped beneath the rubble of buildings knocked down in a powerful earthquake this week. The death toll has risen to 266, with thousands still listed as missing and a race against the clock to find survivors. More from Karen Chamos. Search teams are pushing up against a key time threshold to locate survivors before it's too late. In Pereira on Wednesday, a body was recovered from the rubble of a collapse. Building Colombia's new president, Abelado de la Espirea, is under pressure to make sure his government responds to the vulnerable communities most affected by the quake and more than 100 aftershocks. Over 260 people have died so far and hundreds more have been reported missing. Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours crucial for retrieving people alive. That limit can be extended if those trapped have access to food and water. I'm Karen Shamas. Ukrainian drones have struck a major refinery deep inside Russia, marking the fourth attack in three days. William Denslow has more. Two major grain export terminals have reportedly been hit in a Ukrainian strike. The country's president says it's conducted a unique attack on a Russian Black Sea base. According to local officials, three people, including an eight-year-old, were killed. Ukraine says full Russian warships were hit. From feature story news in Brussels, I'm William Denslow. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is leaving her post at the end of the month to spend more time with her family. Leavitt gave birth to her second child in May. President Trump said Leavitt will still have a role in the White House as an advisor leading up to the November midterms. Nick Harper has more. He said that Karoline Leavitt would be departing her role at the end of the month, saying that she wants to spend more time with her children and family. The president added that it was a decision he totally understood and respected. He said that she had been one of the best White House press secretaries in the history of the office, and went on to say that she would now become one of his top outside advisers and an influential voice within the Republican Party. That's Nick Harper reporting. Jury selection has begun in federal court in Oakland in a lawsuit brought by four states against Facebook and Instagram parent Meta. The suit claims Meta made its product addictive to children and has harmed their mental health. Iris Spitzer reports.

The states say that Meta designed Facebook and Instagram to keep young people hooked on the platform with features such as infinite scrolling, the like button features and many other aspects of the product design and that they did all this well knowing that their products were harmful to young people. Now, Meta has strongly rejected... those allegations, so this will, of course, now all play out in front of this court here in Oakland, and the stakes couldn't be hired. That's Ira Spitzer. Media companies and advocacy groups are suing President Trump and federal court to stop him from making money off a new paid service at his truth social company that offers early exclusive access to his posts on U.S. policy. the lawsuit alleges the service offering paying customers first peak access to his posts on u s policy decisions violates the constitution and that official announcements should be made available to everyone at the same time the service is charging wall street firms as much as one hundred thousand dollars a month to trade off the market moving posts before others truth social says the lawsuit is an attempt by left-wing activists to silence the president The Freedom of the Press Foundation and the Intercepts lawsuit alleges that the First Amendment right to access a president's comments on equal terms with other members of the press and the public and the Fifth Amendment prohibitions on charging unreasonable conditions for government benefits are being violated. Much of Western Europe is sweltering in yet another heat wave this summer. It's the fifth heat wave to hit Britain and France this summer, and climate change is at the heart of it. Kwain Hot reports. The UK is facing the fifth heat wave of what has already been an exceptionally hot and dry summer. Extreme heat alert has been issued across every region in England, with warnings that temperatures could reach as high as 38 degrees. More than two-thirds of England are now officially in drought after the driest July since record began almost two centuries ago. A total of 45 million people are living in drought conditions with more than 27 million people facing water use restrictions. Here in London, parks and green spaces have turned yellow and dusty due to a lack of rainfall. The extreme heat is putting pressure on health services, transport and infrastructures.

This latest heat wave is being felt across much of Western Europe, with temperatures soaring in France and Spain, fueling the risk of further wildfires. That's Quayun Hot. The Labor Department reported today U.S. unemployment benefit claims rose last week, but layoffs remain at historically healthy levels. The Labor Department reported that 209,000 people filed jobless claims last week. That's up from a revised 200,000 the week before, and higher than the 205,000 forecasters had expected. The four-week average of applications which smooths out week-to-week volatility was unchanged at 199,000. Claims for jobless benefits are a proxy for layoffs, and they've been at historically low ranges of around 200 to 230,000 a week for the past year, suggesting that Americans who have jobs enjoy unusual job security. The U.S. unemployment rate is low at about 4.1%. Partly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 60s and 70s, lows tonight in the 50s, in the Central Valley. Mostly sunny, highs in the 90s, lows tonight in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. And that takes us to 708 in the morning here on Up Front. I'm Kat Brook, standing in for Brian Edwards Teakert. He domes, hurricanes, fires. The current climate headlines joining us to discuss is Eugene Cordero, Professor Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose University. He's also founder of Green Ninja an education provider that uses climate topics to teach middle school science. Good morning. Good morning. Professor Cordero, a recent climate study found the number of heat domes in North America has increased every year since 1940. I don't think... that I had ever heard the term heat dome until a few weeks ago. I'm sure that it was here, but I didn't hear it. But now I've heard it enough that I want to know what is it and what causes it and why are we having five this summer, right? It's five, five fifth heat dome now? Yeah, I mean, it's a meteorological term that we use to describe a region of persistent high pressure. And when you have high pressure, you tend to get warmer than average temperatures. But you could also think of these as heat waves. I mean, heat domes another term for it. And it's a time when things don't really move around too much very quickly. So you get this persistent heat. It builds up over time. And the impacts of these heat waves, the longer they are, the more impact they can have on people, they can have on human health, they have on infrastructure, and really testing our resilience to this extreme heat. And this is one of the signatures of climate change, is that we see more frequent events like this, we see them last longer, and we're witnessing this, just as you indicated, there's a trend in these type of events happening over time.

That same study, Professor Cordetto, found that the number of heat domes, heat waves, y'all, in northwestern North America is supposed to nearly double by 2080 if carbon emissions continue at the levels that we just seem to be committed to keeping them at. That's what? That's 50 years from now. Yeah. Do we got, do we have, I was just asking this question in an organizing meeting yesterday about different people conditions. But do we have 50 years? I mean, like, what does that materially mean for humans on Earth? as this proceeds to doubling? Yeah, I mean, it means that we have to, I mean, we can think of it in a couple different ways. We could think of it as like, we don't want to get there. We don't want that to happen. And so what do we do to prevent that? But also, we are committed to some additional warming. I mean, the United Nations had set a goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming for the planet, and we're basically already there. That was a... You know, an agreement. When were we supposed to get there? Well, we were hoping to never get there. But in their compromise with Mother Earth, I didn't realize she was at the table, but right on, what did we tell her that we were going to do and by when? Well, we had, you know, some, especially island nations who were susceptible to sea level rise, they had said, let's set the target at 1.5 degrees C is that, that's the red line that we aim to not get over. And we have already, we're basically already there. So now some people say, well, 2 degrees Celsius, you know, would be a target that we try to get to. I mean, there's some good news. We're starting to bend emissions because of the adoptions of renewables that are happening with or without government. You know, this is just economics. But we're definitely not making nearly as much progress as we need to, obviously. Talk about for me, how do, because I want to sort of talk about material consequences, right? So I want to talk about energy grids. How do heat waves, heatoms impact energy grids? And why does this become dangerous, especially when we're talking about places like Puerto Rico, right, where the grid has been in chaos for quite a number of years? Yeah, I mean, you know, in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State where I teach one of my colleagues consults and has worked at PG&E for the last decade. And I really didn't understand the challenge that an institution like PG&E has to deliver power to, you know, millions of customers. when you flip on a switch, when you flip on that air conditioning and how critical the weather is. So, you know, when we have a weather forecast for the Central Valley, it's going to be, you know, 97 degrees. And if that forecast turns out to be an underestimate and it turned out to be 102 degrees, just 5 degrees warmer than we thought, a bunch of additional air conditioning systems, a lot, go online.

and there's an immediate demand for more energy. And... PG&E wasn't expecting that. They didn't, you know, plan for that. So they have to go buy energy on the open grid. It's more expensive. It's more polluting. And ultimately, it costs the rate pay or us, more money. So the, so when we have these heat waves, you know, that puts additional strain on this challenging grid to be able to provide energy for everyone. Otherwise, you get these blackouts or brownouts and they have to. turn off energy to some folks. So you're right, these weather and climate events and the impact on our grid, it's significant. And we have to ultimately become more resilient to these types of extremes. My daughter has decided to do aquaculture and ocean conservation for a living. Oh, nice. Yes, I'm very proud of her. And I'm learning about the cascading effects of climate change, how this thing over here impacts this thing over there. Little by slow, I'm learning. Can you talk a little bit? And one of those cascading effects, as you mentioned a little bit earlier, is also reduce water supply. So for some places, like Puerto Rico, for example, energy grid issues, energy issues, power issues often collide with reduced or non-existent water supply. Yes? Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, the grid... One of the roles it plays is it helps pump water around, which is obviously critical resource for everybody. And in addition, for example, in California, we're not going to be able to forecast how much rain we're going to have every year in the next 80 years. It's very difficult for us as climate scientists to say, oh, California is going to get more rain or less rain. But the one thing we do know in California is that... the temperatures are going to continue to warm, and we're going to get a larger percentage of rain events compared to snow events up in the Ipanar, Sierra. And what that's going to do is, even if we got the same amount of rain for the next 40 to 80 years, more of it's going to come as rain. And we're going to have to either get that rain on its way down, the hill, to the ocean, or we're going to have severe water shortages for our agricultural needs, for our personal needs, And so California is a great example of how climate change is going to impact water resources. Not that we're not getting the water from the sky, as you said, Mother Earth is providing it, but we're used to getting it as snowfall and the snow just sits there until the summer comes and then it melts and it's a great system because it's storing that water for us.

But if it comes as rain, it's going to run down the hill, and we either maybe build more reservoirs to capture it, and that has its own challenges, or we're not going to have much water as we need in the summertime. We've been here for so long. As you were talking, I was blessed. I grew up in Vegas, Las Vegas. My godmother, however, lived in Los Angeles, and I go visit her. And I remember as, so I was a kid, I'm 50 now, so at least 40 years ago. And I remember being at her house and having to use a cup, et cetera, for my shower and her trying to teach me how to take a limited shower because they were having a water shortage 40 years ago. There's lots of great books written about water in California. We live and die over water in this state. We're in a Mediterranean climate. And what that means is that we get all our water from the sky in four or five months of the year, and then the rest of the year is dry. and we don't get rain in the summer, you know, typically. And so we, but we have some of the largest agricultural producers in the world here in our, you know, in our beautiful state. But we have to get that water from somewhere. So it comes from the mountains or it comes from the Colorado River, and especially Southern California, they're not. blessed as well as we are in Northern California with, you know, running water. So we developed aqueduct system and, you know, it's a complicated system to provide water for 40 million inhabitants here in California. And so, and it's not a new story as you share. This is something we've been struggling and challenged with for many, many years. And climate change is just going to add additional challenges to that. So, you know we have to be prepared i guess what i'm feeling in this moment and i'm just going to guess that other listeners are too is that we've been hearing about climate change for for a long time they were teaching it to me when i was in elementary school oh bless them yeah we were getting hotter my aunt um may she she rise in power like she don't be a litter bug i remember those things that right like i we've been having these conversations for so long and just apparently just not refused to learn the lessons or those in power, you know, don't care. They're not, they're not going to be here. It feels to me, Professor Cordero, and I guess this is where we started. Like, I'm looking around and going, oh, it's here. It's here right now. It's here at an escalated, in an escalated manner, right the second. This, it's coming is over. Yes? Yeah, absolutely. And I've been in this business for a few decades as well, and we used to say it's coming. It's coming. And now, or we don't say it's coming, it's here. We are...

You know, we've significantly changed the temperature of our planet. We've changed the energy balance of energy coming in and energy coming out. And the things we were talking about a few decades ago, about record-breaking heat waves, about sea level rise, about increases intensity in storms and heat domes, we're seeing them. And, you know, what we've seen in the news over this summer, especially, let's say, in Europe, had maybe their fifth. large heat wave and it's affecting tourism and it had all these fires. We've seen that, especially this summer in Oregon and Washington, you know, terrible fires. It's becoming the normal. And it is, you know, we're seeing how we, as humans, inadvertently, could shape our own climate and weather and we're feeling the effects. You know, we have a big El Nino coming. It looks like it very likely is to be record-breaking. And that's going to really test us here in California and different places around the world as well. And I want to talk about that in just a moment. I want to stay here with the heat for a moment. I looked it up. There are 94 large active wildfires being fought in the U.S. right now, with hundreds of new smaller spot fires igniting daily and getting contained. In 2026, y'all, over 6.4 million acres have burned across the United States across more than 46,500 wildfires. This is according to the National Interagency Fire Center. The total is well above normal levels, you think? Tracking at roughly 155% of the 10-year average for acres burn to date. What is the big waving red flag that these data present to us? And how do we prepare? This is our new normal. I have a friend that owns a decommissioned railroad town in the Sierras, and I stayed there during... COVID and every fire season, like there was this whole running around the property trying to prepare for the fires that ultimately you have no control over if it's going to go this way or that way. I mean, they try, but ultimately no control. What is, what is, what is this reality mean materially? Yeah, this, I mean, it's kind of like banging on our head and saying, hello, you have to, you know, take this very, very seriously. It's not just going to be, oh, we're going to have this bad event. But especially when you think about regional areas, we're going to see this, you know. most years, these very active fire seasons. And going back to the climate perspective, when you warm the planet, you increase the evaporation and your fuels, the vegetation on the ground dries up much more quickly. And that increased the risk of fire. And then especially what we're seeing is that the nighttime temperatures are not getting as cool as they used to.

And that also increases fire risk. So we were predicting this type of phenomenon, but it's actually much worse than we had actually anticipated in terms of the threat for fires and the impact it's having on people. I mean, there's more fires burning than there are states, but I'm going to ask probably a layperson's question. I'm not going to call it stupid. No. But, or and, fires are hot, clearly. Scientifically, like mechanically, the impact on that many raging fires on warming of Earth planet. Any? Is there one? Well, I'd say that the climate impact really is that our wonderful planet, you know, takes in carbon dioxide through plants, their photosynthesis. And so when plants and trees grow, they take carbon out of the atmosphere and they use that carbon into their roots and into the actual plant, which is a great thing. But when we have a fire... that carbon gets released back into the atmosphere, you know, further contributing to the warming. In a way, it doesn't have a dramatic impact, except in a real case, we're losing that vegetation. We're losing that stored carbon. The heat, it probably plays a secondary role. But, you know, our ecosystems depend on vegetation, plants and animals, ourselves as well. There's a... Of course, fire is part of the natural ecosystem. That's all we've always had fire. We have lightning. There could be fire, you know, as a result of nature completely. And our ecosystems have evolved with fire. But we are shaping our planet in very significant ways. And we are seeing an increase in the intensity of these fires and how hot they burn in the weather that these fires help contribute to. And this is also, you know, really having a negative impact on people and on our ecosystems. So the heat that the fires generate, yeah, that has a very kind of immediate local effect, but it's a big planet. It's probably not as significant as the loss of carbon in our, in the vegetation and in the soils. Thank you. In addition to fires, what are some other material impacts on quality of life for humans of increased heat? I mean, there's food production, of course. Yeah, and we've done a pretty remarkable job in producing food for 7 billion people. But as the weather and climate continues to change, where we have normally said, oh, this is a good place for growing, you know, tomatoes or strawberries, as the climate changes and you have shifts in what is normal, we're going to have to change our agricultural system to...

to be, you know, similar to what the weather is providing. And then, you know, like you mentioned earlier, about water resources. And that's going to be, if you don't have the water, you're not going to grow anything in that particular region. So when we are changing things around on our planet inadvertently, but we then will have to, you know, make changes to our agriculture system to adapt. Now, farmers are great at adapting. but ultimately to a point. And so predictions from the United Nations about food production, as the climate continues to shift, show that there'll be increasing strain and challenges to produce the food required for the planet. And of course, because I don't think we skip over stuff like this. One of the impacts of the heat waves in 2026 is tens of thousands of deaths primarily in Europe. They're looking at 25 to 30,000 people that have died as a result of the excess heat. Yeah, and this is one of the themes when we think about climate change, is that the folks who get impacted the most are the folks with the least. Now, even in Europe, which is fairly developed and people who live in middle class, a large percentage of them, they're not used to heat waves. And so the elderly, potentially unhoused, are the folks who get impacted the most dramatically by these large heat waves. And we knew this was potentially going to be a problem. We had a situation. A couple decades ago, we had a large heat wave in France, and lots of, unfortunately, people died because they don't have air conditioning systems, and they live in these buildings that over a few days start to really heat up. And people really struggled with that. So we have to, when we think about, like, oh, how do we adapt to climate change? We have to think about our vulnerable populations. first and foremost, folks who don't have air conditioning systems, folks who don't have necessarily relief from what might be a period of five or seven days of relentless heat. It was 2024. October, and I left my home and went into a local hotel downtown because I was worried about me and my dog, and that's over here because we don't have air conditioning in the Bay either, as you know. How did we get to summer in October here in the Bay Area, Professor? Yeah, I mean, it's a outcome of a warmer planet is your... your summers are extended. They start earlier, they end later, and I'm glad you found relief in a public space. I've privileged. Yeah. And even where I live here in Mountain View...

Some of my friends have been advocating for cooling centers. Because just like you said, we don't normally need air conditioning. A lot of people don't have it. And where are folks going to go when they need some relief? And what was interesting is that our city, our little city here, just not thinking along these lines. We took activists to say, we need these places. And then they said, well, we're going to, you know, they'll be open until like 6 p.m. And activists are saying, no, that's not good enough, right? Where are folks supposed to go after 6 p.m.? It's still hot. So it just shows that there's, we need to shift how we're thinking about these challenges. And ultimately, folks need to step up and make their voices heard that we have to be better prepared because it's happening right now. And when I said I have privilege, right, that was me pointing out for folks. And when we, in a little bit, because we're going to take a news break in a second, we're going to talk about a sentence. You said that I don't want to jump over, which is those that are most impacted, are often those that have the least. When I say I'm privileged driving to the hotel downtown where I got to go stay with my dog on a whim notice that I'm not going to do with this heat, I passed probably no less than 25, 30 people who. could not go inside because we've made it so that they can't afford to be inside. Yeah, that is the challenge we have is that we have to think of everybody when we think about these impacts. Well, we are in conversation with Professor Eugene Cordero. He's a professor in the Department of Media and Religion and Climate Science at San Jose University. He is also founder of Green Ninja, an education provider that uses climate and environmental topics to teach middle school science. We are going to continue to talk about what's going on with our climate. We're going to move into talking about El Nino and also a little bit about what it is we can do to prepare what we must do. think we're talking we're past what we can do what we must do to prepare for what not what is coming but what is already here that is the conversation we will continue in just three minutes or so when we come back after these news headlines I'm Max Pringle with these headlines. Rescue teams in Colombia are continuing their efforts to reach people trapped beneath the rubble of buildings knocked down in a powerful earthquake this week. The death toll has risen to 266, with thousands still listed as missing and a race against the clock to find survivors. More from Karen Chamas. Search teams are pushing up against a key time threshold to locate survivors before it's too late. In Pereira on Wednesday, a body was recovered from the rubble of a collapse. Building, Colombia's new president, Abelado de la Espirea, is under pressure to make sure his government responds to the vulnerable communities most affected by the quake and more than 100 aftershocks. Over 260 people have died so far and hundreds more have been reported missing.

Aid agencies consider the first 48 to 72 hours crucial for retrieving people alive, that that limit can be extended if those trapped have access to food and water. I'm Karen Shamas. Ukrainian drones have struck a major refinery deep inside Russia, marking the fourth attack in three days. William Denslow has more. Two major grain export terminals have reportedly been hit in a Ukrainian strike. The country's president says it's conducted a unique attack on a Russian Black Sea base. According to local officials, three people, including an eight-year-old, were killed. Ukraine says, for Russian warships were hit. From feature story news in Brussels, I'm William Denslow. California's high-speed rail project could run out of money as soon as December of next year, and project leaders are not being clear about the issue. That's according to a new report from the project's Inspector General. Benjamin Netanyahu Belknap, the Inspector General for the High Speed Rail Authority, released an updated review of the project's revised 2026 business plan flagging the cash issue. The High Speed Rail Authority's original 2026 business plan had major gaps in information that the authority attempted to fill with an edited version earlier this summer. Belknap signaled that the changes were not enough, and the plan still violates state law. In a letter to lawmakers and Gavin Newsom, in an introduction to the report, the Inspector General included a set of bullet points, including one that said, quote, The business plan does not sufficiently emphasize that the authority will exhaust its current funding resources and, as soon as December of 27, if it does not secure financing, unquote. Partly sunny today in the San Francisco Bay Area, highs in the 60s and 70s, lows tonight in the 50s, in the Central Valley. Mostly sunny, highs in the 90s, lows tonight in the 60s. Those are the headlines. I'm Max Pringle on KPFA. And that takes us to 733 in the morning here on Upfront. I am Cat Brooks, standing in for Brian Edwards Teakert. Our guest this morning is Professor Eugene Cordero. He's professor of the department or in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose State University. He's also founder of Green Ninja, an education provider that uses climate and environmental topics to teach middle school science. All right, I want to talk about Super El Nino. that is on the way. El Nino, has that just become the name for Big Storms? I was trying to sort that out as I was getting ready to have a conversation with you.

No, it really is an atmospheric ocean phenomenon. So this is something that even, you know, 40 years ago, folks would learn about El Nino. And it's, actually, it's just something that's happening kind of far away from here. The ocean temperatures, which are normally quite warm in the tropics, turns out that they don't, that ocean temperatures aren't the same everywhere in the tropics in the Pacific Ocean. So over Indonesia in that area, usually the temperatures of the oceans are very very hot and then near the coast of chili on the eastern pacific the ocean temperatures are relatively cooler two or three or four degrees cooler on average. And that's kind of a normal thing. And our weather has shaped by what's normal. And we get, you know, storm tracks and weather systems in different places. But every few years, every two or three or four or five years, we have that system in the Pacific Ocean shift and it changes. And that's what's called Nel Nino, that the ocean temperatures... you know, in one part over Indonesia, they get a lot cooler, and then around the eastern Pacific, the temperatures get a lot warmer. We can actually see with satellite data the warm water like moving over a period of months. And we also know from historical records that when that happens, weather patterns around the world shift and they change and where... You used to get a lot of rain in one part. Now it turns out to be dry. And another part that used to be dry gets a lot of rain. And some parts like California, when we get a very strong El Nino, we then typically get more rainfall. And that's why we, especially in California, when we see the forecast that we're going to get a strong El Nino, we start to pay attention because historically we've seen many cases, not all, but many cases where a strong el nino in the pacific equatorial region produces more storms in our winter season and more rainfall and all the impacts that that can bring but do we start to pay attention because what would it mean if municipalities they actually started to pay attention now if they actually started to pay attention now and prepared for the potential acts of el nino what would that look like well i mean i i did hear a report just recently that some some cities are taking this El Nino forecast. Somewhat seriously, meaning they're preparing sandbags. They're worried about flooding is the big risk here. And so they are preparing sandbags. They're preparing some of the sewage water systems for if they got... clogged up, how to unclog them quickly. They're going to issue, make announcements to residents who are living near the bay or near flood-prone areas to be on watch for evacuation orders. So there are things that some municipalities can do. And the, especially over the last, let's say,

month or two. We could see this El Nino coming even February March, but we knew that that far out, our predictive capability isn't very good. But now we're in August, and all the models are showing, really showing record-breaking El Nino. Like that is, I think, I think even Noah said a 70% chance. of a record-breaking El Nino and not just slightly record-breaking, like really large record-breaking. And so because of that, I think many communities, hopefully more and more, will say, okay, if we get, you know, higher chances of flood, especially flood risk, seems to be the thing that I think we feel like is we have a lot of confidence that we're going to have. you know, really high flood risk this winter. So what does that mean for our community? What does that mean for Santa Cruz? What does that mean in Napa area? What does that mean for San Francisco? Like, so some of these municipalities are taking this more seriously. I hope they hear that, you know, this is a really going to be a potentially really challenging event for them. Not just because of this El Nino. Also, we have some king tides coming, especially in December, that are much higher than tip. That's when, you know, we have tides, high and low tide. And that's due to astronomy. That's due to the location of the moon and the earth. And so we can predict the tides, like for tomorrow, the next week. But we can also predict the tides for the next. you know, 40 years. And there will be some periods where the tides are going to be low tide is really, really low, the water goes back, and then high tide, the water rises up. And during these, they call them king tides or super high tides, there's more flood risk. And there's, you know, San Francisco has lots of systems to prepare for this. But then when you add... the regular sea level rise that we're seeing because of climate change. And then in El Nino, and what we've seen in the historical record is when you have a strong El Nino, the ocean temperatures are a little warmer around California. That increases the tide as well over the sea level even further, and that creates additional flood risk. So we're pretty confident that, and I think the word is getting out, two minutes. to different cities is if you're a city with areas with flood risk, you need to repair because when November, December, January comes, we're going to see, you know, additional risk for flooding and you need to do something about it. And again, I'll say, I mean, not to beat a horse dead or alive, the unhoused is, again, with, we also need to be, it would be great this flood season to see municipalities. High Los Angeles, high Oakland, prepare. You know, even in our, you know, I teach at San Jose State, and we had a large group of unhoused folks living along the Guadalupean Coyote Creeks.

Sometimes in the winter, when there's storms coming, you know we're going to get a few inches of rain, and those creeks are going to flood. They don't flood over, but there's a big bank of where the folks are living. And last year, when this happened... I was talking to some of my meteorology students saying, we can see the forecast, three-day forecast. I wonder about the folks who live in the path of all this additional water. And tribute to the city of San Jose, they had staff going out into that community telling them, you guys got to move your stuff. The Guadalupe is going to be pretty high. And this was a good example of the science and the forecasters and cities working together. to help folks and i was kind of proud of the city of san Jose in that moment like okay good job um it's not always a happy story it's not always good news but we do have the technology to make some of this we have this predictive capability let's use it to for everyone not just the regular folks but for our most vulnerable communities exactly as you were talking i realized that the very first book interview i ever did for up front because this is where i started co-hosting with brian was kevin fagin's book about the unhoused in san jose um You, in the last first part of the hour, we were talking about sea level rise. And can you get more in depth firstly people connection between increased heat, sea level rise? And then what does that actually mean? Because they're having a conversation about San Francisco too and sea level rise. What does that mean materially for people who live there? It's a great question. Over the last hundred years, the average sea level around San Francisco, Embarcadero is the actual where there's a little instrument that measures, you know, the sea level goes up and down every day, but if you just imagine a little, you put a little float in there and you just measure how things change. Over the last hundred years in San Francisco and Embarcadero, the water has gone up about a foot. So if we came here 100 years ago, on average, where you'd see the water level would be a foot down, and today it's a foot higher. And most of that... rise is because, well, there's two factors really. One is that the oceans are warmer today, just like the atmosphere, the temperature is warmer. The oceans are warmer today than they were 100 years ago. And when warm things, you warm a fluid like the water, it's going to expand, just like a thermometer expands in some kind of temperature gauge. The water has expanded.

And we've also melted a lot of ice around the planet. And so when you melt water, and that's going to raise the sea level as well. So all around the world, we've seen the sea level go up. And for places like San Francisco, for many places around the world, one foot of sea level rise means that, you know, we have to ensure that... places that are near the coasts are not going to be in that path of that additional water. So places like the Netherlands have been struggling with sea level rise for decades and they build sea walls. San Francisco's built a seawall as well. Cities have to plan for this type of sea level rise. And it's not just that like, oh, on one day, you know, you have to pay attention to this, it's like during storms when you get a bunch of extra water, you have what's called a low pressure system when you have a weather system and the sea level actually goes up a little bit. If we remember in New Orleans when they had a big hurricane and they had all this flooding, it wasn't necessarily the rain, it was what we call a storm surge and this water coming in. This can happen anywhere. especially in our area during the wintertime when we have these storms come through. So sea level rise is one of the big impacts of climate change. And as I was mentioning earlier, this, we're fairly clear that not only are you going to see some impact of additional flooding risk this winter because of this El Nino, on top of that we just have this. slowly rising sea level due to climate change. And so that creates this additional challenge for our communities in dealing with this extra water and how to manage that. Now, how does all of that risk and shift of life and living impact, as you mentioned earlier, islands in the Caribbean where you're literally all sides water? Yeah, I mean, dramatically. And that's why those folks in those island communities were the one saying to the United Nations, we need the lowest possible temperature goal because... you know, at 2 degrees Celsius warming of the planet might mean an additional 6 or 12 inches of sea level rise, you know, over a period of decades and they could lose their whole country. So low-lying regions, you know, even Florida is really having to deal with flooding a lot. You know, there's some parts of Florida that are not very high. They're very close to sea level and they, you know, because sea levels keeps going up, you know, they keep getting this small scale flooding or these roads get flooded and when there's a big storm. They see lots of, you know, areas that they have to close the road. They have to get sandbags out.

They have to design ways to get rid of the water. But as you mentioned, some whole countries, small island countries, are really feeling like so vulnerable. They're not emitting much carbon in the atmosphere. They were not the instigators of this, but they are certainly in line to be. some of the first places that could be eliminated because of rising sea level. So that's a segue to my next question. How then should we be anticipating or how have we seen climate change, weather pattern shifts, et cetera, impact migration? And what additional problems? And I don't know if this is in your wheelhouse, but this is the question I'm asking. You can say it's not my wheelhouse. Impact migration patterns and then additional pressure on the places where people are migrating to. And I mean climate pressure. Well, I'll be happy to say it's not directly in my wheelhouse, but I can offer a few things that I understand. Right. You know, when, even on my street, I'll just tell you this, even on my street, I had one of my neighbors say to me when we had just gone through some heat waves and then we had all these fires with smoke and she said to me, should I move? Like, is it not habitable anymore? And I was saying, you know, this is a personal decision. I mean, like, you were lucky enough to be able to have that choice. When you have, you know, when you have money, you can make those choices. If you're a tech billionaire, you can have a villa or a place in New Zealand as a, if things get really bad here. Most of us don't have those opportunities. But if... there are cases where some folks in communities feel like, oh, this is too much. You mentioned in my tagline that I help with some education work, and I had a teacher that I knew in Reading, California, who moved because she said the smoke is too bad in the summer. She said, we have so many fires around here. She was used to the heat, but she wasn't used to this. She just couldn't. She said, I don't want to bring my kid up with all this smoke around all the time. And so we're seeing those types of, and these are both anecdotal for me, but social scientists are studying how people are moving around and what's causing people to move. Sometimes it's economic pressures, but in this case, we're seeing weather and climate changes that... convince people that I can't continue to live here. And then, like you said, this puts additional burdens on the places where people are moving. So there aren't, you know, social scientists are documenting shifts and as people make these decisions, especially the people that have the economic ability to make those decisions. For folks who don't, that makes life even more challenging.

Talk a little bit about Green Ninja and talking to the young folks. Like, how is the conversation you're having with middle schools different than the conversation they were having with me and middle school in the late 1980s? Yeah, it is quite different. I mean, we're finding, and, you know, I teach at the university level, so I'm finding that the students are coming into our classes know a lot more about. climate change than they did a couple decades ago. So I think that what students are introduced and shared with in elementary middle and high school provides more than it used to. I'm still going to say, though, in the traditional textbook, it's not emphasized very much. And it's a checkbox like, yep, we talked about climate change. But you and I've been talking all hour, right? This is not just something you just do at the end of your unit on weather and think, yep, I've covered this. Because this affects our society in so many ways, water and food and transportation. What I find, and this is somewhat uplifting, at least to me, is that students really want to talk about solutions. They want to learn about what to do about it. They get that things aren't going well. and that we've changed our weather and climate. But when we talk to them about how are we going to adapt, or even more importantly, how are we going to mitigate and reduce the amount of carbon going into the atmosphere every year to try to stabilize our climate? What new technologies, what new ways of thinking, what new... things could we do about housing and transportation and food systems? Even middle schoolers get excited about thinking like, oh, how can we make a difference? Because I think it gives them hope and some agency and a way to apply the science that they're learning, the social science that they're learning, a ways to think about history and not repeating mistakes. And... you know, the goal with some of the work I've been doing and other people is to help students feel some hope that they can make a difference in their own community. And there's so many ways that they can do that. So that gives me hope that young folks care. And when we give young folks some of the tools and experiences to make a difference in their community, they step forward. I'm glad to hear the whole part because it's my daughter's college now. And when she was in middle school, high school, there was this thing happening to her and her friends that we, because we love to name things, called climate depression.

Right? And they didn't want to talk about the future. Think about the future. There was just really dark memes about, I can't remember how it went exactly. It was like grandkids for what planet? Like, you know, so do you encounter that with your students too? I mean, there's the hope, but also the it's over. Absolutely. Yeah, that's, and we're learning about that framing. And that's why if we just talk about the problems all the time with our young students, I mean, it can be very depressing for them. And the climate anxiety is a real thing for not just young people, all of us. So some of the researchers are finding that if we can frame it, we need to understand the science, we need to understand reality. But if we can. even if we can do a little bit, if we can plant a garden, if we can ride our bike somewhere, if we can make a video that talks about how we can help people, you know, reduce the impact of climate change. Those things, just as natural humans, we want to do better. We want to help. And that is one thing that can help with some of those challenging, you know, mental health issues related to the environment. The other piece that research has found is that taking young people into nature, into the forest or into bushland or whatever, also can help a lot because it creates some empathy and gives us just some natural hope that, wow, nature is still here. It's not all gone, and we can do stuff to help preserve it. For a long time, we heard, or at least the slogan used to be, save the planet, save the planet. And one day I looked up and I was like, the planet will be fine. It's us that may not be able to be here. Is that the right framing or is the framing save the planet? You know, I think it's going to vary depending on the context, but... This feels a little arrogant to assume that we are going to get rid of them, as opposed to she's going to get rid of us. Yeah. And, you know, I agree that even one of my friends is interested in forest restoration and especially focus on the redwoods and says that if you cut down all the redwoods, they will eventually come back. uh just like before but it might take hundreds of years because the whole ecosystem like when you cut down a whole forest you really mess up the ecosystem are we willing to wait hundreds of years for things to come back uh and so i think the notion that we should do something to protect nature and and find some connection with with this beautiful planet of ours um is really important but also understanding that we you know like

it's going to do what it's going to do in some regard, although it was probably a much more beautiful place before humans were here, and what can we do to restore at least some of that? Yeah, we definitely have to be in right relationship, right relationship with the planet and everything on it and daily gratitude. All right, we've got like 90 seconds. A couple of everyday things, because let's end up, to your point, let's end on hope. A couple of everyday things people could do to make our planet a little bit healthier, reduce our carbon footprint that don't feel, because people are selfish. We are just naturally selfish. We don't want to make big sacrifices. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know. But. is the favorite favorite saying of human beings what are some things our folks can do professor well i'll just tell you what but i've been i've been through this whole cycle too cat like thinking okay what can i do and you know um trying to reduce our our transportation emissions you know Maybe if we don't have good public transit around, and we, some folks who have the resources who buy electric bicycle or electric car, those are, you know, can make a big difference. But I want to, like what I've been thinking about more recently is pushing on decision makers, council members, state legislators to do more, more quickly. It's just too slow. Like to build a bike lane in Mountain View takes 10 years. We're not going to get there if it takes us 10 years to build a bike lane. So I'm asking folks who are running for City Council this coming cycle, are you willing to do more and more quickly and feel a little bit more urgency? Because if folks feel like, well, things are okay, you know, yeah, we're not going to get there, especially for the folks who are inheriting this, our young folks. So getting involved, like there is good news. We are switching over to renewables that's happening, but we just need to do it quicker and we just need to figure out a cleaner way to live on this planet with all of us. And because I promised her I would do it, the kid says stop ocean trawling right now, immediately. Professor Cordero, thank you so much for talking to us this morning. Thanks for having me. Eugene Cordero's professor in the Department of Meteorology and Climate Science at San Jose University and founder of Green Ninja and education provider that uses climate and environmental topics to teach middle school science. That does it for today's show, Ma. Upfront airs weekday mornings at 7am. We post information about topics and guests online at KPFA.org, where you can also dig through archives of past shows. If you would like to give us feedback on something you heard or suggest something for us to cover, send an email to Upfront at KPFA.org. A big thanks to everyone who makes the show happen, producer Kimya Akberry, engineer's Kristen Thomas. I am your guest host, Kit.

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