Grace van Deelen

Grace van Deelen, joined Eos in 2023 as a staff writer. She covers all things Earth science and is particularly interested in stories that highlight the intersection of society, the environment, and equity in science. Grace holds a master’s degree from MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing and bachelor’s degrees in biology and anthropology from Tufts University.
Posted inResearch & Developments

Climate Change Made This Summer’s Canadian Wildfires Twice as Likely

by Grace van Deelen

Wildfires in the Canadian provinces of Ontario and the Northwest Territories have burned more than 3.9 million hectares this summer, prompted widespread evacuation orders, and created poor air quality for not only Canadians, but more than 120 million people across the midwestern and northeastern United States. The fires spread exceptionally quickly, stressing the resources of local response agencies. About 700 fires are still active across Canada.

According to a new analysis, human-induced climate change and its contribution to fire conditions across Canada made these fires twice as likely to occur. The report is from World Weather Attribution, an international climate science partnership.

Posted inResearch & Developments

We’re Getting Better at Knowing When Climate Change Is to Blame, National Academies Report Says

by Grace van Deelen

Scientists have gotten much better at parsing how severe events are linked to climate change, a long-awaited report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine has found.

The report was developed by 14 experts (including climatologists, meteorologists, and atmospheric scientists) and updates a 2016 report on the same subject. That report found that climate change was partly responsible for worsening heat waves, cold events, droughts, and heavy precipitation events, but that improvements to attribution science—a branch of climate science that aims to determine the extent to which individual extreme weather events are caused by climate change—were needed.