Melting Greenland Ice – July 31, 2021

National Weather Forecast

We’ll be tracking numerous areas of showers and storms as we go through Saturday, with the driest portions of the nation along the West Coast, in the Northern Plains, around the Ark-La-Tex, and into the Northeast. Monsoonal showers and storms could produce heavy rain in portions of the western United States.

The heaviest rain through Sunday will fall across portions of the Central Plains, where storms could produce at least 3” of rain in some locations. We will also see some heavy rain across the Four Corners region due to monsoonal moisture, with some storms capable of at least 1” per hour rainfall rates.

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Toyota Led on Clean Cars. Now Critics Say It Works to Delay Them.

More from the New York Times: “But in recent months, Toyota, one of the world’s largest automakers, has quietly become the industry’s strongest voice opposing an all-out transition to electric vehicles — which proponents say is critical to fighting climate change. Last month, Chris Reynolds, a senior executive who oversees government affairs for the company, traveled to Washington for closed-door meetings with congressional staff members and outlined Toyota’s opposition to an aggressive transition to all-electric cars. He argued that gas-electric hybrids like the Prius and hydrogen-powered cars should play a bigger role, according to four people familiar with the talks. Behind that position is a business quandary: Even as other automakers have embraced electric cars, Toyota bet its future on the development of hydrogen fuel cells — a costlier technology that has fallen far behind electric batteries — with greater use of hybrids in the near term. That means a rapid shift from gasoline to electric on the roads could be devastating for the company’s market share and bottom line.”

The road to an electric vehicle future is paved with lithium

More from Marketplace Tech: “Tesla beat earnings expectations Tuesday, reporting record profits of more than a billion dollars last quarter. The electric vehicle market, while still small, has grown rapidly this year. Of course, a global shortage of microchips could slow things down. In the long term, there’s also the issue of availability of lithium. It’s a soft, silvery metal that’s the key component in electric car batteries. Chris Berry, a strategic metals consultant and president of House Mountain Partners, says demand for lithium is expected to triple in the next five years, which is why some automakers, like GM, have taken the unusual step of making deals with lithium mines directly.”

The amount of Greenland ice that melted on Tuesday could cover Florida in 2 inches of water

More from CNN: “Greenland is experiencing its most significant melting event of the year as temperatures in the Arctic surge. The amount of ice that melted on Tuesday alone would be enough to cover the entire state of Florida in two inches of water. It’s the third instance of extreme melting in the past decade, during which time the melting has stretched farther inland than the entire satellite era, which began in the 1970s. Greenland lost more than 8.5 billion tons of surface mass on Tuesday, and 18.4 billion tons since Sunday, according to the Denmark Meteorological Institute. While this week’s total ice loss is not as extreme as a similar event in 2019 — a record melt year — the area of the ice sheet that’s melting is larger.”

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Thanks for checking in and have a great day! Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@dkayserwx) and like me on Facebook (Meteorologist D.J. Kayser).

– D.J. Kayser