The Mission blue butterfly lives exclusively around the San Bruno Mountain in California. There are an estimated 18,000 adults remaining in their original region. While its bright blues may seem better fitted for the tropics, mountainous regions are, in fact, hosts to two-thirds of butterfly species across the world, according to researchers. 

Recently, Yale researchers published a first-of-its-kind study in Nature, using previously collected data to map out butterfly hotspots. 

“Unfortunately, our first global assessment of butterfly diversity and threats finds that butterflies’ fascinating diversification into higher-elevation environments might now spell their demise, with potentially thousands of species committed to extinction from global warming this century,” Walter Jetz, director of the Yale Center for Biodiversity and Global Change who oversaw the study, told the News. 

Today, climate change threatens the careful balance of the alpine regions, leaving the Mission blue and other fragile butterfly populations in considerable danger.

Climate Threat to Butterflies

Historically, conservation efforts have largely excluded butterflies and other insects to prioritize protecting land vertebrates, such as mammals or reptiles. Now, global assessments of insect biodiversity and climate change vulnerability have been lacking — primarily due to the limited and incomplete distribution data for most insect taxa.

Larry Gall, senior collections manager of the center’s entomology division and moth researcher, considers butterflies to be “specialized moths” that are active in the daytime as opposed to nighttime.

“As is true for most insects, Lepidoptera [the scientific name for butterflies and moths] in their various life stages are involved in pollination, nutrient cycling and other important roles in ecosystems,” Gall wrote to the News. “[With] no habitat for Lepidoptera, [there would be] no springtime as we presently know it, and related tragedies.”

Gall’s alarming message regarding the butterfly threat is not unfounded. However, not much has been done in part due to the lack of information available.

According to Jetz, ignoring insect populations in conservation sciences has created “vast global knowledge gaps,” potentially leading to past conservation decisions that were uninformed.

“Our study is the first to systematically identify and assess butterfly biodiversity hotspots, establishing a clear and strong connection with mountain regions which harbour a disproportionately high percentage of butterfly diversity,” Jetz wrote.

The researchers pored through atlases, field guides and the extensive pre-existing literature on butterflies. They then used automated models that integrated these official records with citizen-scientist data.

In the publication, the team used colorful legends to depict higher concentrations of species of butterflies at higher altitudes.

The main findings? Mountains are critical for butterfly biodiversity. 

Mountain, or alpine, ecosystems are unique due to their physical structures. In addition to being large physical barriers, mountains also serve as environmental buffers. Precipitation levels, temperature and environmental conditions are all more stable in these areas.

However, as outlined in a 2022 article published in PeerJ, mountain environments today are in a “state of rapid transition as a consequence of climate change in the Anthropocene.”

The overall increase in temperature may cause ice cover — a useful sort of “sunshade” — to melt, exposing dark rock that absorbs rather than reflects heat. As the ice melts more, the speed of water run-off that reaches lower-lying ecosystems may increase, changing the way ecosystems or even cities deal with the influx of ice melt.

Regionally, changes in weather patterns may reduce the number of frost days, alter the treeline of forested regions and change the way plants interact with their environment— all of which will indirectly affect butterfly populations. 

“Our results suggest that mountain areas — once vital refugia — are increasingly at risk of becoming biodiversity traps,” Stefan Pinkert, a University of Marburg lecturer and former postdoc in Jetz’s lab, said. 

Pinkert is also the lead author of the study. 

Even then, the data is incomplete. The results are “broad, yet conservative,” according to Pinkert, and don’t offer a complete image of the butterflies’ interactions with other organisms.

Looking Ahead

Protecting these delicate insects extends far beyond just saving their kind.

Butterflies are a vital component of Earth’s biodiversity. As caterpillars, they are often specialized herbivores that help regulate plant abundance and contribute to nutrient cycling; as adults, they pollinate flowering plants. 

This evolutionary relationship they have with plants makes both groups not only ecologically important but also “highly vulnerable.” A loss in butterflies and pollinators as a whole will deeply impact humans — economically and emotionally.

“Just as plants may face greater extinction risks from the loss of associated butterflies, their decline would, in turn, accelerate the precarious situation butterfly populations are facing,” Pinkert said. “While the knowledgebase for other insect groups is even more limited, conservation priorities for butterflies and their vulnerability likely apply to many terrestrial insects. This suggests unfortunately very dire consequences for biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in the coming decades, urging rapid and targeted conservation and restoration efforts.”

With newfound information on butterfly hotspots, Pinkert suggests that governments can increase protections by expanding protected natural areas into mountains, where environmental pressures from human land-and-resource use are increasing.

Governments can also “implement migration corridors and targeted conservation of hotspots of butterfly rarity,” Jetz said.

However, last month, the Trump administration implemented aggressive “rollbacks” on regulations issued by the Environmental Protection Agency, the federal entity responsible for protecting natural lands.

Those who care about butterflies can still do their part in protecting them. 

Butterflies don’t need much space, Pinkert says. Local landowners can set aside small plots of land of butterfly-friendly habitats to support stable populations. 

“Simple measures—such as managing meadows extensively without the use of fertilizers or pesticides—can make a significant difference,” Pinkert wrote. “Many species will readily return to gardens, field margins, and other semi-natural areas if the right conditions are restored.”

Even citizens, unfamiliar with the thousands of species of butterflies, may be able to boost conservation, Pinkert says. By utilizing the iNaturalist app, users can contribute images of species they might happen upon in their neighborhood or vacations abroad.”

The Yale Peabody Museum houses over 350,000 butterfly and moth specimens.

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This consolidation of the workforce comes after what the agency describes as “the biggest action in U.S. history.” On March 12, Administrator Lee Zeldin announced a series of 31 actions to advance President Trump’s executive orders, stating that while the agency is committed to protecting the environment, they are also interested in fulfilling the Administration’s promises to reduce living costs for Americans, strengthen American energy, among other actions.  

“When the agency was founded, there was this old saying that the air is so polluted that the people of Denver wanted to see the mountains again, the people of Los Angeles wanted to see each other again, the water was so contaminated that we had rivers bursting into flames,” Paul Anastas, professor in the practice of Chemistry for the Environment, told the News. “These are not history lessons, these are guarantees of what our future will look like if we don’t take the actions necessary to preserve our environment.”

Anastas is widely known as the Father of Green Chemistry and served as the assistant administrator of the EPA. During this time, Anastas worked to create the EPA’s Scientific Integrity Policy which prohibits political interference with scientists, the conduct of their work and the share of their work. 

The EPA was created by Richard Nixon in 1970 to address a growing number of environmental concerns including environmental pollution, industrial waste, water pollution and interactions between human health and the environment. 

The Office of Research and Development, ORD, is the arm of the EPA responsible for providing a foundation for decision making to protect human health and the environment from pollutants. 

“We don’t have to see research on climate change as being so awfully different from research on cancer, and paint the picture so black and white, but I do think that is what’s happening,” Karla Neugebauer, professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, told the News.

The information generated by the ORD is the basis of all the regulatory programs, decision making throughout the offices of the EPA, and it is the basis for all of the State departments’ environmental protection initiatives. It is also a widely used source for governments around the world.

The ORD manages the Integrated Risk Information System, IRIS, which is the go-to source for understanding risks involving activities, such as monitoring water quality and quantifying risks associated with various pollutants and how those risks can be mitigated. 

“EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment rests on the scientific foundation provided by the ORD. IRIS appears to be a target of both the ORD cuts and the No IRIS Act introduced in Congress,” Shimon Anisfeld, a research scientist in water resources at the Yale School of the Environment, told the News. “Trying to protect water quality without IRIS and ORD is driving blind, an approach that will certainly lead to increased pollution with real-world consequences for ecosystems and communities, especially those with the least power to fight polluters on their own.” 

The agency claims that its actions will roll back trillions in cost of living for American families. The purpose of these deregulatory actions are to remove the government control on industries and sectors to increase competition and lower cost.

Some of these actions include terminating Biden’s Environmental Justice and diversity, equity and inclusion arms of the agency, reconstituting the Science Advisory Board and Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, reconsidering the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants and reconsidering Mercury and Air Toxics standards. 

“We have to recognize that science has been the golden goose for the U.S. economy, it has been the driver of innovation. Science drives innovation. Poison in our environment is poison in our economy,” Dr. Anastas told the News. “We have run this experiment before, and it didn’t work out very well. Run it again, we are going to do it at tremendous cost to people’s health and even the economy.” 

James Payne, former acting EPA Administrator, issued a directive ordering the staff at the EPA to halt communications outside of the agency, on Jan. 24. 

When asked for specific examples of research initiatives that have been blocked or delayed, Dr. Anastas admitted he was unable to share without revealing who the scientists are involved, as they currently feel under threat. 

“I know that scientists have been told to stop their work, stop their projects, and not communicate with scientists,” Anastas told the News when asked about colleagues currently at the EPA. “There are examples that I am personally aware of scientists from the EPA who are invited to conferences because of their expertise, who are being directed not to attend and not to participate.” 

The Yale School of the Environment is located at 195 Prospect St.

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The two-day Admitted Student Welcome Days event took place on April 3 to 4 on Yale’s campus, near Kroon Hall, with a variety of events taking place either in the building or close-by. 

Last year’s admitted class ranges from 20 to 46 years old, with some having five to 10 years of professional experience and others matriculating straight from undergrad.

“The admissions team is so excited for this year’s Admitted Student Welcome Days,” Brie Charles, assistant director of admissions, events and recruitment, wrote to the News. “We believe that this year’s program will do a fantastic job of showcasing our campus, community, and academics and will help students feel confident in their decision that YSE can help them make the kind of impact they want to make in the world!”

YSE has traditionally hosted some type of yield program to boost the number of students who matriculate after acceptance, but last year the admissions team adopted the name “Admitted Student Welcome Days” to better reflect the nature of the program. 

According to Charles, their goal during Admitted Student Welcome Days is to “use the 1.5 days students are on campus to get a better sense of what their time at YSE will look like.” 

Admitted students will hear from individuals within their student support teams and meet with members of the YSE Student Affairs Committee and various student interest groups. 

“Admitted Students Welcome Days is a great first opportunity for accepted students to get to know each other and discover everything YSE has to offer,” Kaley Sperling MESc ’26 told the News. “I’m super excited to get to share YSE with the incoming class!” 

Emma Thornton, ENV ’27 SOM ’27 was in charge of organizing a meet-and-greet event for students admitted to the YSE and School of Management joint degree program. The dual-degree program allows students to obtain an MBA from the SOM along with a master of environmental management or master of forestry from the School of Environment. 

On average, fewer than 10 students each year are accepted, providing those who are with a greater sense of community.

“The joint degree community holds events regularly to socialize and build our sense of community, as well as develop academically and professionally,” Thornton wrote to the News. “Our gathering at East Rock Brewing during YSE Admitted Students Welcome Days is a chance for incoming and prospective ‘Joints’ to come meet the rest of our lovely community and get a sense for what it’s like to enroll in the YSE/SOM joint degree program at Yale!”

The second day will be primarily focused on academics and feature micro lectures from two of YSE’s faculty members, Professors Liza Comita and Narasimha Rao. Programming also includes personal outreach from current YSE students and alumni to admitted students through virtual webinars and one-on-one virtual appointments.

YSE admits can also expect a surprise visit from Handsome Dan and Heidi, Yale’s two beloved campus canine celebrities. On the more fun end of the tour, there will also be a tour of the Yale Farm, free food, panels featuring current students and a tabling fair with all of YSE’s Centers and Programs. 

“We hope that during their time here students will get a sense of our tight-knit community and a better understanding of what distinguishes YSE as a locus for environmental education, research, and practice,” Charles said.

While Welcome Days used to take on a hybrid form, the event has transitioned to being primarily in-person this year, with most of the program being recorded and emailed to all admitted students post-program. 

YSE is located at 195 Prospect St.

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The panelists, from the Nature Conservancy, the School of Drama, the Peabody Museum and the School of the Environment, discussed how to make climate change a more relatable issue for various audiences, including the value in creating a narrative arc about climate change, remaining optimistic about the climate and encouraging substantive engagement with nature.

“Climate change is so all-encompassing that it actually touches all of us in every single possible way,” said Anthony Leiserowitz, panel moderator and director of the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. “Food you’re eating is related to climate change. If your kid has asthma, you should care about climate change. If you like chocolate, you should care about climate change. If you’re a person of faith, you should care about climate change.”

Leiserowitz works to make climate change universally understandable, so that a wide range of people understand how it affects their lives. As part of this, he hosts Climate Connections, a daily radio program broadcast across the country.

On Climate Connections, he incorporates stories about climate change from all sections of society, listening to the perspectives of Democrats, Republicans, politicians, scientists and more. He hopes this will help them appreciate the enormity and impact of climate change, without the influence of political discourse.

“How do we help people see that this is not an issue we need to care about only because of politics?” Leiserowitz asked at the panel. “The climate system doesn’t care whether you’re Democratic or Republican.”

Emily Sorensen, a doctoral candidate at the School of Drama, also spoke at the panel. She studies ecodramaturgy, which includes combining theater and drama with ecological topics. 

In the past, she has worked with kids, helping them to explore and engage with nature. She acknowledged that sometimes it is challenging to remain optimistic, when information about climate change is typically disheartening.

“It’s so important to follow up saying ‘this is bad,’ with ‘this is what people are doing about it,’” Sorensen said. “So you can leave feeling that even though things are bad, we can work on it.”

It is important, Sorensen said, that the audience does not become discouraged but leaves feeling empowered.

Another panelist, Susan Butts, is the director of collections and research at the Peabody Museum. She explained that, in the Peabody’s exhibits, she and her colleagues try to tell a story, weaving together positive and negative parts of history to create a nuanced conversation.

For example, she said, “Let’s tell a story of corn. Let’s give this full-bodied story that looks at the history of corn, and then let’s also talk about conservation at the same time. So we learn that we’re affecting life on Earth in different ways, but we also learn how we’re protecting life on Earth.”

Butts and her colleagues seek to create a narrative that engages the audience, instead of alienating them, tying together many pieces of information to create a balanced presentation.

Additionally, panelist Susan Wollschlager, director of marketing and communications for the Nature Conservancy in Connecticut, explained that her organization encourages people to get out in nature. She referenced the Farmington River, one of Connecticut’s endangered rivers, which has been harmed by an outdated hydroelectric dam.

“Our hope is for people to think, ‘How is this ecosystem and habitat being affected? What could it look like if that whole area was restored?’” she said. “We want people that are hiking at the river to feel connected to that river, to want to protect it and learn more.”

Wollschlager aims to instill a sense of commitment and responsibility in her audience.

Furthermore, Leiserowitz said, spreading a message of love is crucial.

“At the heart of [our work against climate change] is love. We love certain things,” Leiserowitz said. “Even if you didn’t know about a creature in a documentary until you finally saw it, learning about it could inspire something in you to care about that creature, or that ecosystem, or that landscape, or those people, in a way that you didn’t fully appreciate before.”

The Environmental Film Festival takes place April 1-5.

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The forum, hosted at Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall and featuring speakers from YCCCH, discussed the history of Yale’s climate and health involvement and touched on recent accomplishments. YCCCH Executive Director Jen Wang organized the forum with YCCCH co-faculty directors Dr. Robert Dubrow and Dr. Kai Chen. The forum celebrated ten years of the center.

“We had two primary goals: To bring together Yale faculty from across the university to learn about each other’s work in climate change and health, build relationships, and foster collaboration for future external funding proposals, [and] to celebrate 10 years of YCCCH and re-introduce the center to the Yale community as a leader, convenor, and thought partner on climate change and health research at Yale and beyond,” Jennifer Wang wrote to the News.

Wang joined the University in 2023 and took over as the YCCCH’s executive director. She is a co-instructor in a School of Public Health and School of the Environment’s cross-listed course, “Clinic in Climate Justice and Public Health,” which provides practical experiences for student teams to work on community or stakeholder-engaged projects.

According to Wang, this was the first time faculty have convened for a forum. Its exigence came about to celebrate “the great track record in research, education, and policy” and “re-invite the Yale faculty community to explore collaborations with us.”

“We were very pleased with the turnout from many parts of the University,” Dubrow, the founding director and co-faculty director of YCCCH, said. 

He estimates that, throughout the day, over 50 faculty members attended — including from the Schools of Public Health, Medicine, Nursing, Environment, and Architecture, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Provost’s Office.

The collaboration between Yale’s medical and climate change research communities has been increasing in recent years, according to Dubrow.

Climate Change and Health Concentration for Masters of Public Health has had 27 graduates since it was established in 2020, according to Dubrow, and over 800 working professionals from 66 countries completed the online Climate Change and Health Certificate Program. Students in the Clinic in Climate Justice and Public Health have carried out 41 projects since the course started in 2017. 

YCCCH also has a CDC-funded partnership with the Connecticut Department for Public Health to engage in local heat and air quality preparedness and response plans.

“The Yale Center on Climate Change and Health is promoting collaborative efforts across multiple disciplines to tackle the health impacts of climate change,” YCCCH Fellow Cristina Arnés Sanz MPH ’25 told the News, “It was very inspiring to witness faculty from various schools at Yale gathering at the Forum with a shared commitment to breaking down silos and co-developing innovative research on climate and health.” 

In 2020, the YCCCH was adapted from the Yale Climate Change and Health Initiative, which was created in 2015.

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Motivated by disaster and by pain, these two juniors at Yale College turned to artistic creation. Combining their prior expertise, they’ve organized an upcoming gallery titled, Palette to Purpose. The theme: “What is your ecological vision?” 

Visual artists from the University and greater New Haven created pieces and were grouped with a musician or an engineer to add a nonvisual aspect to their artwork, whether it be through music or through touch. One showing will be March 24 to March 31 in the Ezra Stiles College art gallery. The second showing will be April 28 in the Yale Club of New York City.

“You feel emotion when you listen to music. You feel emotion when you look at a painting,” Young said. “If you mix two, you’re able to, kind of like, create this bridge between different senses that is all towards one goal, which is environmental advocacy and climate change awareness.”

Drawing inspiration

A self-described climate artist, Young is no stranger to activism. She has created art in the wake of disaster and has traveled to different countries to interview community members about their climate stories, which she then creates paintings of.

Young also founded a nonprofit called Relief after Disaster in high school, and won a United Nations Millennium Fellowship to help her kick off the inaugural Palette to Purpose exhibition in 2024.

Jain, a singer since age four, attended an arts high school. Growing up, her house was “always filled with music” — her brother playing Indian drums, her singing, songs playing on speaker.

Jain previously conducted research on music therapy for people with visual impairments. She found strong links between art therapy and how it improved mental health in low vision individuals. 

“Arts are very visual by nature,” Jain explained. “We came up with this concept of a multidimensional art exhibit where not only you were consuming art by looking at it, but you’re also engaging the other senses.”

In 2019, Jain founded a nonprofit called EyeMatter to make the arts more accessible for the low vision community. She was inspired by collections in the New York Public Library that feature Braille and Talking Book Library, which makes written works more accessible to the blind.

Through a partnership with the World Wildlife Foundation, or WWF, the Palette to Purpose organizers are ensuring the creators create fact-checked art. Each pair of visual and tactile/musical artists works with a WWF educator who ensures their work is backed by science. 

Funds from the art sale and gallery will go toward Direct Relief and Anekant Community Center, an organization that provides free cataract surgery in countries like India and Kenya.

The musician and the maker

Dahlia Kordit ’28 creates visual art with various physical mediums. She learned about Palette to Purpose through Yale Visual Artists and felt a call to get involved. 

“I always try to push myself in new directions when I am creating a work of art. For me, this often means using materials in new ways that add to the meaning of my work,” Kordit told the News. “Since this exhibition is centered around the climate, I decided that it would be best to incorporate recycled materials into whatever I make.”

Kordit experimented with three-dimensionality, incorporating an old canvas and various material scraps into her piece.

The final product incorporates paper mache, “a technique that [she] had never tried before” but she feels adds both physical and symbolic depth.

Rory Bricca ’26 is the composer and improvisational pianist working with Kordit on her piece. 

He received only a draft of what Kordit envisioned — then, just a foregrounded arm holding nature in the palm of its hand, surrounded by dark clouds.

The two exchanged voice memos and offered interpretations of the piece and how each perceived the composition.

“We discussed how the fate of our planet is in our hands, how we have the power and responsibility to act,” Bricca said. “I sent her a piano improvisation with beautiful major triads in the right hand being interrupted by a dissonant bass melody, which I thought would capture this juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and the terrifying power that our species has to destroy it.”

The duo struggled initially to “bridge the gap between art and music,” according to Bricca, but with Kordit’s suitemate, a spoken word poet, they were able to come up with five phrases highlighting different aspects of the visual work and have those overarching themes carry Bricca’s piece along.

“Another detail that I really look forward to incorporating in this piece is the concept of the red string of fate, as well as tying a knot around your finger in an effort to remember something,” Kordit told the News. “It goes back to how Rory described my piece — our fate is tied to the planet, and we have to do our best to remind ourselves of that.”

Singing for climate

Zaida Rio Polanco ’26 is an environmental studies major who has been a singer-songwriter for “as long as [she] can remember.”

In 2020, Rio performed in several climate justice protest concerts. She collaborated with Young last year for OurHouse, the annual arts showcase to promote student artists of color. 

“I wrote a song called ‘Slow Violence’ about incremental changes due to climate change and how that ties to slow violence in relationships,” Rio said. “[Camila] made a live painting to it during the performance. It was really beautiful.”

The artist that Rio is working with right now for Palette to Purpose created a moving graphic design.

“If there was ever a time for the performing arts to really like come alive for social justice, climate justice, it would be now,” Rio said. “Under Trump, it’s just like … the call to action is so much more important now.”

Globally, at least 2.2 billion people have a near or distance vision impairment.

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Outside, homes are fractured. Inside, relationships, bearing the invisible stresses of the heat, crumble, too.

“Climate change exacerbates mental health stressors, especially among populations facing displacement, food insecurity and economic instability due to environmental shocks,” Kaveh Khoshnood SPH ’89 GRD ’95, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, wrote to the News.

Khoshnood’s work at the Humanitarian Research Lab — or HRL — investigates the impact of war, forced migration and environmental shocks on health outcomes in vulnerable populations.

According to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, climate change is considered a “serious aggravator of gender-based violence” and increases the risk of domestic violence. Economic strain, displacement and social isolation, as well as psychological distress, are mechanisms by which climate change accelerates intimate partner violence incidents, Khoshnood mentioned.

“[The] loss of livelihoods due to climate disasters can increase financial dependence, reducing women’s ability to leave abusive relationships,” Khoshnood said.

Countries that have experienced recent, acute weather events — such as cyclones, flooding, heat waves and droughts — have a higher prevalence of intimate partner violence, according to a recent paper published in the journal, PLOS Climate.

“For this particular project, we look[ed] at upstream global issues and how those play into violence as a downstream factor,” said Abigail Hatcher, an associate professor of health behavior at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health. 

The paper drew data on intimate partner violence from a variety of pre-existing databases and merged this with the Emergency Events Database, a global list of climate shocks. 

The World Health Organization and other organizations often conduct household interviews as part of the survey procedure. Questions for women ask if they’ve experienced any physical or sexual violence from a husband or partner in the last 12 months.

“When extreme weather happens, it has this immediate physiological effect on your body, obviously, but also how your nervous system is responding,” Hatcher said. “Extreme weather will always have a gendered effect.”

According to Hatcher, hunger leads to more impulsive, violent actions, as anxiety responses might be heightened.

Additionally, there are the added social factors if a household doesn’t have food, and how it might reflect on them within their community, Hatcher says.

A 2023 study led by Dr. Pooja Agrawal, a global health specialist at the School of Medicine, examined the interplay between climate change, food insecurity and gender-based violence.

The authors wrote that climate shocks strain food production and transportation infrastructure and impact how vulnerable populations access food. When people lose the ability to make their livelihoods, this can have significant negative effects on societal dynamics.

The Yale study alluded to several case studies in which climate change worsened livelihoods. The 1998 floods that decimated infrastructure in Dhaka City, Bangladesh, led to an increase in food prices and a lack of safe drinking water. With rampant unemployment and rising tensions, domestic violence incidents rose. 

In 1997, a drought brought food insecurity to the Hawa people, a farming population in Papua New Guinea. The Hawa responded to resulting food insecurity with an increase in “witch killings,” or violence predominantly targeted at women. 

In Senegal and Ghana, a similar phenomenon of increased sexual violence — including rape, forced prostitution and early marriage of girls — was observed in response to disasters triggered by natural hazards.

Patriarchal societies play into this gendered experience of a disaster. These effects impact who picks up labor during recovery efforts or bears the abuse at home.

Bryn Redal SPH ’25, a research assistant at the Yale Program for Climate Change Communication, said that climate change “alters human behavior both directly and indirectly” by driving economic instability, food and water insecurity and increasing mental health stressors.

“Rising food prices and resource scarcity can alter dietary habits and migration decisions, while food insecurity has been linked to increased aggression and intimate partner violence,” Redal wrote to the News. “Climate anxiety, displacement, and loss of livelihoods contribute to heightened stress, depression, and social unrest, influencing political engagement and community dynamics.”

In the future, research could explore regional differences, as some climate shocks may have stronger effects on domestic violence in low-income countries where social protections are weaker, said Khoshnood.

He also thinks it would be valuable to incorporate qualitative data — such as survivor narratives — to better understand how climate change exacerbates domestic violence risks at a community level.

“The study reinforces the urgent need for climate resilience strategies that incorporate gender-based violence prevention,” Khoshnood said.

Hatcher is, however, worried about the future of this research. Last week, the Trump Administration moved to end the U.S. Agency for International Development, which runs a data collection agency called the Demographic and Health Surveys, from which the study authors drew data.

“The world will no longer have data about country wealth, estimates of health and social factors like intimate partner violence,” Hatcher said. 

The Demographic and Health Surveys has population and health data from over 400 surveys conducted in over 90 countries.

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While New Haven is not likely to see any weather as extreme or destructive as the wildfires, the rising sea level is increasing the likelihood of surge flooding. New Haven also faces potential extreme heat, along with the general threat of greenhouse emissions. To be prepared, the local and state governments must ensure that building, infrastructure and policy regulations are up to date. 

“With climate change, the probability [of extreme weather] increases, so we have to think about this and just be a little bit better prepared than we are,” professor of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences Alexey Fedorov said.

However, Fedorov believes that natural weather variations can still be drastic, and are not the result of climate change. These natural variations are still the general reason for everyday changes in the weather.

Regardless, in respect to climate change, New Haven should be wary of the rising sea levels, which can lead to far more dangerous storm surges — abnormal rises in sea levels caused by storms.

“If you have already high sea levels, a storm surge can do much more damage,” Fedorov said. “We have flooding penetrating much further inland, and so that’s probably one of the critical things to think about in terms of global warming for New Haven and generally this area of Connecticut.”

According to David Kooris, a lecturer at the School of the Environment and the Executive Director of the Connecticut Municipal Redevelopment Authority, dangerous flooding is a related issue that faces New Haven. It is important that the city is able to upgrade and invest in the necessary infrastructure to contain flood water, including culverts and bioswales. Culverts carry river water underneath roads and can burst in floods if they are not wide enough, while bioswales are patches of planted land that hold water before they enter drainage systems, reducing the likelihood of overflow during a flood. 

Kooris also mentioned a project funded by the Army Corp of Engineers to use I-95 as a flood wall to reduce the risk of flooding in the area. Furthermore, municipalities should think of how to ensure safe future development in a world impacted by climate change, according to Kooris.

“The state is constantly updating its building codes, raising the bar for municipalities, so that their floodplain regulations and coastal zone management regulations are constantly raising the bar for future development,” Kooris said.

Extreme heat is another concern in New Haven, where the urban climate increases its effect. 

Kooris believes that having concentrations of pavement and other surfaces absorb heat can mitigate its risks, along with planting more trees, which provide shade and also absorb some heat.

“About having adaptation measures for the neighborhood,” Kooris said, “[it’s important to have] splash pads and ways for kids to engage with water and cool down.”

Creating government policy can be helpful in fighting climate change as well, including through reducing greenhouse gas emissions. 

Suprya Sarkar is Chair of the Outreach Committee of the New Haven Climate Movement. During summer 2024, Sarkar and other members of the Climate Movement drafted the Transportation Transformation Resolution for the New Haven city government. 

“The resolution is essentially focusing more on greenhouse gas reduction in the transportation sector as it is the number one contributor to emissions in the state,” Sarkar said. “We tried to incorporate demands such as increased funding for sustainable urban development, climate education planning, staffing, and greater access to public transportation.”

For Sarkar, it is meaningful to have her voice heard, and she hopes her actions will bring about meaningful political change that will help curb the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on New Haven.

Since 1901, the global average temperature has risen by about 0.17°F per decade.

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Climate change-induced extreme and near-record dryness settles into southern and central California and Nevada. By April 2024, climatologists begin taking note of the below-average precipitation. In the U.S. Drought Monitor’s September 2024 report, parts of the region receive a moderate, D1 drought designation. 

A grueling summer passes by. The urban valley breaks records with all-around temperatures of above 100 °F. Hundreds die, many more are hospitalized — heat exhaustion and heat strokes are to blame. 

All the while, in this nine-month period, vegetation in the coastal chaparral dries, withers and browns. 

In early January 2025, just a week after New Year, furious 80 mph Santa Ana winds swept through SoCal. The winds are natural, occurring when cool, pressurized desert air heats and picks up speed as it races down a mountainside. 

Blustery and mildly irritating to those with dust-sensitivities, Santa Ana wind episodes only last a few days. Angelenos are used to the late-fall windstorms.

This time, things are different.

Fires start and spread. First in the Pacific Palisades, then Eaton Canyon of Altadena, Kenneth, Hollywood Hills.

Climate patterns had irrevocably shifted as a result of anthropogenic activity. Drought, fuel and a single spark was all it took for the urban metropolis to go up in flames.

“Climate change has lots of cascading effects on water systems,” Shimon Anisfeld, a Yale researcher of water resources and environmental chemistry, wrote to the News. “But probably the three biggest categories are: increased hydrologic variability, which leads to more droughts and floods; increased evaporation, which leads to overall drier conditions in many places; and loss of natural water storage in the form of snow and ice, which leads to less water available during the summer.” 

Water in the desert

By 3 a.m. of Jan. 8, the firefighters in the Pacific Palisades came across an unthinkable problem: the hydrants had gone dry.

It didn’t take long for rumors to leak. Misinformation spread like hopping embers. 

Social media users speculated that billionaires controlling the Kern Water Bank had refused to lend water to firefighting efforts. This was proven false; the Kern Water Bank is over 100 miles north of the fires, and has played no part in ever contributing to the fires.

The more plausible explanation, however, remained: the reservoir had been emptied. 

This second explanation was closer to, though not entirely, the truth. The Santa Ynez Reservoir, located near the Pacific Palisades, holds up to 117 million gallons of water. It was strategically placed in the region so that water resources could be used to fight fires in the event of one.

The LA Department of Water and Power, LADWP, declined to further comment on the issue with the News. Instead, LADWP referred the News to a previously issued statement from early January.

According to the statement, “water pressure in the system was lost due to unprecedented and extreme water demand to fight the wildfire without aerial support. This impacted our ability to refill the three water tanks supplying the Palisades and a low percentage of hydrants in the area, mostly in the higher elevations. As soon as LADWP identified the risk of losing water in the tanks and water pressure in the system, we immediately deployed potable water tankers to sustain support for firefighting efforts.”

This contrasted with a more recent LA Times article that claimed tear-related repairs had taken the reservoir out of commission. 

According to the LA Times, the reservoir had been emptied to deal with repairs. When the fires snuck up on the region, the reservoir could not be filled fast enough.

“The fire hydrants ran dry because water was being pulled from them faster than it could be replaced, not because the system as a whole didn’t have enough water,” Anisfeld wrote to the News. “In the hilly landscape of Pacific Palisades, water pressure is dependent on high-elevation water tanks, which have limited capacity, about 3 million gallons – when they ran dry, there was trouble refilling them quickly because of power limitations and leaks caused by the fires themselves.”

According to Anisfeld, urban water systems like the Santa Ynez Reservoir were designed to fight fires in which a few structures are burning at once, not these kinds of massive conflagrations at the wildland-urban interface. 

Additionally, air support, usually a key component of fighting wildfires, was nearly impossible given the high winds during the critical time periods.

“The water systems in California are fundamentally different from those in Connecticut because of the differences in climate, hydrology, and water uses. For example, California, with its Mediterranean climate and multi-year droughts, needs much more water storage than Connecticut,” Anisfeld said. “And the demand side is quite different too: in California, agriculture is a huge part of the picture, while in Connecticut, most water use is for cities and households.”

Anisfeld recently published a water management textbook explaining these issues and others in detail titled, “Water Management: Prioritizing Justice and Sustainability.”

Unsafe and Undrinkable

But further issues have plagued the Palisades preexisting water crisis; LADWP has been under further backlash due to “Do Not Drink” alerts regarding the reservoir’s contaminated water. 

On Jan. 10, LADWP released a statement saying the water surrounding the Palisades was unsafe to drink. 

Residents in Pasadena and Altadena, around the Eaton Fire, also received similar alerts, but from Pasadena Water and Power. 

David Backer Peral ’28, a first year at Yale, attended La Cañada High School, roughly five miles from the epicenter of the Eaton Fire. While he wasn’t in the area at the time, friends and family in the area were notified of unsafe tap water.

He said that his friends received water “alerts from Pasadena when going on the highway” near the Eaton Fire. 

“My friends in La Cañada ignored the [Do Not Drink] warnings once they made sure the water was safe to drink,” Backer Peral said. “And then my family in Altadena, I think, just bought bottled water at the stores when they were in the area.”

Volatile organic compounds, a toxic contaminant introduced by the fires, had entered the reservoir. Low water pressure made it impossible to simply flush out these toxins, leaving the undrinkable water stagnant. Still water also poses a problem — it becomes a breeding ground for pathogens like bacteria and viruses.

The Do Not Drink alert for Pasadena was lifted on Jan. 24, 2025.  

Future concerns

Oct. 1 marks the start of a new Water Year. Water management is a costly endeavor, especially when there’s less of it to manage. 

The Getty Center and Museum went aflame early in the Palisades Fire episode. Unlike the less fortunate residential abodes, the facility had been well equipped with anti-fire engineering.

Vegetation was regularly pruned. Galleries containing multi-million dollar works of art were sealed when the fire ran up the hillside. 

Crucially, rather than rely on the faulty Santa Ynez Reservoir, the Getty relied on its own supply of water — stored conveniently on-site.

“There is a one-million-gallon water storage tank on site as an alternate or additional water supply that can support fire sprinklers and hydrants as necessary,” the Getty Center explained on the website. 

However, most of the fire zones remain outside the philanthropic, foundational support of the Getty. 

The Arroyo Seco Foundation, a conservation organization that manages the Arroyo Seco and Hahamongna watershed, posted a picture of the spreading basins, small man-made ponds to prevent runoff into the ocean. Noticeably missing from the image: water.

“One year ago, the spreading basins in the Arroyo Seco were filled with water which was slowly recharging the aquifer,” the caption read. “Today these spreading basins are all bone dry. There’s no water for the aquifer. And there’s barely any water upstream for the rainbow trout that inhabit the Arroyo.”

Luckily for the Arroyo, and its rainbow trout, Southern California had its first rain this week. In some ways, it was a respite from the dry ashiness that had fueled the fire. There was also cause for concern.

These hillsides, no longer held up by vegetation, will lose integrity at the soonest rain. When they slip, mounds and rivers of mud, boulders, house foundations will come down. A scorched slope sets the blueprint for mudslides.

“With rain ahead this weekend, we are swiftly installing concrete barriers in the burn zone, laying down sandbags and clearing debris to shore up burn areas and stem the flow of toxins,” Mayor Karen Bass wrote on X.com earlier this week. 

Flood runoff can carry municipal toxins to the sea, where the water problem, once a burden to terrestrial human life, becomes a concern to the hundreds of miles of coastline and the trillions of organisms that live in its salty depths.

Water, once a lifeline, remains a betrayer.

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For centuries, inhabitants of California and other fire-prone areas around the world have used one highly effective technique to reduce fuel: prescribed burns. These low-intensity fires are set voluntarily to clear bush and dead plant matter. When planned well, they can reduce the risk of catastrophic fire in California forests by 60 percent. 

Yet in October 2024, the U.S. Forest Service — or USFS — halted prescribed burns in California, citing unfavorable conditions and strained crews. 

Controlled burnings typically happen in the fall or spring, when humidity levels and wind circulation are ideal. As the climate warms, Marlon said, this safety window shrinks. 

In both 2021 and 2022, USFS ceased prescribed burns nationwide due to unfavorable conditions and limited resources, prioritizing fire suppression over fire prevention.

Prescribed burning’s main function is to prevent large-scale fires, but the practice also maintains healthy wildlife, said Marlon, who researches sediment records and public perception of fire. 

“In a healthy ecosystem out west, it’s completely normal for lightning to set off a fire — even a very high severity fire,” Marlon said. “Within a few weeks, you can go back into the burned area and see all this fresh green growth sprouting up. These trees and plants evolved with fire over millions of years.”

Fire clears away pests and disease, allows sunlight to reach flowers and herbs in the understory and returns nutrients to the soil, she added. Some Californian species are even coated in flammable oils. Dr. Leandro Maracahipes, an associate research scientist who studies fire-prone ecosystems at the School of the Environment, said that most native plants are not killed in prescribed burns. 

But plants are not what is burning in Los Angeles, according to Marlon.   

The Pacific Palisades, where the first of four fires ignited, sits on the border of two distinct types of land: densely populated residential neighborhoods and pristine mountains of Topanga State Park. The two fires that followed, the Eaton and Hurst fires, border the San Gabriel Mountains and Angeles National Park. 

“That’s what people call the wildland-urban interface,” Marlon said. “Fire is a healthy natural disturbance. The problem is when you start building houses in these areas, not realizing that burning is actually a natural process in these ecosystems.” 

While plants have adapted over millions of years to withstand fire, buildings have not. Surveying satellite images of burned neighborhoods, Marlon found that the trees were intact. It was houses, cars and city infrastructure that burned. 

Consequently, the smoke spreading through Los Angeles is composed of chemicals far more toxic than plant matter ash. 

In prescribed burns, “you can control what’s burning,” Marlon said, making the technique crucial for preventing fires in urban areas. She hopes the coming weeks will bolster public support for prescribed burns and other preventative efforts. 

“We have a lot more work to do to help people understand that we have to figure out ways to live with fire, or we’re going to end up in more situations like this,” she said.

Maracahipes stressed the importance of cooperation with Indigenous communities of California, who have practiced prescribed burns and effective fire management for far longer than U.S. fire agencies. 

Both experts stressed that climate change will necessitate careful management of California landscapes as weather patterns become less predictable. 

Even increased rainfall can contribute to wildfires. From 2022 to 2024, LA experienced the second-wettest two-year season on record. 

“Above-average rainfall promotes greater biomass accumulation, which consequently leads to higher-intensity fires. These increased rains likely led to a higher biomass accumulation,” Maracahipes said. 

Prescribed burning could have reduced this excess fuel in forests, thus decreasing the intensity of wildfires. 

As crews are called more often to fight fires in diverse regions of the country, the labor and money allocated toward fire prevention may dwindle, Marlon predicted. And while fire is essential to California ecosystems, she said, the fires affecting Los Angeles are far from natural. 

Fire management is further complicated when natural areas are artificially divided among different stakeholders. Only 3 percent of forested land in California is owned by the state; the majority is federally or privately owned. As a result, cooperation is a challenge. 

Public agencies may also not be willing to take responsibility for the risks associated with prescribed burns — even if the long-term outcome is positive. 

In 2019, a prescribed fire planned over years and funded by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy broke into a small wildfire in Northern California, when weather conditions shifted quickly. The fire was contained in under two weeks. 

Two years later, the catastrophic Caples Fire swept through the region. Even as winds pushed flames toward the previously burned area — which bordered a residential community — the fire slowed and changed course. 

Despite the risks, Marlon said, prescribed burns are one of the best tools with which California is equipped to prevent fires of catastrophic scale. 

“It’s fighting fire with fire,” Marlon said. 

The spread of Los Angeles fires is reported at fire.ca.gov.  

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