HANOI, Vietnam (AP) — Asian countries are offering to buy more U.S. liquefied natural gas in negotiations with the Trump administration as a way to alleviate tensions over U.S. trade deficits and forestall higher tariffs. Analysts warn that strategy could undermine those countries’ long-term climate ambitions and energy security.

Buying more U.S. LNG has topped the list of concessions Asian countries have offered in talks with Washington over President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on foreign goods. Vietnam’s Prime Minister underlined the need to buy more of the super-chilled fuel in a government meeting, and the government signed a deal in May with an American company to develop a gas import hub. JERA, Japan’s largest power generator, signed new 20-year contracts last month to purchase up to 5.5 million metric tons of U.S. gas annually starting around 2030.

U.S. efforts to sell more LNG to Asia predate the Trump administration, but they’ve gained momentum with his intense push to win trade deals.

Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas cooled to a liquid form for easy storage and transport that is used as a fuel for transport, residential cooking and heating and industrial processes.

Trump discussed cooperation on a $44 billion Alaska LNG project with South Korea, prompting a visit by officials to the site in June. The U.S. president has promoted the project as a way to supply gas from Alaska’s vast North Slope to a liquefication plant at Nikiski in south-central Alaska, with an eye largely on exports to Asian countries while bypassing the Panama Canal Thailand has offered to commit to a long-term deal for American fuel and shown interest in the same Alaska project to build a nearly 810-mile pipeline that would funnel gas from

The Philippines is also considering importing gas from Alaska while India is mulling a plan to scrap import taxes on U.S. energy shipments to help narrow its trade surplus with Washington.

“Trump has put pressure on a seeming plethora of Asian trading partners to buy more U.S. LNG,” said Tim Daiss, at the APAC Energy Consultancy, pointing out that Japan had agreed to buy more despite being so “awash in the fuel” that it was being forced to cancel projects and contracts to offload the excess to Asia’s growing economies.

“Not good for Southeast Asia’s sustainability goals,” he said.

LNG deals could derail renewable ambitions

Experts say LNG purchasing agreements can slow adoption of renewable energy in Asia.

Locking into long-term deals could leave countries with outdated infrastructure as the world shifts rapidly toward cleaner energy sources like solar or wind that offer faster, more affordable ways to meet growing power demand, said Indra Overland, head of the Center for Energy Research at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs.

Building pipelines, terminals, and even household gas stoves creates systems that are expensive and difficult to replace—making it harder to switch to renewables later. “And you’re more likely then to get stuck for longer,” he said.

Energy companies that profit from gas or coal are powerful vested interests, swaying policy to favor their business models, he said.

LNG burns cleaner than coal, but it’s still a fossil fuel that emits greenhouse gases and contributes to climate change.

Many LNG contracts include “take-or-pay” clauses, obliging governments to pay even if they don’t use the fuel. Christopher Doleman of the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis warns that if renewable energy grows fast, reducing the need for LNG, countries may still have to pay for gas they no longer need.

Pakistan is an example. Soaring LNG costs drove up electricity prices, pushing consumers to install rooftop solar panels. As demand for power drops and gas supply surges, the country is deferring LNG shipments and trying to resell excess fuel.

The LNG math doesn’t add up

Experts said that although countries are signaling a willingness to import more U.S. LNG, they’re unlikely to import enough to have a meaningful impact on U.S. trade deficits.

South Korea would need to import 121 million metric tons of LNG in a year — 50% more than the total amount of LNG the U.S. exported globally last year and triple what South Korea imported, said Doleman. Vietnam — with a trade surplus with the U.S. twice the size of Korea’s — would need to import 181 million metric tons annually, more than double what the U.S. exported last year.

Other obstacles stand in the way. The Alaska LNG project is widely considered uneconomic. Both coal and renewable energy in Asia are so much cheaper that U.S. gas would need to cost less than half its current price to compete. Tariffs on Chinese steel could make building building gas pipelines and LNG terminals more expensive, while longstanding delays to build new gas turbines mean new gas power projects may not come online until 2032. Meanwhile, a global glut in LNG will likely drive prices lower, making it even harder for countries to justify locking into long-term deals with the United States at current higher prices.

LNG deals raise energy security concerns

Committing to long-term U.S. LNG contracts could impact regional energy security at a time of growing geopolitical and market uncertainties, analysts said.

A core concern is over the long-term stability of the U.S. as a trading partner, said Overland. “The U.S. is not a very predictable entity. And to rely on energy from there is a very risky proposition,” he said.

LNG only contributes to energy security when it’s available and affordable, says Dario Kenner of Zero Carbon Analytics.

“That’s the bit that they leave out … But it’s pretty important,” he said.

This was the concern during the recent potential disruptions to fuel shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and earlier during the war in Ukraine, when LNG cargoes originally destined for Asia were rerouted to Europe. Despite having contracts, Asian countries like Bangladesh and Sri Lanka were outbid by European buyers.

“Events in Europe, which can seem very far away, can have an impact on availability and prices in Asia,” Kenner said.

Asian countries can improve their energy security and make progress toward cutting carbon emissions by building more renewable energy, he said, noting there is vast room for that given that only about 1% of Southeast Asia’s solar and wind potential is being used.

“There are genuine choices to meet rising electricity demand. It is not just having to build LNG,” he said.

Jintamas Saksornchai in Bangkok contributed to this report.

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receive support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The masonite plate, called a Hester-Dendy sampler, helps biologists like Glandon scrape algae off underwater rocks. Just a few feet below the surface, she reached a huge underwater ridge made of limestone and other rocks piled into 750-foot rows parallel to the coast.

On this dive in late June, a crew of four scuba divers ferried equipment back and forth between the kayaks and the underwater ridges, collecting sediment samples near the boulders and dropping off underwater cameras on the bottom of the lake. As the divers continued their work, a thick morning fog began to fade, giving way to clear blue waters. From the surface, schools of juvenile fish could be spotted drifting between patches of sunlight at the bottom of the ridges.

These structures, called “rubble ridges,” aren’t just typical rocky reefs found on the bottom of the Great Lakes — they’re entirely man-made.

“We just want to see, are these reefs impacting aquatic biodiversity as well as sediment retention?” Glandon said. “We’re trying to get the whole picture of the aquatic community, and in order to do that, we need to sample in a lot of different ways. It allows us to not only look at the sediment … but also the critters that are living in there.”

Man-made reefs have become a popular way to provide a habitat for fish in coastal communities. The rubble ridges, however, are also designed as a cost-effective tool to prevent erosion. Each ridge sits about 3 to 5 feet beneath the lake’s surface, which allows them to block some of the energy and sediments carried by waves during intense winter storms. When these waves reach the coast, they don’t hit the shoreline as hard, which slows the process of erosion. And the gaps between each ridge help to retain some sediment without fully stopping the natural flow of sand.

“The designers call it passive sand management, just to slow erosion down when it’s the worst,” said Steve Brown, the Illinois state geologist. “That was part of the idea — a lower-cost offshore breakwater system. And we’re trying to see, does it work like the designers thought it would work?”

Glandon and her team of biologists and geologists at the Lake Michigan Biological Station, a research station in Zion run by the University of Illinois, are studying the rubble ridges as part of a federally funded pilot project through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. The initiative is a collaborative effort that provides funding to over a dozen federal agencies to protect the Great Lakes through infrastructure and lake monitoring projects.

Installed at Illinois Beach State Park in 2021 by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the ridges are being monitored along with another artificial reef at Fort Sheridan in Highland Park, as well as two control sites, about 2 miles south of each respective reef.

In this part of Lake Michigan, just 3 miles south of the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, the lake bottom consists of a flat layer of sand, which doesn’t usually attract invertebrates and smaller fish.

But as Glandon descended onto the rocky ridge, she saw hundreds of fish, from species that tend to stay near the reef year-round like the round goby, to schools of younger migratory species like alewife that were using the ridge as a nursery habitat.

By analyzing both biodiversity and shoreline changes at the reef, researchers are hoping to see whether this new kind of infrastructure could be scaled up as a tool for cities across the Great Lakes.

“Lake Michigan is a very dynamic place. It is always changing, and it always wants to change, and it always will change,” said Philip Willink, a biologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey and an expert on natural reefs in Chicago. “People don’t like that change and are trying to hold the shoreline in stasis, when, in reality, nature wants to erode some shoreline … But how do we put that into city planning?”

Tracking shoreline changes

As Glandon and a crew of three other scuba divers and two kayakers ventured out to sample algae and sediments at the ridges, a few other researchers remained onshore to help handle equipment. It was the research team’s first dive of the year, and biologist Scot Peterson could already spot the traces of erosion from the winter’s storms.

Where a wooden boardwalk had once extended out over the beach, only a small chunk of wood remained, poking out from under a sand dune on a nearby roadbed. Strong waves had gradually weakened the structure over the past few years, and last year, the state park decided to remove it altogether.

“Every time I come back, it feels like something has changed,” Peterson said.

Sights like these are common across the Great Lakes, and Lake Michigan in particular can be especially “unpredictable,” said Liz Spitzer, a coastal geologist with the Illinois State Geological Survey. The lake’s levels tend to fluctuate from low to high in 10- to 30-year cycles, with levels usually reaching their annual peak during the summer.

However, climate change is speeding up these fluctuations, experts say. In January 2013, Lake Michigan was at a record low. Just 3 ½ years later, the lake had risen 4 feet and by July 2020, it nearly broke the record high. Lake levels have always fluctuated, but that has been over a period of decades. Now these shifts are happening within a few years. That variability is attributed to multiple factors, but increased precipitation from climate change is the driving force.

Today, lake levels are hovering at about 579 feet, close to the lake’s average.

At Illinois Beach State Park, these fluctuations have taken a toll, causing extreme erosion along the coastline. Kellogg Creek, located just south of the rubble ridges, has flooded several times over the past few years, damaging one of the buildings that researchers at the Lake Michigan Biological Station used to store samples. The lake bed at the northern part of the beach has eroded away, leaving grass roots exposed as windswept dunes pile up behind the shore.

In response, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources approved a massive breakwater installation project in 2019 for the state park. The state spent $73 million to install 22 breakwaters along a 2.2-mile stretch of the state park’s shoreline, making it the largest capital project in IDNR history.

According to a 2023 release about the breakwaters, the state intended the structures to “guide and direct the movement of the sand instead of simply trying to prevent its movement.” The breakwaters, made of stone, are angled slightly to the northwest to block storms that typically come from that direction. IDNR officials did not respond to requests for comment.

The breakwaters, along with 430,000 cubic feet of sand that was added to bolster the beach, have helped rehabilitate the beach since construction finished in August 2024. The first chain of breakwaters ends just a few hundred feet north of the rubble ridges.

With extreme erosion and other construction projects unfolding at the state park, Glandon said her team has had to deal with several “confounding factors” at this reef site.

“The rubble was actually supposed to be built a little bit north of where it currently is, and that’s because the large breakwater project was in the process of being designed when the rubble was being implemented,” Glandon said. “They moved (the rubble) further south to accommodate those breakwaters.”

The monitoring project at Illinois Beach State Park began in 2021 and is set to wrap up next year. The other artificial reef site at Fort Sheridan has been monitored since 2023 under a different project funded by the Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant. Researchers are comparing the results between the two sites, hoping to explain how reef systems function along different types of shorelines. The shoreline at Fort Sheridan consists mostly of rocky bluffs, and the lake bottom in that area is dotted with small boulders.

Each spring, geologists have used drones to map the elevation of the bottom of the lake, allowing them to compare any changes in the lake’s topography that happened during the winter storm season and see if the reefs are helping retain sediment.

According to the research team’s preliminary results, the Fort Sheridan reef has successfully helped to build up some sand. At Illinois Beach State Park, though, erosion has overall increased. Most of this erosion occurred between 2022 and 2024, with very little change happening at the site during the 2025 winter season.

“The sediment dynamics, that part of it is going to be very hard to make any conclusions without a huge asterisk, since they built these big breakwaters,” Glandon said. “But what we’re hoping to do is kind of zoom out with the geology story, and tell it from the perspective of before they built these big breakwaters and after. We’re just trying to be nimble with the way we’re sampling.”

Starved of sand

Illinois Beach State Park, which boasts the state’s longest continuous stretch of natural shoreline, is somewhat of an anomaly. The park takes up 6.5 of Illinois’ 63 miles of coastline along Lake Michigan, and the majority of this coastline consists of man-made structures, such as breakwaters or seawalls.

This infrastructure is meant to help protect the urban coastline from eroding. However, it’s not how the shoreline naturally functions, according to Spitzer.

“Along this stretch of the coast, the dominant current is generally coming from the north, going southward,” she said. “Over the past couple thousand years, with the direction of the dominant current, we’ve been seeing the sand moving southward over time. And then human activity adds an extra layer of complexity to that, because that compartmentalizes where the sand can go.”

The goal of most coastal protection structures, like seawalls, is to retain sand that’s flowing through the lake. This helps build up extra sand along lakefront beaches and harbors, and lessens the impacts of erosion. Sand was already a scarce resource in southern Lake Michigan before humans began to build coastal infrastructure, according to a 2020 study conducted by Brown and other geological survey researchers, making sand retention in the area particularly vital.

But man-made structures, which often run perpendicular to the shore, can also block the natural southward flow of sand. So while seawalls can build up sand in one location, a beach directly downstream of that seawall might face worse erosion as a result.

“Every time we create a structure, it stops the sand movement, and you get erosion downstream,” said Brown. “And so the real question is that we haven’t sorted out how to live along the lake.”

The rubble ridges were designed to be an “actively moving system,” Glandon said — as waves crash against the ridges over several years, researchers expect that some of the boulders will tumble to the bottom, flattening out over time.

Since reef structures like the rubble ridges run parallel to the coast, they serve as somewhat of a middle ground — they retain some sand near the coastline but still allow most of it to pass through. So as the sand moves downstream, it leaves more for lakefront properties to the south to use as they build up their own shorelines, helping distribute sediments more evenly across the lake.

That’s part of the reasoning behind government investments in this project, Glandon said. Currently, most municipalities along the North Shore run their own coastal management programs and tend to build shoreline infrastructure like seawalls without consulting their neighbors. When one town builds a seawall, it creates a so-called domino effect — that can starve neighbors of sand directly to the south, and usually the only solution is to build their own seawalls.

“When we have private land ownership, it can be tricky to manage sediment movement that occurs outside of those human-created bounds,” Glandon said.

Using infrastructure like artificial reefs, or other more natural designs, could help alleviate the need to build seawall after seawall. It also presents a relatively low-cost option — installing the rubble ridges cost just over $1.4 million.

“One of the hopes of our program is to try to provide this quantitative data on the effects of these structures … to give towns and local managers options for ways that they could potentially retain some sand in their areas without impacting their neighbors as much,” Glandon said.

Building biodiversity

From the shores of Fort Sheridan and Illinois Beach State Park, the artificial reefs are invisible, hovering just beneath the surface. For aquatic creatures, though, these rocky reefs are a landmark, rising distinctly above the lake bottom.

“Most of the bottom of Lake Michigan is pretty flat. It’s either sand or mud, with no real features,” Willink said. “But every once in a while, there are natural reefs out there, and these can be in shallow water, in deeper water, they can be from a variety of sources as well.”

Willink, the biologist who now works with the Illinois Natural History Survey at the University of Illinois, worked for many years at Chicago’s Field Museum and Shedd Aquarium. There, he studied one of Chicago’s most iconic underwater landmarks.

Morgan Shoal, located just off the coast of Promontory Point by 53rd Street, is one of a handful of naturally occurring rocky reefs in Lake Michigan. This reef is actually a remnant of Chicago’s ancient past, Willink said — about 425 million years ago, the modern-day Great Lakes region was located south of the equator, submerged in a tropical sea that was home to several coral reefs.

Though the region’s latitude has shifted, traces like the rocky reefs remain on the bottom of the lake, providing an ideal habitat for fish. Morgan Shoal features a wide variety of “nooks and crannies,” Willink said, which provide habitats for a range of animals from large migratory fish to small invertebrates and worms.

“In the smaller spaces, that’s where we found a lot of the aquatic insects and worms — things which may not sound super exciting, but that is the bottom of the food chain,” Willink said. “This is the key, to have a variety of different habitats. When you do that, you create more of a larger variety of living spaces for a larger variety of species. And then ultimately, you end up with a higher biodiversity on the site.”

While natural reefs often provide more appealing habitats for fish, artificial reefs are also widely used for the same purpose, and have been shown to boost biodiversity.

This has been shown at the rubble ridges, too. Both the Illinois Beach State Park and Fort Sheridan reefs showed a significant increase in fish populations and biodiversity when compared against the control site for each reef, according to preliminary data from the Lake Michigan Biological Station research team.

The team tracks fish diversity with a number of different measures. During the June dive at Illinois Beach State Park, kayakers carried large aluminum frames, each with an underwater camera mounted in the middle, out to the reefs. Scuba divers carried these frames down to the reefs, where they’ll remain for the rest of the summer season.

The cameras are programmed to take a picture every five minutes, which helps scientists track the density and mass of the fish living on the reef.

“We see at the control sites, biomass is high, but abundance is low, versus at the reef sites, we have much smaller fish,” Glandon said. “We think it’s because this is showing that the reefs are nursery habitats for these fish.”

They also take samples of algae living on the underwater boulders that make up the reef, and collect sediments to see what types of invertebrates are living at the site. These invertebrates are the core of the food chain, attracting smaller fish in search of food sources.

While fish and invertebrates do sometimes seek shelter around man-made breakwaters, Willink said they’re most attracted to natural structures that don’t totally stop the flow of sand.

“Part of the key is that it isn’t a dam to the sand, it doesn’t hold the sand there,” Willink said. “If there’s too much sediment, that would smother all these small places.”

As the reef monitoring project continues, so does the constant movement of sand. Despite humans’ best efforts to counter this, the currents of the lake are ever-changing and ever-powerful, scientists say. As lakefront communities have built containment structures along their waterfronts, this trend has remained the same — even at established places like Illinois Beach State Park, waves surge above boardwalks, benches sink beneath sand, roadways are left to crumble in the face of encroaching shorelines.

“A lot of what we’re facing right now in the 21st century is, how do we deal with nature in urban areas? How do we live with nature next to us and allow nature to do its thing, and yet still maintain the infrastructure of a city?” Willink said. “And I think that’s sort of an emerging field, trying to figure out how to deal with this sort of struggle between the two. It’s not just restricted to Lake Michigan — it’s everywhere.”

Lily Carey is a freelancer.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — U.S. land managers are racing the clock as hotter, drier weather raises the risk of wildfires in the nation’s overgrown forests with each passing year.

One tool is to use the flames from lightning-sparked wildfires when conditions allow or to plan prescribed fires for other times of the year to clear out dense vegetation as a way to limit future risks.

Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona for decades has been a leader at using fire to make the ecosystem more resilient. A lightning-sparked fire along the North Rim that started July 4 presented an opportunity for fire to play its natural role.

After a week conditions quickly deteriorated. Wind-whipped flames rushed toward the iconic Grand Canyon Lodge and the surrounding historic cabins. Many were reduced to rubble and ash.

It’s not the first time firefighters have been on the losing end of trying to wrangle the forces of nature.

Still, experts say fire is a critical land management tool, pointing to countless examples where the work has paid off.

“We focus so much on the fires that go bad and almost nothing on the 99% plus that do great work,” said Scott Stephens, a professor of fire science and forest policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Unless we get the forests in a more resilient condition with low fire hazards, we will be chasing our tails forever.”

Searching for new tools

On the North Rim, managers working the Dragon Bravo Fire say crews had constructed containment lines and were prepared for more defensive maneuvers before conditions rapidly changed.

Uncharacteristically strong winds pushed the flames past multiple containment lines, prompting mandatory evacuations for remaining North Rim residents.

Crews in New Mexico also were forced to change their strategy in battling a blaze burning in the Santa Fe National Forest after a spot fire was discovered beyond containment lines. Ranchers there shared pictures of dead cattle on charred grazing allotments, criticizing officials for not putting out the flames sooner.

Experts agree there’s always room for improvement when it comes to managing wildfires and planning for prescribed fires, especially as technology improves to help fire managers predict what the flames might do.

University of Utah atmospheric scientist Derek Mallia is among those working on new forecasting tools. He’s tracking fires in Utah and Arizona in preparation for a project next year that will focus on pyrocumulonimbus clouds, or those towering thunderstorms that sometimes form above wildfires.

Mallia said fire forecasting hasn’t advanced as quickly as tools for other severe events like tornados and hurricanes. That’s partly because fires happen on a finer scale, making the work more difficult. Managers also have to account for the legacy of built-up fuels in the forests and the compounding factor of climate change, he said.

For example, he said fires are burning hotter at night than they used to.

“That used to be a time of the day where there was a good opportunity to kind of jump on a fire, get it contained and make a lot of meaningful progress,” he said. “That’s a lot more difficult now.”

Researchers also are trying to better understand how fires affect weather patterns. Mallia explained that fires are part of a more complex feedback loop that makes forecasting even more challenging.

Still, the biggest issue is the condition of the forests and their susceptibility to high severity wildfire, said Stephens, the California professor.

Andi Thode, a professor of fire ecology and management at Northern Arizona University and the lead at the Southwest Fire Science Consortium, agreed. She said using a lightning-sparked fire or taking years to plan a prescribe burn is a matter of deferred risk for fire managers.

“Do you want to take your risk now with a lightning ignition that seems to be functioning in the way that you want it to with weather predictions that are not too bad? Or do you want to push that risk back to later in the worst time of the year?” she said. “Fire managers are always juggling this now.”

Lessons already learned

For Native Americans, fire has long been a part of life and crucial for forest health. Westward settlement all but eradicated those attitudes until ecologists ignited a shift in the way policymakers thought about fire.

The first wilderness fire management program was established in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks more than a half-century ago, as policies shifted from suppression to management. Other parks followed, with thousands of lightning-sparked fires being allowed to burn under carefully monitored conditions in dozens of parks across the U.S.

But there have been costly lessons, including at Bandelier National Monument in northern New Mexico, where a prescribed fire was set in the spring of 2000 to treat 2 square miles of dense forest.

Strong winds, dry conditions and insufficient resources contributed to the destruction of homes as the fire ballooned to nearly 75 square miles. Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nations’ premier nuclear weapons labs and the birthplace of the atomic bomb, also closed.

The Cerro Grande Fire forever changed the landscape around Los Alamos, prompted congressional inquiries, led to a host of recommendations from nonpartisan government watchdogs and formed the basis of new training programs.

Changing conditions

It’s not that the lessons faded from memory, but the circumstances are more dire with a drier landscape across much of the U.S. West.

That was the case in 2022, when the U.S. Forest Service forged ahead with a pair of prescribed burning operations in New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains as pressure mounted to address the wildfire threat.

Outdated models and miscalculations by managers resulted in what was the largest blaze in New Mexico’s recorded history. Rural communities were uprooted and the Hermit’s Peak/Calf Canyon Fire wasn’t contained for four months.

During the conflagration, the Forest Service put on hold its prescribed fire program and conducted a lengthy review that resulted in numerous reforms. Congress approved billions in recovery dollars, with FEMA paying out about $2.6 billion so far.

A 2024 report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office noted 43 prescribed fire projects between 2012 and 2021 out of 50,000 prescribed fire projects. That included blazes in national forests in more than a dozen states — from the California-Nevada border to Utah, New Mexico, Idaho, North Carolina and Arkansas.

The Forest Service alone ignites about 4,500 prescribed fires each year, with the agency saying most are successful. But support wavers each time a fire escapes, like in New Mexico and now with the lightning-sparked fire at the Grand Canyon.

Thode said fire managers weigh many variables when making decisions — from wind speed and topography to the dryness of the fuels and moisture deficits within the atmosphere.

“There’s a lot of science that goes behind what the folks are doing on the ground to manage these ecosystems,” she said.

GENEVA (AP) — Soccer had a fierce reckoning with heat at the recently concluded FIFA Club World Cup in the United States — a sweltering preview of what players and fans may face when the U.S. co-hosts the World Cup with Mexico and Canada next summer.

With temperatures rising worldwide, scientists warn that staging the World Cup and other soccer tournaments in the Northern Hemisphere summer is getting increasingly dangerous for both players and spectators. Some suggest that FIFA may have to consider adjusting the soccer calendar to reduce the risk of heat-related illnesses.

“The deeper we go in the decade, the greater the risk without considering more dramatic measures, such as playing in the winter months and/or cooler latitudes,” said Prof. Piers Forster, director of the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures in Leeds, England. “I’m getting increasingly worried that we are only one heatwave away from a sporting tragedy and I would like to see governing bodies lean into the climate and health science.”

Tournament soccer in June and July is a tradition going back to the first World Cup in 1930.

Since then, the three-month period of June, July and August globally has warmed by 1.89 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, European summer temperatures have increased by 1.81 degrees C. The rate of warming has accelerated since the 1990’s.

Climate scientists say that’s a factor that needs to be considered when playing high-intensity outdoor sports like soccer.

“If you want to play football for 10 hours a day, they’ll have to be the hours of the early morning and late evening,” climatologist Friederike Otto from Imperial College, London, told The Associated Press in an email, “if you don’t want to have players and fans die from heatstroke or get severely ill with heat exhaustion.”

FIFA adapts

Extreme heat and thunderstorms made an impact on FIFA’s newly expanded tournament for club teams. The Club World Cup was held in 11 American cities from June 14 to July 13.

FIFA adapted by tweaking its extreme heat protocol to include extra breaks in play, more field-side water, and cooling the team benches with air fans and more shade.

Still, Chelsea midfielder Enzo Fernández said the heat made him dizzy and urged FIFA to avoid afternoon kickoffs at the World Cup next year.

The global soccer players union, FIFPRO, has warned that six of the 16 World Cup cities next year are at “extremely high risk” for heat stress.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino addressed the heat concerns on Saturday, saying the handful of World Cup stadiums that are covered would be used for day-time games next year.

Extreme heat could become an even bigger challenge at the following World Cup in 2030, which will be co-hosted by Spain, Portugal and Morocco. Games are scheduled to be played in afternoons and early evenings from mid-June to mid-July. All three countries have already seen temperatures rise well above 100 Fahrenheit this summer.

FIFA downplayed the heat risk in its in-house evaluation of the 2030 World Cup bid, saying “weather conditions are difficult to predict with the current development in global and local climate, but are unlikely to affect the health of players or other participants.”

Heat exhaustion

The physical effects of playing 90 minutes of soccer in direct sunshine during the hottest part of the day can be severe and potentially result in hyperthermia – abnormally high body temperatures.

“When players experience hyperthermia, they also experience an increase in cardiovascular strain,” said Julien Périard of the University of Canberra.

“If core temperature increases excessively, exertional heat illness can occur,” leading to muscle cramping, heat exhaustion, and even life-threatening heat stroke, he said.

Many sports events held in the summer adjust their start times to early morning or late night to minimize the risk heat-related illness, including marathons at the Olympics or track world championships. Morning kickoffs, however, are rare in soccer, where World Cup match schedules are often set with European TV audiences in mind.

It would be hard for FIFA to avoid day-time World Cup kickoffs given the packed match schedule as the number of participating teams increases from 32 to 48 in 2026.

Calendar rethink

Heat mainly becomes an issue when the World Cup is held in the Northern Hemisphere, because June and July are winter months in the Southern Hemisphere.

FIFA has stuck to its traditional June-July schedule for the men’s World Cup except in 2022 when it moved the tournament to November-December to avoid the summer heat in Qatar. Something similar is expected when neighboring Saudi Arabia hosts the tournament in 2034.

However, moving the World Cup to another part of the year is complicated because it means Europe’s powerful soccer leagues must interrupt their season, affecting both domestic leagues and the Champions League.

FIFA didn’t respond to questions from AP about whether alternate dates for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups were being considered.

When and where to schedule the World Cup and other outdoor sports events is likely to become more pressing as the world continues to warm.

Athletes and even everyday people doing basic physical activities are now exposed to 28% more of moderate or higher heat risk in 2023 than they were in the 1990s, said Ollie Jay, a professor at the University of Sydney who has helped shape policy for the Australian Open in tennis.

“This is symbolic of something bigger,” said Michael Mann, a University of Pennsylvania climate scientist. “Not just the danger and inconvenience to fans and players, but the fundamentally disruptive nature of climate change when it comes our current way of life.”

Borenstein contributed from Washington, D.C.

AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer

NEW YORK (AP) — Two people in New Jersey were killed after their vehicle was swept up in floodwaters during a storm that moved across the U.S. Northeast overnight, authorities said Tuesday.

Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, noted the deaths occurred in the northern New Jersey city of Plainfield, where there were two storm-related deaths July 3. A third person was killed in North Plainfield during that previous storm.

“We’re not unique, but we’re in one of these sort of high humidity, high temperature, high storm intensity patterns right now,” Murphy told reporters after touring storm damage in Berkeley Heights. “Everybody needs to stay alert.”

The names of the two latest victims were not immediately released Tuesday. Local officials said the vehicle they were riding in was swept into a brook during the height of the storm.

“Emergency personnel responded quickly, but tragically, both individuals were pronounced dead at the scene,” according to a statement the city posted online.

The heavy rains also caused flash floods in New York and south-central Pennsylvania on Monday night into early Tuesday, prompting road closures and snarling some service on the New York City subway.

It was the second-highest one-hour rainfall ever recorded in Central Park at more than 2 inches, surpassed only by the remnants of Hurricane Ida in 2021, according to local officials.

Flooding in the New York City subway

Viral videos posted online showed water flooding down into one Manhattan subway station, submerging the platform while passengers inside a train watched on.

Janno Lieber, chair and CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, told ABC 7 in New York the city’s sewer system got overwhelmed by the rain and backed up into the subway tunnels and to the stations. In several cases, he said, the backup “popped a manhole,” creating the dramatic “geyser” seen in some videos.

“What happened last night is something that is, you know, a reality in our system,” he told the TV station, noting the backup happens when more than 1 3/4 inches of rain falls in an hour. “We’ve been working with the city of New York to try to get them to increase the capacity of the system at these key locations.”

City officials said their venerable sewer system worked as well as it could, but it simply was not built to handle that much rain.

“Imagine putting a two-liter bottle of water into a one-liter bottle. Some of it’s going to spill,” Environmental Protection Commissioner Rohit Aggarwala said at a virtual news briefing Tuesday.

Lieber said full service was restored to the subway, as well as commuter rails, after hundreds of people worked overnight to restore operations.

Flooding has proven to be a stubborn problem for New York’s subway system, despite years and billions of dollars’ worth of efforts to waterproof them.

Superstorm Sandy in 2012 prompted years of subway repairs and flood-fighting ideas, and some have been put into practice. In some places, transit officials have installed or are installing storm barriers at subway station entrances, seals beneath subway air vents and curbs to raise the vents and entrances above sidewalk level.

Meanwhile, summer thunderstorms and the remains of hurricanes have repeatedly flooded parts of the subway system anew. In 2021, the remnants of Hurricane Ida killed more than a dozen New York City residents, largely in basement apartments, and sent water cascading again into subways, renewing attention to resiliency proposals.

The storm’s effects in New Jersey and Pennsylvania

The storm prompted multiple water rescues in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where streets and basements flooded after roughly 7 inches (18 centimeters) of rain fell. Some roads remained closed in parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey on Tuesday. Murphy said the pavement buckled in some locations and state and local officials were assessing the level of damage in several counties, noting the White House had reached out to his office.

A major east-to-west highway in New Jersey was closed to make emergency repairs while dozens of flights were delayed or canceled at area airports Tuesday.

Most flash flood watches and warnings had expired in parts of New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania as the rain moved on.

In one flooded North Plainfield neighborhood, a house caught on fire and collapsed amid the storm. Murphy said there was an explosion at the house but the family was not home and there were no injuries. The cause was under investigation.

Haigh reported from Connecticut.

This story has been corrected to reflect Janno Lieber is CEO of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, not the Metropolitan Transit Authority.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Monday took another step to make it harder to find major, legally mandated scientific assessments of how climate change is endangering the nation and its people.

Earlier this month, the official government websites that hosted the authoritative, peer-reviewed national climate assessments went dark. Such sites tell state and local governments and the public what to expect in their backyards from a warming world and how best to adapt to it. At the time, the White House said NASA would house the reports to comply with a 1990 law that requires the reports, which the space agency said it planned to do.

But on Monday, NASA announced that it aborted those plans.

“The USGCRP (the government agency that oversees and used to host the report) met its statutory requirements by presenting its reports to Congress. NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data,” NASA Press Secretary Bethany Stevens said in an email. That means no data from the assessment or the government science office that coordinated the work will be on NASA, she said.

On July 3, NASA put out a statement that said: “All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring continuity of reporting.”

“This document was written for the American people, paid for by the taxpayers, and it contains vital information we need to keep ourselves safe in a changing climate, as the disasters that continue to mount demonstrate so tragically and clearly,” said Texas Tech climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. She is chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy and co-author of several past national climate assessments.

Copies of past reports are still squirreled away in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s library and the latest report and its interactive atlas can be seen here.

Former Obama White House science adviser and climate scientist John Holdren accused the administration of outright lying and long intended to censor or bury the reports.

“The new stance is classic Trump administration misdirection,” Holdren said. “In this instance, the administration offers a modest consolation to quell initial outrage over the closure of the globalchange.gov site and the disappearance of the National Climate Assessments. Then, two weeks later, they snatch away the consolation with no apology.”

“They simply don’t want the public to see the meticulously assembled and scientifically validated information about what climate change is already doing to our farms, forests, and fisheries, as well as to storms, floods, wildfires, and coast property — and about how all those damages will grow in the absence of concerted remedial action,” Holdren said in an email.

That’s why it’s important that state and local governments and every day people see these reports, Holdren said. He said they are written in a way that is “useful to people who need to understand what climate change is doing and will do to THEM, their loved ones, their property and their environment.”

“Trump doesn’t want people to know,” Holdren wrote.

The most recent report, issued in 2023, found that climate change is affecting people’s security, health and livelihoods in every corner of the country in different ways, with minority communities, particularly Native Americans, often disproportionately at risk.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

WAIANAE, Hawaii (AP) — When there’s enough rain, the mountain-framed expanse of vacant land behind Calvin Endo’s house looks like the lush and verdant landscape that makes tropical Hawaii famous. But in the summer, when the jungle of eyeball-high invasive grasses and spindly tree branches fade to brown, he fears it could become a fiery hellscape.

This isn’t Maui, where most of Lahaina burned down during a massive wildfire in August 2023. Endo’s duplex is in Waianae on the west side of Oahu.

But Waianae and Lahaina have a lot in common. They’re both situated on parched western island coasts, with road access pinched by topography, and are bastions of Native Hawaiian culture. Both have sections crisscrossed by overhead power lines atop aging wooden poles, like those that fell in high winds and caused the Lahaina fire.

There’s even a Lahaina Street through the heart of Makaha, Endo’s neighborhood along the Waianae coast.

“It can happen to us,” said Endo, who moved to the Makaha Meadows subdivision in 1980, soon after it was built. “We can have a repeat of Lahaina if somebody doesn’t do anything about the brush in the back.”

In recent days, two wildfires a few miles away, including a July 6 blaze that left a 94-year-old woman dead, proved his worst fears could become reality.

It’s been nearly two years since Lahaina provided a worst-case scenario of the destruction from wind-whipped flames fueled by overgrown brush. With 102 deaths, it’s the deadliest U.S. wildfire in a century.

In the months afterward, the number of Hawaii communities participating in the Firewise network, a nationally recognized program that helps communities with resources for safeguarding homes, more than doubled to 35 — but none in western Oahu.

Even though Waianae residents have long known about their wildfire risks, only now is one of its neighborhoods close to gaining Firewise status.

Communities become Firewise by organizing a committee, creating a hazard assessment, developing an action plan and volunteering hours toward reducing risk, such as removing overgrown brush. Firewise tracks a community’s progress, connects residents with experts, and provides ideas and funding for mitigation, workshops and training.

Identical risk

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service considers Lahaina and Waianae to be at much higher risk than other U.S. communities for a wildland fire, noted Honolulu Fire Department Battalion Chief Keith Ito.

“The weather, the winds, they’re pretty much identical,” he said. “With all that being said, I think that the high-risk wildfire potential is a state-wide problem, not really specific to Waianae or Lahaina.”

Nani Barretto, co-director of the Hawaii Wildfire Management Organization, struggles to understand why fire-prone communities like Waianae have yet to join the Firewise movement. There are also no Firewise communities on the island of Kauai.

“Just because we are proactive in getting the word out, it doesn’t mean the right people are getting the information,” she said. “For Maui, it took a very devastating event for them to join.”

Organizing a community can be challenging because it requires residents to put in time and step up as leaders, she said.

Endo, who is a longtime member of the Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board, had never even heard of Firewise until recently.

A development called Sea Country, near the neighborhood that was recently ordered to evacuate during a wildfire, is close to becoming the fist Firewise community in Waianae, said Andria Tupola, a resident who also represents the coast on the Honolulu City Council.

The process got underway around 2018 but picked up momentum after Lahaina, she said.

Sea Country recently completed a hazard assessment and has planned some mitigation events, including a park cleanup in August, said Ashley Bare, the Firewise support specialist for Oahu.

Emergency route and hungry sheep

Lahaina also provided the spark for opening an emergency access route in Waianae, Tupola said. Farrington Highway, the main artery along the coast, can get clogged with just an accident.

Military officials who control a mountain pass above Waianae started talking about letting civilians access the route after Lahaina, she said. During the July 6 fire, state and military officials were ready to open the road as a way out of the coast and into central Oahu, said state Rep. Darius Kila, who represents the area.

A Hawaiian homestead community in Waianae’s Nanakuli Valley is also trying to achieve Firewise status, said Diamond Badajos, spokesperson for the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands.

Home to the largest concentration of Native Hawaiians, Waianae is rich in Hawaiian culture and history. But much of the coast also struggles with poverty and homelessness.

Residents have grown accustomed to wildfires in the dry summer months, said Republican state Rep. Chris Muraoka: “It’s almost like if it doesn’t burn, something’s not right.”

However, Muraoka said he thinks communities along the coast would benefit more from fire-prevention and safety education in schools rather than organizing to be Firewise. Muraoka, who lives in Makaha, said communities in Waianae have unique needs that being Firewise might not address, including sections with neighborhoods that are more spread out than in Lahaina and blazes that are often started by arsonists or kids playing with fire.

Some residents already do what they can, especially with the dry season underway.

Endo often tries to clear brush on private property behind his home himself, to create a firebreak. Some properties in Waianae Valley use sheep to eat the overgrown vegetation.

Retired firefighter Shermaih “Bulla” Iaea recalls fighting blazes in the brush near Endo’s home and Makaha Elementary School.

In 2018, his farm burned down during high winds from a passing hurricane. He was using a herd of sheep on his property until wild dogs killed them in April. Neighborhoods banding together to become Firewise is another tool that will help, he said.

“There’s a 100 percent chance that will happen here,” he said. “I thought it would never happen to me. Now I’m trying to ring the bells. I’m trying to sound the alarm.”

‘Relentless sun’

Being one of the poorest communities in the state is a major factor preventing Waianae from becoming Firewise, said Kila, who lives near where the July 6 fire happened.

Before the summer, the Democratic lawmaker sent a letter to Hawaiian Electric and telecom companies urging “immediate and coordinated action” to address dangerous, sagging utility lines on aging wooden poles along the coast.

It’s not clear why Makaha ended up with a long street named Lahaina, which can mean “relentless sun” in Hawaiian. But like the west Maui town, it fits the sunny west Oahu neighborhood, which is home to the world-famous Makaha surfing beach.

Some neighborhoods above Lahaina Street are newer and have underground utilities, like Endo’s. But toward the ocean, older neighborhoods are laced by overhead power lines.

That worries Glen Kila, a Hawaiian cultural practitioner in Waianae, who is not related to Darius Kila. Power lines are blamed for sparking the Lahaina blaze.

“If that happens to Waianae,” he said, “we’re done.”

KERRVILLE, Texas (AP) — With rain in the forecast Monday, officials kept a wary eye on river levels as some crews resumed the search for people still missing after catastrophic flooding pummeled Texas this month, killing at least 132 people.

Search and rescue operations along the Guadalupe River were halted Sunday after a new round of heavy rain led to more high water rescues and prompted fears that waterways could surge again above their banks.

That was the first time search efforts for victims were paused since the July Fourth floods. Authorities believe more than 160 people may still be missing in Kerr County alone, and 10 more in neighboring areas.

‘Trailer after trailer after trailer’ swept away

Kerr County Judge Rob Kelly said Monday during a commissioners’ meeting that it is difficult to determine exactly how many tourists were in the area when the flooding occurred.

“We’ve heard accounts of trailer after trailer after trailer being swept into the river with families in the them. Can’t find the trailers,” Kelly said. “It’s what we don’t know. We don’t know how many of them there are.”

Kelly said he’d been told of one trailer that was found “completely covered in gravel” 27 feet below the surface of the river. He said sonar crews have been searching the river and local lakes and more are expected to arrive.

Commissioner Don Harris said officials plan to drain two reservoir lakes on the river.

“Who knows how many out there are completely covered,” Harris said

FEMA Urban Search and Rescue teams fully resumed operations on Monday, said Obed Frometa, FEMA Blue Incident Support Team information officer.

Levi Bizzell with Ingram Fire Department said their operations and everything up the river were still suspended as of about noon Monday but they would be reconvening shortly to discuss next steps.

“Everybody here wants to be out there working,” Bizzell said. “They literally come in in the morning whether they are tired or not, and they just want to get out there and work because they want to find closure for these families.”

‘Playing a blame game’

In Kerrville, about 100 miles west of Austin, local officials have come under scrutiny over whether residents were adequately warned about the rising water on July 4.

Authorities in Kerrville went door-to-door to some homes early Sunday to warn that flooding was again possible, and pushed phone alerts to area residents.

Kerr County commissioners asked the public for their patience as the search and cleanup continues. Commissioner Rich Paces said during the meeting Monday morning that he has received death threats.

“They’re just playing a blame game,” Paces said.

During a special Kerrville City Council meeting Monday, council member Brenda Hughes also complained of threats to city officials and staff, which she did not detail, and called for increased security at City Hall.

“We’re not only dealing with all of the aftermath of this tragic event, but now we have to worry about threats that are coming to staff, targeted threats that are specific to individual staff members,” she said.

Bad weather forces a halt to search efforts

During the pause in search efforts, Ingram Fire Department officials ordered crews to immediately evacuate the Guadalupe River corridor in Kerr County, warning the potential for another flash flood was high.

The soil is still primed for enhanced water runoff across Texas Hill Country, and a flood watch covering the region is in effect until 9 p.m. Monday, with up to 5 inches of rain possible in some spots, the National Weather Service said.

Gov. Greg Abbott said on X on Sunday that the state had rescued dozens of people in San Saba, Lampasas and Schleicher counties, and that people evacuated their homes in a handful of others.

The latest flooding damaged about 100 homes and knocked down untold lengths of cattle fencing, said Ashley Johnson, CEO of the Hill Country Community Action Association, a San Saba-based nonprofit.

“Anything you can imagine in a rural community was damaged,” she said. “Our blessing is it was daylight and we knew it was coming.”

County officials ordered everyone living in flood-prone areas near the San Saba River to evacuate and relocate to the San Saba Civic Center, Johnson said.

A wide-ranging weather system brings heavy rains

The weather system brought widespread slow-moving storms and multiple rounds of heavy rain Sunday, pushing rivers and streams over their banks.

The rains caused waterways to swell further north in Texas, where emergency crews rescued one motorist who was left stranded in waist-high rapids on a submerged bridge over the Bosque River.

“He drove into it and didn’t realize how deep it was,” said Jeff Douglas, president of the McGregor Volunteer Fire Department.

Just before daybreak on the Fourth of July, destructive, fast-moving waters rose 26 feet on the Guadalupe River, washing away homes and vehicles. Crews in helicopters, boats and drones have been searching for victims.

The floods laid waste to the Hill Country region. The riverbanks and hills of Kerr County are filled with vacation cabins, youth camps and campgrounds, including Camp Mystic, the century-old, all-girls Christian summer camp.

Located in a low-lying area along the Guadalupe River in a region known as flash flood alley, Camp Mystic lost at least 27 campers and counselors.

The flood was far more severe than the 100-year event envisioned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, experts said, and moved so quickly in the middle of the night that it caught many off guard in a county that lacked a warning system.

Associated Press reporters Sophia Tareen in Chicago; Carolyn Thompson in Buffalo, New York; Juan Lozano in Houston, Michael Weissenstein in Dobbs Ferry, New York; and Jeff Martin in Kennesaw, Georgia, contributed to this report.

SEATTLE (AP) — Though natural disasters cycle across seasons and regions in the U.S., it’s often a shocking discovery for property owners how expansive and expensive flood and water damage can be when a major storm devastates their homes, businesses and communities.

That’s because oftentimes insurance doesn’t cover what the policyholder thinks it does — or thinks it should.

The disappointing surprise is that while the standard home insurance policy does cover fire and wind damage, even good property insurance typically doesn’t cover things like flooding and earthquakes, which usually require a special and separate policy for each.

Here are the things to know about flood insurance.

Who has flood insurance

Most people who have flood insurance are required to have it.

Although many property owners have the option of purchasing flood insurance, it is mandated for government-backed mortgages that sit in areas that the Federal Emergency Management Agency deems highest risk. Many banks require it in high-risk zones, too.

But most private insurance companies don’t carry flood insurance, leaving the National Flood Insurance Program run by FEMA as the primary provider.

Congress created the federal flood insurance program more than 50 years ago when many private insurers stopped offering policies in high-risk areas.

FEMA’s Flood Map Service Center has an online tool to check your area. FEMA notes even a 1% chance of flooding is considered high risk because it amounts to a 1-in-4 chance of flooding over the life of a 30-year mortgage.

Who doesn’t have flood insurance

Homeowners in high-risk areas who should have it sometimes decide not to get it. Someone who pays off their mortgage can drop their flood insurance once it’s not required. Or if they purchase a house or mobile home with cash, they may not opt for it at all.

The rest of us are just rolling the dice, even though experts have long warned that flooding can happen just about anywhere because flood damage isn’t just water surging and seeping into the land — it’s also water from banks, as well as mudflow and torrential rains.

Mark Friedlander, spokesman for the Insurance Information Institute, an industry group, said only about 6% of U.S. households have a flood policy — primarily in the coastal areas prone to hurricanes. That rate has remained steady in recent years despite the increasing frequency of severe flooding events, including in areas that are not formally considered by the government to be high risk.

“Lack of flood coverage is the largest insurance gap across the country,” Friedlander said in an email. “Ninety percent of U.S. natural disasters involve flooding and flooding can occur just about anywhere it rains.”

What flood insurance covers

Even if a homeowner does have flood insurance, the coverage may not be enough to make a policyholder whole again.

FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program only covers up to $250,000 for single-family homes and $100,000 for contents. Renters can get up to $100,000 for contents, and commercial flood insurance will cover up to $500,000.

There are concerns that such flooding coverage limits are not robust enough, especially at a time when climate change is making strong hurricanes even stronger and making storms in general wetter, slower and more prone to intensifying rapidly.

And what typically happens to the people without flood insurance in a major storm is that they can try to recover some money from their standard home insurance but may end up in a fight to determine what damage is or isn’t wind versus rain, or even “wind-driven rain.”

Don Hornstein, an insurance law expert at the University of North Carolina, said the line between wind and water is a thin but very clear line that technical experts can determine. Should there be a proverbial tie, the law favors the insurance company.

“If the house was simultaneously destroyed by flood and, concurrently (by) wind, it’s not covered by private insurance,” Hornstein said.

Catastrophic floods can be difficult to prepare for. Sometimes evacuation is the right call, but if it’s too late the best bet is to find higher ground nearby. The stakes can be high, because a flash flood may give those in its path only minutes or seconds to react.

The right moves depend on the storm and the geography, said James Doss-Gollin, an assistant professor who teaches civil and environmental engineering at Rice University. For example, the advice won’t be the same for people who live near a beach and those who live by a river, he said.

“Some places you’re worried about the water moving really fast in the river. Some places you’re worried about roads getting flooded, but the water might not be moving very fast. So often your local community is going to have the best information,” he said.

Regardless of the storm or where it’s happening, Richina Bicette-McCain, an emergency physician with Baylor College of Medicine, said preparation is key.

“One of my favorite phrases is if you stay ready, then you don’t have to get ready,” she said.

Before the flooding starts

If you live in the United States, make sure the National Weather Service’s automatic weather alerts on your phone are activated. If you live in another country, find out what the weather agency and how they provide alerts.

If you don’t have a phone or it’s not working, the weather service recommends NOAA Weather Radio, local news coverage and listening for the Emergency Alert System on TV and radio broadcasts. These alerts typically include a few key phrases that indicate how serious the threat is. Here’s a quick glossary:

• 1. Flood watch: Hazardous weather is possible. Be prepared.

• 2. Flood advisory: Flooding is expected to be inconvenient, but not necessarily dangerous. Be aware.

• 3. Flood warning: Hazardous weather is imminent, or already happening. Take action.

• 4. Flash flood warning: Flooding is imminent or already happening, and the flood is especially sudden or violent. You might only have seconds to find higher ground.

5. Flash flood emergency: There’s a severe threat to human life, and catastrophic damage is about to happen or is already happening. This is exceedingly rare, and at this point, officials are typically reporting evacuations and rescues.

Doss-Gollin said before the National Weather Service issues a warning or emergency alert, it’s important for people to know where the nearest high places are that will not flood, so evacuees can move quickly if needed.

Bicette-McCain has her go-bag ready and refreshed every hurricane season that includes flashlights, spare batteries, food and water. And she said patients seeking medical care in flood emergencies typically face one of two problems: either they can’t use their regular medications or medical devices once the power goes out, or they’re dehydrated. So, she said, the most important items to throw in are medications, batteries and lots of drinking water.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever been so thirsty that you’re just desperate for a morsel of liquid to drink, but sometimes people get into that situation and they’ll resort to drinking flood water. And if you survive the flood, the implications of drinking flood water may be what does you in,” she said.

The National Weather Service, FEMA and American Red Cross all have emergency go-bag recommendations that include personal hygiene items, warm blankets and a whistle to signal for help. Doss-Gollin’s go-bag includes diapers and milk for his baby, and a weather radio that’s designed to pick up radio frequencies from far away in case the power is out or the local tower goes down. “We have one that’s hand-crank, which I really like because I’m not going to check the batteries on those every couple of months to make sure that they’re working,” he said.

Once the storm has arrived

Find out what local officials are recommending, and follow their instructions.

If it’s time to evacuate, do it before the storm comes. “We see a lot of casualties from people attempting to stay at their home,” Bicette-McCain said. “Don’t be that person.”

Bicette-McCain said it is never a good idea to touch the stormwater because it is impossible to know how contaminated it is. The only exception is if the space you’re in is so dangerous that you have to trudge through water to get somewhere safer. In that case, she recommended finding an umbrella or big stick to judge how deep the water is or whether there is debris in front of you. “We’re talking very turbulent, very putrid waters that you can’t see through,” she said.

If it’s too late to evacuate, don’t. Trying can be fatal. Just 6 inches (15 centimeters) of moving water can knock a person down, and a foot of moving water can move a car.

“Very often the people that die during floods … are driving across bridges or they’re trying to drive through water,” Doss-Gollin said. “The one piece of advice that everyone will give you is don’t drive through floodwaters, ever.”

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.