1/ The House passed the Inflation Reduction Act over unanimous Republican opposition, sending the multibillion-dollar climate, health, and tax bill to Biden’s desk to be signed into law. The legislation marks the single largest federal investment in addressing climate change and the most substantial change to national health care policy since the Affordable Care Act. In total, more than $370 billion will be dedicated to climate and energy programs aimed at reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below 2005 levels by the end of the decade. (Washington Post / New York Times / ABC News / NBC News / Bloomberg / Wall Street Journal)

2/ More than 107 million Americans will live in an “extreme heat belt” by 2053 and experience heat index temperatures over 125 degrees at least one day a year – the extreme danger level on the National Weather Service’s heat index. A new report using hyperlocal data and climate projections finds that the future heat belt will stretch from Texas, Louisiana, and the Southeast through Missouri and Iowa to the Wisconsin border. Texas and Florida will bear the brunt of climate change, with the number of extreme heat days nearly doubling in the next thirty years. The model also finds that next year more than 8 million American are expected to experience heat index temperatures above 125 degrees. The heat index is what it feels like when humidity and air temperature are combined. It is commonly referred to as the “feels like” temperature. (NBC News / Bloomberg / CNBC)

3/ A new study finds that California is overdue for a once-a-century “megaflood” that could drop up to 100 inches of rain and 34 feet of snow. California last experienced a month-long, atmospheric river superstorm in 1862. The paper warns of “extraordinary impacts” and reports that such an event could transform “the interior Sacramento and San Joaquin valleys into a temporary but vast inland sea nearly 300 miles in length and [inundate] much of the now densely populated coastal plain in present-day Los Angeles and Orange Counties.” Most of California’s major highways would also be washed out or become inaccessible. A separate study concluded that human-caused climate change will intensify atmospheric rivers and could double or triple their economic damage in the western U.S. by the 2090s. Government agencies last studied a hypothetical California megaflood more than a decade ago and estimated that it could cause $725 billion in damages – three times the projected fallout from a severe San Andreas Fault earthquake, and five times the economic damage from Hurricane Katrina. While researchers can’t say when the next megaflood will strike, forecasters say there’s a 0.5 to 1.0% chance of it happening in any given year. (