The Brief

We all know it’s hot — and getting hotter.

According to NOAA and NASA, the 10 warmest years globally since 1850 have all occurred in the past decade. In less than 200 years, when the Industrial Revolution began, the global average temperature has increased by more than two degrees Fahrenheit.

While the planet’s climate has changed dramatically over millions of years, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels are now at their highest in millenia due to pollution from human society. Scientific consensus proves the modern, rapid weather shifts we're now experiencing are a result of how we humans, largely through fossil fuel pollution, are changing the climate.

The science is clear that we’re entering a new era of extreme heat. We’re unlikely to keep global temperatures below the threshold scientists have raised the alarm about for years, and weather extremes will only become more frequent and intense if we don’t dramatically cut emissions in the next seven years or soon after.

So, as the earth heats up, what is “normal” vs “extreme” heat? How is the climate crisis affecting heat here in Southern California?

Normal heat in the Southland

Of course, July through September and even much of October in southern California, it's normal for the weather to heat up. Southern California has deserts, mountains and the ocean, so our temperatures vary widely. From geography to tree cover to local weather patterns, there are a lot of factors that naturally make some parts of Southern California hotter than others. My colleague, science reporter Jacob Margolis, explains in more detail in this story.

'Extreme' vs 'normal' heat

What’s normal versus extreme depends on where you live — after all, what’s considered a hot day in Santa Monica is a far cry from a hot day in Palm Springs.

The climate crisis is shifting average temperatures hotter — not every day, or every season, but it’s driving an average increase in both day and nighttime temperatures.

How the climate crisis is expected to affect heat in California.

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Courtesy of the California Legislative Analyst's Office

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That also means longer and more frequent “heat waves,” during which temperatures reach higher extremes and stay there for longer periods of time. A week-long heat wave in early September 2022 was the hottest and longest in the state’s record for that month, which is already one of the hottest months in California.

“Whether you're on the coast, whether you're in the mountains, whether you're in the deserts, whether you're in between, all those averages are going up,” said Alex Tardy, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS) San Diego office.

In Southern California, the most rapid and dramatic increases are happening in the deserts and the mountains, already extreme environments, Tardy said.

Doing the math

Since 1901, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has collected temperature records from weather stations across the country. They use that information, combined with other data and computer models to calculate specific “climate normals” for different regions.

The “normals” add up to a 30-year average temperature, or what’s considered a long-term average temperature. NOAA’s National Weather Service uses those average temperatures to decide whether a heat event is extreme or not.

“Abnormal heat is typically daytime temperatures 10 to as much as 20 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average,” said Tardy. “When we talk about a heat wave, what we're talking about is really two or more days when temperatures are much above average.”

NOAA's latest climate normals map showing the normals from 1991-2020 minus 1981-2010 normals. Most of the U.S. shows significant warming, especially in the West, Southwest and East, where soem normals jumped by a whole degree already.

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Courtesy of NOAA

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Since our bodies take time to acclimate to changes in temperature, those averages depend on the time of year. For example, Tardy said that an abnormal threshold in mid-July in L.A would be 90 degrees, whereas it would be 110 degrees in Palm Springs.

“We look at the heat risk, we look at the departure from normal, we look at the ability for someone to be able to acclimate to the heat,” Tardy said. “We don't just look at the fact that it's a hundred degrees and that requires a heat warning.”

Every 10 years, NOAA recalculates the climate normals — most recently in 2020 — and overall, averages are going up.

“Normals and averages — it's always been a moving target, but the target is moving up and up and up and warmer and warmer and that's what we've seen the past 10 years,” said Tardy.

Six of the last 10 years have been the hottest on record in Southern California, Tardy said.

Ranking heat waves like hurricanes 

When the NWS sees abnormal temperatures in the forecast, that can spark a heat watch or excessive heat warning or advisory. These warnings are meant to help individuals stay safe, inform governments and businesses, and can trigger some legal protections for outdoor workers.

NWS is currently prototyping an extreme heat risk scale that will more directly communicate how different heat extremes translate to health risk. They've already used it in tweets about the current heat wave:

Tardy said improving early communication about the dangers of heat is especially important as the climate crisis makes heat more extreme and frequent — already, heat kills more people than any other weather event in the U.S.

“Heat is a very silent killer,” Tardy said. “It's not something that we see like a hurricane or a flood or a winter storm. It's something that just kind of catches up to you over time. It's one of those things that a lot of people don't take seriously until it happens to them.”

The idea is to rank heat waves similar to how we rank hurricanes. California lawmakers also passed a bill in 2022 requiring a statewide heat wave ranking system by 2025.

The prototype scale for ranking heat waves amid a changing climate.

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Courtesy of NOAA

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“People can really relate to the magnitude or the potential impact on a five versus a one [for a hurricane],” Tardy said. “So we're trying to do that also with heat.”

NOAA’s current prototype, which you can peruse here, uses a color scale to indicate how dangerous forecasted temperatures may be to health. NWS is currently using it to inform its official heat alerts, but it will likely be a few years before it’s used in widespread public communication.

“The overall magnitude of the event — not just, 'It's 110 degrees' — that's something we're really trying to focus on more,” Tardy said.

The scale forecasts seven days in advance and allows a more nuanced view of heat as it relates to health by incorporating data about:

• How significantly above normal the temperatures are at your location.
• The time of the year. 
• How long the unusual heat will last (will overnight temperatures get low enough to lower heat stress? How much warmer than average will those temperatures be?)

Weather forecasting has gotten a lot better, and it is another tool to save lives amid the climate crisis, Tardy said. He hopes the heat risk scale will better communicate the health dangers of heat and help people better protect themselves and their loved ones amid our hotter normal.

“We have to do a better job ingraining it into the culture — that it's not just hot all the time, it's not just hot because it's summer,” Tardy said. “When we start talking about heat alerts or heat warnings, it's something that should be treated as, ‘Hey, this is very unusual.’ And we can't just treat the day or the activity as normal.”

Staying safe in the heat

The legal tug-of-war centers on a two-panel work called “Adam” and “Eve.” The life-size paintings depicting the biblical characters were created around 1530 by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

The Nazis stole the two paintings, and many others, from Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker in Holland in 1940. After the war, the Dutch government sold these two works to a Russian aristocrat, who sold them to the Norton Simon in Pasadena in 1971.

“By pursuing the recovery of the Cranachs, we are seeking to reverse a great injustice perpetrated by the Nazi theft of a Jewish family’s property,” Rabbi Noah Farkas, president and CEO of Jewish Federation Los Angeles, said in a written statement.

The Federation is plaintiff in a lawsuit filed on Monday in L.A. Superior Court that names the museum and two related foundations as defendants. Cranach the Elder’s work has sold for millions of dollars.

Goudstikker’s only living heir, Marei von Saher, gave the Federation the authority to file the lawsuit. If the lawsuit is successful, the Federation pledges to use the majority of the net proceeds to care for impoverished Holocaust survivors living in the L.A. area.

Adam and Eve, painted around 1530 by German artist Lucas Cranach the Elder.

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Courtesy Norton Simon Art Foundation

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Von Saher has spent years trying, unsuccessfully, to get these paintings back. But this lawsuit is different. It’s filed under a 2024 California law that gives people the ability to petition to recover cultural property “that was taken or otherwise lost as a result of political persecution,” according to the law.

Stolen painting

Responding to the lawsuit, the Norton Simon Museum did not challenge that the painting was looted by the Nazis.

“After decades of litigation, court after court including the United States Supreme Court has confirmed that the Norton Simon Art Foundation has proper title to 'Adam' and 'Eve,'" the museum said in a written statement.

The museum is referring to a 2018 ruling by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which said that since a foreign government sold the artwork, the court could not declare that sale illegal. The U.S. Supreme Court let that decision stand without reviewing it.

The Norton Simon has been pressured to negotiate with the heirs to return the work, even from the founder’s grandson.

“In my opinion, it's immoral and unethical because they don't have good title,” said Joel Greenberg, founder of the nonprofit Art Ashes, which helps families of Holocaust survivors recover art looted from their ancestors.

It’s not the only high-profile case of Nazi-looted art in the region. The late Los Angeles resident Maria Altman recovered a work by Gustav Klimt that was looted from her family by the Nazis in Austria.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A motorist was arrested on murder charges after authorities say she slammed her SUV into a city bus in Los Angeles, killing at least two people and injuring six others in a prelude to a second deadly tragedy: the fiery crash of a TV news helicopter that was covering the collision.

Bailee Lynn Rios, 36, of Simi Valley, was arrested Tuesday night and is being held at a Los Angeles jail with bail set at $4 million, police said Wednesday. The case is being forwarded to the district attorney’s office, which will decide whether to file the charges in court or pursue different ones. Information on a lawyer who could speak on her behalf was not immediately available.

The helicopter, which was used by NBC and Telemundo, crashed about two hours after police say Rios drove her 2004 Ford Expedition the wrong way down a busy avenue, ran a red light and struck a vehicle before hitting the bus. One passenger was fully ejected from the bus and another was partially ejected, police said.

Rios’ mother, Cindy Rios, said she was shocked and saddened by the string of events. She said she had not spoken to Bailee Lynn since her arrest and had not been contacted by law enforcement.

“It’s just horrible,” Cindy Rios told The Associated Press in a phone interview Wednesday. “The fact that my daughter was involved and was the cause of it is just extremely disturbing.”

“If anything, I’m sorry for the other families,” she added. “My daughter’s alive. People lost their lives.”

Chopper crash killed a reporter, a pilot and a man on the ground

NBC4 Los Angeles reported that two people aboard the helicopter — reporter Eliana Moreno and pilot George Marciniw — were killed when the chopper went down Tuesday in the Chatsworth neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley north of downtown.

A person on the ground, identified as 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, died in a parking lot, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office said. He was from Guatemala, the country’s consulate confirmed.

The crash happened as news crews were reporting on the collision involving the SUV that slammed into the bus.

There were no immediate details on what caused the helicopter crash, but an alarm could be heard sounding inside the helicopter’s cockpit as it lost altitude in the final seconds of video the crew broadcast before the crash.

Just after the beeping noise starts, a woman’s voice says “uh oh.” The helicopter moves quickly away from the bus crash site and starts losing altitude. The woman says “You can’t pull up?” before the video stops as the chopper nears the ground.

“That video is probably the most important evidence that we have discovered so far,” National Transportation Safety Board investigator Fabian Salazar said Wednesday at a news briefing.

Salazar said the sounds were consistent with the helicopter’s engine changing speed, as well as what he said were likely advisory tones for the pilot. The NTSB said it is also investigating the bus collision.

The helicopter, a Eurocopter AS350, went down near a large storage facility. At least four cars and two storage containers burned after the helicopter caught fire. NBC4 reporter Robert Kovacik was at the bus scene and saw black smoke and rushed to the helicopter crash site.

Anchor and reporters pay tearful tributes to deceased colleagues

Moreno was a familiar voice for NBC4 and Telemundo 52 during the station’s aerial coverage. She and Marciniw were both were employees of Angel City Air, which operated the chopper for the station.

Moreno, born in Orange County, joined Angel City Air in 2010, the same year she earned a broadcast journalism and political science degree from Chapman University. She reported for several news outlets and began flying with Marciniw in 2023, the NBC4 website said.

Marciniw grew up in Southern California and graduated from Burbank High School in 1974.

“I think a lot of us are still trying to process what happened, this terrible loss,” NBC4 reporter Lauren Coronado told viewers early Wednesday as she stood near the crash site. A hazmat crew was cleaning up jet fuel, she said.

In a tribute to Moreno and Marciniw, the newscast referred to them as “the team in the sky,” saying Moreno would often post videos from her job and was in awe of the view. Anchor Lynette Romero held a colleague’s hand and wiped away tears after hearing Moreno’s voice when one of her posts was played.

In an interview with the station, Esteban Jimenez, a pilot, said he had known Marciniw since the 1990s. He said Marciniw had been his instructor.

“I just talked to him on Sunday. We were talking about the aviation business and retiring,” he said.

Expert talks about what may have caused the crash

Aviation safety expert Jeff Guzzetti said the alarm sounding in the helicopter’s final video sounds like the low rotor RPM warning horn that signals the main rotor is no longer spinning enough to keep the helicopter in the air.

“It just has all the earmarks of a potential loss of engine power and a dangerous decrease in the main rotor speed,” said Guzzetti who used to investigate crashes for both the NTSB and FAA.

Guzzetti said the pilot appeared to be trying to perform an emergency maneuver to use the wind to force the rotor to spin again much like a breeze turns a windmill. Doing that can create a bit of lift that could help cushion the impact, but Guzzetti said there would have been little opportunity to do that because the helicopter had been hovering at a low altitude beforehand.

There are risks to news helicopters particularly in a major city like Los Angeles where multiple helicopters respond to an incident, but the pilots all coordinate closely over the radio to ensure they maintain a safe distance from each other. The industry also shares best practices to help keep these news flights safe.

“It’s a very unique form of flying. And the community is very good about lessons learned,” Guzzetti said. “And so because of that, you don’t hear about too many of those accidents. So they’re rare, but they do occur, just because the mission is a risky one.”

Other crashes involving news helicopters

The station said this is the second aviation tragedy in its history.

In 1977, a KNBC news helicopter crashed when it ran out of fuel while returning to the station after covering a wildfire in Santa Barbara, killing the pilot and camera operator. The pilot, former U.S. Air Force officer Francis Gary Powers, had been in the news years earlier when he was shot down and captured while flying a U-2 spy plane over the Soviet Union for the CIA, an ordeal portrayed in the movie “Bridge of Spies.”

There have been at least eight fatal crashes involving news helicopters in the U.S. since 2000, killing 16 people, according to a review of federal accident records and news accounts.

They include a 2023 crash in a New Jersey forest that killed the pilot and a photographer aboard a helicopter used by Philadelphia station WPVI and a 2022 crash beside a Charlotte, North Carolina, interstate that killed a pilot and meteorologist during a training flight for WBTV.

A 2007 midair collision in Phoenix of two TV news helicopters that were covering a police chase led the NTSB to recommend that news helicopters have at least two people in the cockpit so the pilot can focus on flying while the reporter focuses on the story.

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Golden reported from Seattle, and Collins from Hartford, Connecticut. Associated Press writers Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska; Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; and Allen Breed in Raleigh, North Carolina, contributed.

Federal and county law enforcement announced charges Wednesday against three people in a widening investigation of homelessness services fraud in the L.A. area. Prosecutors previously charged three other people and said they plan to bring “many more” cases.

In Wednesday’s announcement at a news conference, authorities alleged a bribery scheme built on "ghost" clients illustrates a yearslong problem.

"Nobody was minding the shop," the region’s top federal prosecutor, Bill Essayli, told reporters in response to a question from LAist. "There's no vetting. There's no auditing. There's no accounting. It was just a rush to push as much money out the door."

What are the charges?

Authorities arrested Michael Young — founder of the Culver City nonprofit Home At Last — and accused him of using shell companies and fake bids to misappropriate $12 million in taxpayer funds. The allegations include siphoning $1 million into a high-end nightclub, a nearly $50,000 trip to Tahiti and a $140,000 restoration of a vintage Chevy Impala.

Michael Young, 46, of Baldwin Hills

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Courtesy Department of Justice

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A headshot of Alex Soofer shared by a federal prosecutor on X.

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First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli via X

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Scott Turner, the U.S. secretary for Housing and Urban Development, said Young's group received more than $118 million in public dollars for homeless housing since 2019 — over $75 million of it through the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, or LAHSA.

The new cases allege about $12 million in misappropriated funds — almost all of it by Young.

The bribery charges are against Lakiya Malone, an employee of the nonprofit Special Service for Groups, or SSG, who was responsible for referring homeless people to LAHSA-funded housing. Prosecutors say Malone took roughly $180,000 in bribes from Alexander Soofer, head of the now-defunct nonprofit Abundant Blessings, and in exchange steered him "ghost" participants — so he could bill for services never rendered.

Lakiya Malone, 48, of South Los Angeles

Donye Mitchell, 55, of Orange

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Courtesy Department of Justice

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“She was supposed to guard the money, and instead she took bribes,” Essayli, the first assistant U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, said.

In a statement, SSG said it has been working with federal prosecutors “to ensure that any responsible individuals are held accountable” and has strengthened its “protocols and compliance.”

Charges against Soofer were announced in January. Authorities announced Wednesday that he has agreed to plead guilty to wire fraud and money laundering. Soofer admitted in his plea agreement to the alleged bribery scheme.

According to prosecutors, Soofer also admitted to "pocketing at least $2 million in taxpayer money for his own personal enrichment and for businesses unrelated to homeless housing," and that he has agreed to forfeit the money to the U.S. government. Prosecutors previously alleged he diverted a much larger amount: at least $10 million.

An LAist investigation found LAHSA kept awarding millions in contract renewals to Soofer’s group even after LAHSA’s own compliance team labeled it "high-risk" for, among other things, billing for services while reporting no enrolled participants.

The third defendant announced Wednesday is Donye Mitchell of the nonprofit Big Blue Umbrella. Mitchell is accused of lying about his experience to land a $1.2 million county-funded grant, receiving $315,000 and using those funds for personal expenses, including bail for a domestic violence arrest and video games. Officials said he's believed to be in Las Vegas and hadn’t been arrested as of Wednesday morning.

Mitchell is “a convicted fraudster, by the way,” Essayli said. He was convicted in 2011 of defrauding California unemployment benefits, according to the criminal complaint in the new case, and was ordered in 2012 to compensate the state $6 million.

The county funds he’s accused of stealing were awarded by a county vendor in 2024 — well after his fraud conviction.

LAist has left phone messages for Young's and Malone’s lawyers inviting their response to the charges and will update this article if they respond. It is unknown if Mitchell, who has not yet been arrested, has a lawyer.

Prosecutors' critique 

Essayli and L.A. County District Attorney Nathan Hochman criticized what they called a glaring lack of oversight of massive spending on homeless services. Hochman cited a court-ordered 2025 report that found L.A. city officials failed to properly track $2.3 billion in homeless funds, largely by outsourcing to LAHSA — which the review found failed to collect accurate data on its vendors and hold them accountable.

"We have not seen the results you would expect for billions of dollars being spent," Hochman said.

“This is the beginning of these prosecutions,” he added.  ”Many more” are expected in the coming months, he said.

Continuing trouble for LAHSA 

The new charges were announced the day after LAHSA's governing commission decided to give up its responsibility for federal dollars, including applying for roughly $240 million a year in federal homelessness funding and running the annual homeless count.

Also on Tuesday, Mayor Karen Bass skipped a congressional hearing on LAHSA's fraud problems, calling it a "politically motivated" attack.

LAHSA, now led by Interim CEO Gita O'Neill, said in a statement Wednesday that it has "zero tolerance for fraud, waste, or the exploitation of public resources" and commended prosecutors’ action.

The agency said it terminated its contracts with Young’s nonprofit in June after evidence of wrongdoing emerged, and is pursuing recovery of cash seized from Young. The statement added that LAHSA fully cooperated with the federal task force and that no LAHSA staff are implicated — only "external provider executives and outside contractors.”

Essayli was asked Wednesday whether LAHSA's past or current leadership has been culpable.

"That's actually a very difficult question to answer," he said.

"It is not against federal law to be incompetent, unfortunately. I wish it were,” Essayli said. “So just because the people at the helm did not do a good job, that does not give us the authority to arrest them."

“ I assure you, if anyone in power engaged in violation of federal law, we will not hesitate to charge them.”