Category: Climate Change

Arctic Circle Teens Call for Help to Save their Homes

10/18/2020

Teenagers living in remote Arctic communities say they’re worried about the effects of climate change. Scientists warn that melting ice and warming temperatures show rapid climate change is taking place. Rarely heard young people from multiple countries within the Arctic Circle say their way of life is at risk and governments must act. - BBC

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We’re Turning the Amazon Into a Savannah

10/11/2020

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Over the past 50 years, human intervention has been increasingly disrupting the ecological balance of the Amazon. Climate change has led to an increase in temperatures of 1.5 degrees Celsius across the basin, and to more frequent severe droughts. The droughts of 2005, 2010 and 2015-16 were among the worst in more than 100 years. Since 1980, there’s been an increase in the duration of dry seasons by three to four weeks in the more degraded areas of the Amazon. Rainforests also increase evaporation and keep surfaces cool. Deforestation could cause temperatures in the basin to increase by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2050. It reduces rainfall, because trees cycle moisture back into the atmosphere. - NYTimes

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Emissions Could Add 15 Inches to Sea Level by 2100, NASA-Led Study Finds

10/2/2020

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An international effort that brought together more than 60 ice, ocean, and atmosphere scientists from three dozen international institutions has generated new estimates of how much of an impact Earth’s melting ice sheets could have on global sea levels by 2100. If greenhouse gas emissions continue apace, Greenland and Antarctica’s ice sheets could together contribute more than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of global sea level rise – and that’s beyond the amount that has already been set in motion by Earth’s warming climate. - NASA

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Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration

10/1/2020

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Across the United States, some 162 million people — nearly 1 in 2 — will most likely experience a decline in the quality of their environment, namely more heat and less water. For 93 million of them, the changes could be particularly severe, and by 2070, our analysis suggests, if carbon emissions rise at extreme levels, at least 4 million Americans could find themselves living at the fringe, in places decidedly outside the ideal niche for human life. The cost of resisting the new climate reality is mounting. Florida officials have already acknowledged that defending some roadways against the sea will be unaffordable. And the nation’s federal flood-insurance program is for the first time requiring that some of its payouts be used to retreat from climate threats across the country. It will soon prove too expensive to maintain the status quo. - Pro Publica

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Colossal Crater Found in Siberia. What Made It?

9/30/2020

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This is just the latest in a series of such curious craters discovered in the Siberian Arctic, after the first was identified in 2014. Scientists believe they form from blasts of methane and carbon dioxide gas trapped within mounds of dirt and ice—a phenomenon that may be increasingly common as the climate warms. - National Geographic

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40% of O'ahu, Hawai'i Beaches Could be Lost by Mid-Century

9/25/2020

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If policies are not changed, as much as 40% of all beaches on O'ahu, Hawai'i could be lost before mid-century, according to a new study by researchers in the Coastal Geology Group at the University of Hawai'i (UH) at Manoa. In an era of rising sea level, beaches need to migrate landward, otherwise they drown. Beach migration, also known as shoreline retreat, causes coastal erosion of private and public beachfront property. Shoreline hardening, the construction of seawalls or revetments, interrupts natural beach migration -- causing waves to erode the sand, accelerating coastal erosion on neighboring properties, and dooming a beach to drown in place as the ocean continues to rise. - Science Weekly

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New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States

9/23/2020

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Warming temperatures and changing rainfall will drive agriculture and temperate climates northward, while sea level rise will consume coastlines and dangerous levels of humidity will swamp the Mississippi River valley. Taken with other recent research showing that the most habitable climate in North America will shift northward and the incidence of large fires will increase across the country, this suggests that the climate crisis will profoundly interrupt the way we live and farm in the United States. See how the North American places where humans have lived for thousands of years will shift and what changes are in store for your county. - ProPublica / PNAS

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How Beavers Became North America's Best Firefighter

9/23/2020

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A new study concludes that, by building dams, forming ponds, and digging canals, beavers irrigate vast stream corridors and create fireproof refuges in which plants and animals can shelter. In some cases, the rodents’ engineering can even stop fire in its tracks.
“It doesn't matter if there’s a wildfire right next door,” says study leader Emily Fairfax, an ecohydrologist at California State University Channel Islands. “Beaver-dammed areas are green and happy and healthy-looking.” - National Geographic / Apple News

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Climate Disruption is now Locked In: The Next Moves Will Be Critical

9/23/2020

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Last month, before the skies over San Francisco turned a surreal orange, Death Valley reached 130°F, the highest temperature ever measured on the planet. Dozens of people have perished from the heat in Phoenix, which in July suffered its hottest month on record, only to surpass that milestone in August. The questions are profound and urgent. Can this be reversed? What can be done to minimize the looming dangers for the decades ahead? Will the destruction of recent weeks become a moment of reckoning, or just a blip in the news cycle? - NYTimes

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Trump’s Rollbacks Could Add Half an EU’s Worth of Climate Pollution by 2035

9/21/2020

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US President Donald Trump has successfully moved the nation backwards on climate change, even as the world grapples with increasingly devastating fires, heat waves and droughts. His rollbacks of major environmental policies, should they survive legal challenges and subsequent administrations, could pump the equivalent of 1.8 billion additional metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2035, according to a new Rhodium Group analysis. That’s a little more than Russia’s total annual fossil-fuel emissions, or more than half the European Union’s in recent years. - MIT Technology Review

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<<Previous

Arctic Circle Teens Call for Help to Save their Homes

We’re Turning the Amazon Into a Savannah

Emissions Could Add 15 Inches to Sea Level by 2100, NASA-Led Study Finds

Climate Change Will Force a New American Migration

Colossal Crater Found in Siberia. What Made It?

40% of O'ahu, Hawai'i Beaches Could be Lost by Mid-Century

New Climate Maps Show a Transformed United States

How Beavers Became North America's Best Firefighter

Climate Disruption is now Locked In: The Next Moves Will Be Critical

Trump’s Rollbacks Could Add Half an EU’s Worth of Climate Pollution by 2035

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