Rising temperatures and drought create fears of a new Dust Bowl

By Bryan Walsh5 July 2012 Triple-digit days. Weeks with little to no rain. Soil crumbling away. Stunted corn stalks. Right now the fertile fields of the U.S. Midwest are experiencing corn-killing weather, with parts of five corn-growing states in the region experiencing severe or extreme drought. In at least nine states, one-fifth to one-half of […]

U.S. heat wave breaks more all-time records in Midwest – Indiana drought worse than Dust Bowl

By Dr. Jeff Masters7 July 2012 The extraordinary heat wave of late June/early July 2012 toppled more Dust Bowl-era records on Friday, with three cities in Michigan hitting their hottest temperatures ever recorded. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. Lansing has hit 102° four times, […]

Ancient climate change: ‘We were shocked to find 2,500 years of reef growth were missing’

By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com5 July 2012 Coral reefs along Panama’s Pacific coast completely collapsed for 2,500 years due to natural climate cycles, researchers reported in a study Thursday, adding that there’s a lesson in the data for man-made climate change: ease up on greenhouse gasses and reefs will restore themselves. “We can prevent coral reefs […]

Japan’s nuclear power disaster due to ‘collusion’ between government and TEPCO: panel report

By Risa Maeda and Linda Sieg; Editing by Robert Birsel5 July 2012 TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis was a preventable disaster resulting from “collusion” among the government, regulators and the plant operator, an expert panel said on Thursday, wrapping up an inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in 25 years. Damage from the […]

Bavaria glaciers could disappear in 30 years with warming rate double the global average

3 July 2012 (Spiegel) – The high-altitude landscape of the Bavarian Alps is prized by mountain sports lovers around the world, but it could change significantly in the coming years. Temperatures in the region are rising at an above-average rate, which will likely melt most of the glaciers there within the next 20 to 30 […]

People return home to hundreds of thousands of rotting cattle carcasses as floodwaters recede in India

By Vanessa Ko, Harmeet Singh and Sara Sidner, CNN4 July 2012 (CNN) – Flooding described by India’s prime minister as the worst in recent times, has left at least 95 people dead and almost 2 million others homeless in the country’s remote Assam state. The Brahmaputra river overflowed during monsoon rains over the past week, […]

Historic drought causes big drop in Texas portion of Ogallala aquifer

By Kate Galbraith3 July 2012 The historic Texas drought caused the Ogallala Aquifer to experience its largest decline in 25 years across a large swath of the Texas Panhandle, new numbers from a water district show. The 16-county High Plains Underground Water Conservation District reported this week that its monitoring wells showed an average decline […]

Image of the Day: Satellite View of Power Outages in Washington, D.C. Area

Washington, D.C. area before derecho, 28 June 2012   Washington, D.C. area after derecho, 30 June 2012 Caption by Aries Keck4 July 2012 These before and after images from NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite show the power outages in the clear skies over Washington, DC and Baltimore that occurred as a result of a […]

Graph of the Day: Greenland Reflectivity Anomaly, June 2012

Satellite data of Greenland reflectivity 1-22 June 2012 versus the same periods in previous Junes back to 2000. The blue colors indicate a decrease in reflectivity compared to previous Junes. In a new study, Box and a team of researchers describe the decline in ice sheet reflectivity and the reasons behind it, noting that if […]

Ooi Nuclear Plant Reactor 3: Problem with turbine, restart postponed by one day to July 5

By arevamirpal::laprimavera 3 July 2012 It’s just a bad juju after another. Water leaks, alarms going off along the power transmission lines, protesters preventing the government minister from entering the plant by land, and now this. The Reactor 3 turbine vibrates too much. From Jiji Tsushin (7/3/2012): 発電再開、5日に延期=関電大飯3号機 Start of power generation postponed till July […]

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