Siberia forest fires leave ‘green deserts’ – Cities blanketed in smoke

MOSCOW, 3 August 2012 (RIA Novosti) – Fires are spreading across vast Siberian forests in a flashback to the summer of 2010, when the worst drought on record sparked fires that killed dozens of Russians. The total area of forests gripped by fire in Russia has increased to 11 million-12 million hectares, Grigory Kuksin, head […]

Filipinos should get used to weather disturbances as climate changes, official says – Rainfall breaks 2009 record

By Gilbert P. Felongco, Correspondent11 August 2012 Manila (Gulf News) – Filipinos should learn to accept that typhoons and other weather disturbances would increase in intensity as a result of effects of climate change, Environment Secretary Ramon Paje said. “Filipinos must learn to accept the growing intensity of typhoons as the new ‘normal’” the environment […]

Image of the Day: Nighttime satellite view of Siberia forest fires, 3 August 2012

Caption by Adam Voiland7 August 2012 For more than a decade, scientists have used data from instruments on NASA’s Terra and Aqua satellites to map the locations of wildfires burning around the globe. Now researchers have a new tool for observing fire. The Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite (S-NPP) carries an instrument so sensitive to […]

The sound of a damaged habitat

By BERNIE KRAUSE28 July 2012 Glen Ellen, California. YEARS ago, when selective logging was first introduced, a community near an old-growth forest in the Sierra Nevada was assured that the removal of a few trees here and there would have no impact on the area’s wildlife. Based on the logging company’s guarantees, the local residents […]

Bloomberg: Preparing for the next big flood – ‘Not believing in climate change has always been silly’

By the Editors 6 August 2012 A new analysis of worldwide temperatures over the past 60 years has found more evidence that global warming is already upon us, and is responsible for extreme heat waves — such as the ones in Russia in 2010 and in Texas and Oklahoma last year. Naturally, this refocuses attention […]

Climate change not a presidential election issue yet

WASHINGTON, 8 August 2012 (AP) – Barack Obama promised to tackle climate change when he first ran for the White House four years ago, but – battling this summer for a second term – he speaks little of the issue even as the United States suffers through a drought of historic proportions, wild storms and […]

July heat broke 1930s Dust Bowl record

WASHINGTON, 8 August 2012 (AP) – This probably comes as no surprise: Federal scientists say July was the hottest month ever recorded in the Lower 48 states, breaking a record set during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. And even less a surprise: The U.S. this year keeps setting records for weather extremes, based on […]

So far, 2012 is on record as Northeast’s hottest year ever, climatologists say

ITHACA, New York, 7 August 2012 (AP) – No surprise for Northeast residents sweating out the summer after a winter barely touching their snow shovels: This is the hottest year on record in the region so far. The Northeast Regional Climate Center at Cornell University reported Tuesday that the average temperature in the 12-state region […]

Prosecutors open criminal probes over ‘man-made’ Fukushima meltdown disaster

2 August 2012 (Japan Times) – Prosecutors opened converging criminal probes Wednesday into the March 2011 triple-meltdown disaster at Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant, looking to hold people in positions of power accountable, including then Prime Minister Naoto Kan. The Tokyo District Public Prosecutor’s Office and two other district prosecutor’s offices […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of deforestation in Rondônia, Brazil, 1975 and 2012

Caption by Aries Keck8 August 2012 Deforestation in the Amazon Rainforest takes on many different patterns. In Rondônia, a state in Western Brazil, deforestation took on the fishbone pattern revealed in these Landsat images from 1975 and 2012. Access to this remote region began with the building of a major road stretching from north to […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial