It’s not your imagination: Allergy season gets worse every year – Pollen allergy seasons continue to get longer and more intense as temperatures rise

By Umair Irfan 21 May 2019 (Vox) – The weather is warming. The flowers are blooming. Noses are running. Eyes are watering. It’s allergy season, and this year it’s been severe in states like Georgia, and cities like Chicago, where the frigid winter delayed the onset. Now that it’s late May, we’re moving away from peak tree […]

Reductio ad absurdum: “The big deception is that we have weaned ourselves off coal, when in reality we have just exported our coal burning to someone else’s country”

4 June 2019 (The Consciousness of Sheep) — One of the advantages of being a rocky island in the northeast Atlantic, right underneath the Gulf Stream is that you get to deploy record amounts of offshore wind turbines to delay the day when your economy grinds to a halt. This is the reality of modern […]

U.S. shallow groundwater wetness percentile from 11 May 2019 to 13 May 2019. Graphic: NASA Earth Observatory

Wettest 12 months in U.S. history, again – “The last twelve months beat the previous record, set just a month ago, by a full 1.48 inches”

By Bob Henson 6 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – Propelled by a two-week siege of widespread severe weather and heavy rain in late May, the contiguous U.S. has once again broken its record for the wettest year-long span in data going back to 1895. According to the monthly U.S. climate summary released Thursday from the […]

Satellite view of forest loss in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru, on 6 September 2018 NASA. Photo: Earth Observatory

Image of the Day: Satellite view of deforestation in Peru’s Madre de Dios region

By by Andrea Nicolau, Andi Thomas, and Leah Kucera 18 April 2019 (NASA) – Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere […]

Abnormal high temperatures in Alaska disrupt isolated communities, upset subsistence hunting patterns, and cause deaths – “It’s hard to characterize this anomaly, it’s just pretty darn remarkable for that part of the world”

By Tim Lydon 29 May 2019 (Hakai Magazine) – Alaska in March is supposed to be cold. Along the north and west coasts, the ocean should be frozen farther than the eye can see. In the state’s interior, rivers should be locked in ice so thick that they double as roads for snowmobiles and trucks. […]

Aerial view of flooded homes in Arkansas, 2 June 2019. Photo: Brian Emfinger / Twitter

“Horrible scenes” in central, southern U.S. as more rain threatens areas swamped by record floods – “You have to just make a decision because you’re going to lose everything”

By Doyle Rice 4 June 2019 (USA TODAY) – More unwelcome rain is forecast this week in much of the central and southern USA, falling upon areas already swamped by record-breaking floods. “Many locations from the central and southern Plains into the Mississippi Valley and Ohio Valley could see 1 to 3 inches of rain in the […]

Carbon dioxide levels in atmosphere hit record high in May 2019

4 June 2019 (NOAA) – Atmospheric carbon dioxide continued its rapid rise in 2019, with the average for May peaking at 414.7 parts per million (ppm) at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. The measurement is the highest seasonal peak recorded in 61 years of observations on top of Hawaii’s largest volcano and the seventh consecutive […]

Cover of “State of India’s Environment 2019: In Figures”. Graphic: Centre for Science and Environment

Air pollution kills 100,000 children in India every year, study finds – “The country’s progress in renewable energy in 2018-19 has also been dismal”

5 June 2019 (AFP) – The noxious air hanging over India’s towns and cities kills more than 100,000 children under five every year, a damning study published Wednesday for World Environment Day found. India has repeatedly failed to address environmental concerns. Last year a UN report found 14 of the world’s 15 most polluted cities […]

After the Tiananmen Square massacre on 3 June 1989, protesters display photos of bodies at a morgue. Photo: Jeff Widener / AP

Tiananmen Square’s haunted silence, 30 years later

By Ishaan Tharoor 3 June 2019 (The Washington Post) – China’s democratic dream was snuffed out as night fell on 3 June 1989. In mid-April, thousands of idealistic university students had gathered in the heart of Beijing to mourn the passing of an admired Communist Party official who had championed liberalizing reforms. In the weeks […]

Student mows green message for Trump visit to UK: “Climate change is real”

3 June 2019 (BBC News) – A student has attempted to catch the eye of Donald Trump by mowing an environmental message into grass under the flight path of Air Force One. Ollie Nancarrow, 18, cut an image of a giant penis, a polar bear and a climate change message on his family’s land close […]

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