India – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

The European model shows temperatures across Southeast Asia rising well above normal on Monday, 17 April 2023. Numerous heat records were broken across Southeast Asia, China and other parts of the continent in mid-April, with Thailand in particular experiencing unusually extreme conditions. Weather historian Maximiliano Herrera described it as the “worst April heat wave in Asian history.” Graphic: WeatherBell.com

April 18, 2023

Historic Asia heat breaks hundreds of records, with extremes in Thailand and China – Thailand recorded its all-time hottest temperature – “Worst April heat wave in Asian history”

By Dan Stillman 17 April 2023 (The Washington Post) – Numerous heat records have been broken across Southeast Asia, China and other parts of the continent in recent days as the region remains in the grip of a dangerously scorching heat wave, with Thailand in particular experiencing unusually extreme conditions. Weather historian Maximiliano Herrera is describing […]

Map showing global climate risk as an Aggregated Damage Ratio, projected to the year 2050. Graphic: XDI

February 28, 2023

Florida’s projected sea level rise by 2100 is bad news for sunshine state – Outside of China, Florida is the most at-risk state/province in the world for economic damage caused by climate change

By Pandora Dewan 24 February 2023 (Newsweek) – By 2100, Florida could see sea levels rise by up to 6 feet, with over 900,000 properties at risk of being underwater. “By 2050, Florida sea levels, like much of the US, are headed for a 1-foot rise on average (above 2020 levels),” William Sweet, an Oceanographer for the […]

Map showing significant economic loss events in 2022. Direct economic losses resulting from natural disasters in 2022 are estimated at $313 billion. This is close to the 21st century average, after adjusting actual incurred damage to today’s dollars using the U.S. Consumer Price Index. Though 2022 was far from record-breaking in terms of overall losses, it saw many impactful and costly events across the globe. Visualizing the geographic distribution of 2022 events allows for distinguishing certain patterns, including higher frequency of medium-sized Severe Convective Storm (SCS) events in the U.S. and Europe, and the prevalence of flooding events in Africa, Southeast Asia and Oceania. The map primarily shows the economic impact, which to some extent correlates with concentration of wealth — this is not a result of a reporting bias. What this map does not highlight is the humanitarian crises and displaced communities, as many events with significant human impacts do not necessarily translate into a high financial toll in terms of direct damage. Note that significant price inflation throughout the year already resulted in notable increases of per-event losses. Graphic: Aon

January 25, 2023

Aon: Global insured losses from natural disasters exceeded $130 billion In 2022, driven by second-costliest event on record – More than 19,000 heat-related deaths in Europe

CHICAGO, 25 January 2023 (PRNewswire) – Aon plc (NYSE: AON), a leading global professional services firm, today published its 2023 Weather, Climate and Catastrophe Insight report, which identifies global natural disaster and climate trends to help make better decisions to manage volatility and enhance global resilience. The report reveals that natural disasters caused a $313 billion global economic loss […]

Percentage of OECD countries experiencing higher-than-average inflation, 1970-2022. The global inflation shock that began in the United States in 2021 and took hold worldwide in 2022 will have powerful economic and political ripple effects in 2023. It will be the principal driver of global recession, add to financial stress, and stoke social discontent and political instability everywhere. Today’s historically high inflation comes from multiple sources. First was the Covid-19 pandemic, which prompted governments to cushion the fall in incomes with extraordinary fiscal and monetary stimulus at the same time that it disrupted global supply. Then, just as the United States and Europe were coming out of the pandemic thanks to vaccines, China doubled down on its zero-Covid policy, locking down the global economy’s most important manufacturing and shipping hubs. Finally, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s sanctions in response put a strain on the global supply of energy, food, and fertilizer. This unprecedented confluence of overlapping shocks pushed inflation to levels most countries hadn’t seen in nearly 50 years. Graphic: Eurasia Group

January 22, 2023

Eurasia Group’s Top Risks for 2023 – “The risks this year are the most dangerous we’ve encountered in the 25 years since we started Eurasia Group”

By Ian Bremmer and Cliff Kupchan 3 January 2023 (Eurasia Group) – Russia has no way to win in Ukraine. The European Union is stronger than ever. NATO rediscovered its reason for being. The G7 is strengthening. Renewables are becoming dirt cheap. American hard power remains unrivaled. Midterms in the United States were decidedly normal […]

Regional glacier mass change and contributions to sea level rise from 2015 to 2100. Discs show global and regional projections of glacier mass remaining by 2100 relative to 2015 for global mean temperature change scenarios. Discs are scaled based on each region’s contribution to global mean sea level rise from 2015 to 2100 for the +2°C scenario by 2100 relative to preindustrial levels, and nested rings are colored by temperature change scenarios showing normalized mass remaining in 2100. Regional sea level rise contributions >1 mm SLE for the +2°C scenario are printed in the center of each disc. The horizontal bars below each disc show time series of area-averaged annual mass balance from 2015 to 2100 for +1.5°C (top bar) and +3°C (bottom bar) scenarios. The colorbar is saturated at −2.5 m w.e., but minimum annual values reach −4.2 m w.e. in Scandinavia. Graphic: Rounce, et al., 2022 / Science

January 7, 2023

Half of glaciers will be gone by 2100 even under Paris 1.5C accord, study finds

By Phoebe Weston 5 January 2023 (The Guardian) – Half the planet’s glaciers will have melted by 2100 even if humanity sticks to goals set out in the Paris climate agreement, according to research that finds the scale and impacts of glacial loss are greater than previously thought. At least half of that loss will happen […]

The carcass of an elephant that died during the drought is seen in the Shaba National Reserve, Isiolo county, Kenya, 22 September 2022. Photo: Baz Ratner / REUTERS

December 31, 2022

Reuters pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

30 December 2022 (Reuters) – From historic droughts to floods, climate change worsened weather extremes in 2022. See more 2022 extreme weather and environment photos from Reuters here and here. Pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

Maasai children stand beside a zebra that local residents say died due to drought, as they graze their cattle at Ilangeruani village, near Lake Magadi, in Kenya, on 9 November 2022. Photo: Brian Inganga / AP Photo

December 31, 2022

In 2022, AP photographers captured pain of a changing planet

By Peter Prengaman 16 December 2022 (AP) – In 2022, Associated Press photographers captured signs of a planet in distress as climate change reshaped many lives. That distress was seen in the scarred landscapes in places where the rains failed to come. It was felt in walloping storms, land-engulfing floods, suffocating heat and wildfires no […]

Global excess and reported COVID-19 deaths and death rates per 100,000 population, January 2020-January 2022. (a) Cumulative global excess death estimates and the cumulative reported COVID-19 deaths by month from January 2020 to December 2021. (b) Global excess death rates per 100,000 population and the reported COVID-19 death rates per 100,000 population, also by month, from January 2020 to December 2021. On both plots, the central lines of the excess mortality series show the mean estimates, and the shaded regions indicate the 95 percent uncertainty intervals. Graphic: Msemburi, et al., 2022 / Nature

December 30, 2022

WHO study reports global Covid death toll likely three times higher than official records – Pandemic may have claimed nearly 15 million lives, more than 2.7 times official reports of 5.4 million – India mortality alone may be 6.45 million dead

By Robert Hart 14 December 2022 (Forbes) – The Covid-19 pandemic may have claimed nearly 15 million around the world in 2020 and 2021, according to World Health Organization estimates published in Nature on Wednesday, almost three times what was reported in official records and underscoring the devastating and far-reaching impact of the disease as countries strive to return […]

Map showing nations where journalists were killed or imprisoned during 2022. The IFJ released the latest figures ahead of International Human Rights Day, recording 67 killings of journalists and media staff in the line of duty in 2022 compared to 47 last year - a reversal of the decline recorded in recent years. Graphic: IFJ

December 20, 2022

67 journalists killed so far in 2022 – “The surge in the killings of journalists and other media workers is a grave cause of concern and yet another wake up call for governments across the globe to take action in the defence of journalism, one of the key pillars of democracy”

9 December 2022 (IFJ) – The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today renewed its call on the international community for concrete action to protect the safety and freedoms of journalists as it recorded a spike in the numbers of journalists killed or imprisoned during 2022. The vote on the IFJ Convention on the Safety and […]

Landsat images from 21 February 2000 (left) and 27 July 2019 (right) illustrating glacier retreat on top of Mount Kilimanjaro (United Republic of Tanzania). Photo: U.S. Geological Survey

November 19, 2022

Kilimanjaro’s and Africa’s last glaciers to go by 2050, says UN – “What is quite unprecedented in the historical record is how quickly this is happening”

By Patrick Hughes 3 November 2022 (BBC News) – Glaciers across the globe – including the last ones in Africa – will be unavoidably lost by 2050 due to climate change, the UN says in a report [UNESCO finds that some iconic World Heritage glaciers will disappear by 2050 –Des]. Glaciers in a third of […]