Production of selected salts in Mt/year for (a) the world and (b) the United States. Graphic: Graphic: Kaushal, et al., 2023 / Nature Reviews Earth and Environment

Humans are disrupting natural “salt cycle” on a global scale

31 October 2023 (University of Maryland) – The influx of salt in streams and rivers is an ‘existential threat,’ according to a research team led by a UMD geologist. The planet’s demand for salt comes at a cost to the environment and human health, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal. Published […]

Global temperature anomalies relative to the 1880-1920 baseline, based on the GISS analysis. Graphic: Hansen, et al., 2024

Hansen: Comments on global warming acceleration, sulfur emissions, observations – “Acceleration of global warming is now hard to deny”

By James Hansen, Pushker Kharecha, and Makiko Sato 16 May 2024 (Columbia University) – Global temperature (12-month mean) is still rising at 1.56°C relative to 1880-1920 in the GISS analysis through April (Fig. 1). [Robert Rohde reports that it is 1.65°C relative to 1850-1900 in the BerkeleyEarth analysis.] Global temperature is likely to continue to […]

Daily global sea surface temperatures, 1981-2024. Data: Climate Reanalyzer, Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine, based on data from NOAA Optimum Interpolation Sea Surface Temperature (OISST) Data through 8 April 2024. Graphic: The New York Times

Ocean heat has shattered records for more than a year. What’s happening?

By Delger Erdenesanaa 10 April 2024 (The New York Times) – The ocean has now broken temperature records every day for more than a year. And so far, 2024 has continued 2023’s trend of beating previous records by wide margins. In fact, the whole planet has been hot for months, according to many different data […]

Top: Zonal-mean sea surface temperature (SST) (12-month running-mean) relative to 1951-1980 base period. Bottom: Zonal-mean surface temperature (12-month running-mean) relative to 1951-1980. Graphic: Hansen, Sato, and Kharecha, 2024

Global warming acceleration: hope vs. hopium – “The increase is not due to a brightening Sun, it is due to a darkening Earth”

By James Hansen, Makiko Sato, and Pushker Kharecha 29 March 2024 (Columbia University) – Accumulating evidence supports the interpretation in our Pipeline paper: decreasing human-made aerosols increased Earth’s energy imbalance and accelerated global warming in the past decade. Climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing, physically independent quantities, were tied together by United Nations IPCC climate assessments that rely […]

Map showing the number of subglobal climate (two local exposure boundaries), functional integrity, surface water, groundwater, nitrogen, phosphorus and aerosol safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) currently transgressed by location. No more than seven of these eight metrics have their ESBs transgressed in any one pixel. Since climate is a globally defined ESB, we use wet bulb temperatures of over 35°C for at least 1-day per year and low-elevation coastal zones (

Earth is “really quite sick now” and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says – “We are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these”

By Seth Borenstein 31 May 2023 (AP News) – Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study. The study looks not just […]

Earth energy imbalance, global net flux, 2001-2021. The 12-month EEI, Mar 2021-Feb 2022, set another record. The annual Earth’s Energy Imbalance was +1.52 W/m2, the energy equivalent to 1 million Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every day. Data: NASA CERES. Graphic: Leon Simons

New NASA data show Earth heating at unprecedented rate – “Like 800,000 nuclear power plants of 1 GW capacity heating Earth 24/7, 365 days a year”

By Leon Simons 5 May 2022 (Twitter) – NASA data shows our Earth is heating at unprecedented speed: 1.64 W/m2. CERES radiative flux data for 2021 has come available. The annual Earth’s Energy Imbalance was +1.52 W/m2, the energy equivalent to 1 million Hiroshima sized atomic bombs every day. Another 12-month EEI record (from Mar […]

GOES-17 satellite view of the largest known stratospheric smoke injection, from Australia wildfires, 2 January 2020. This photo shows the first phase (29-31 December 2019) of the Australian New Year Super Outbreak (Anyso), which had unprecedented fire and pyrocumulonimbus cloud (pyroCb) activity. this event was the first known pyroCb “super outbreak”, with 32 updrafts over ~45hrs (day and night). Previous events recorded less than 10 updrafts in less than 24 hours. Photo: CIRA

Towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds can spew as much aerosol as volcanic eruptions – The Australian 2019-2020 outbreak exceeded previously unprecedented events “on almost every level”

By Carolyn Gramling 15 December 2020 (Science News) – A massive tower of smoke generated by Australian wildfires in late 2019 set a new record for the loftiest and largest fire-spawned thunderstorms ever measured. It also may represent a new class of volcanic-scale “pyrocumulonimbus” events, scientists said in an online news conference 11 December 2020 at […]

The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this extremely think blanket of smoke along the West Coast on 9 September 2020. OMPS measured smoke clouds over the western U.S. with higher aerosol index values than anything Colin Seftor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says he has ever seen with the instrument. Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen – California fire carbon emissions in 2020 exceed previous record by nearly 2 times

By Matthew Cappucci 12 September 2020 (The Washington Post) – More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the […]

View of air pollution in Moscow, Russia on 6 August 2010 and 20 April 2020. Photo: Natalia Kolesnikova / Niklas Halle'n / AFP / Getty Images

Before-and-after photos show dramatic decline in air pollution around the world during coronavirus lockdown

By Sophie Lewis 22 April 2020 (CBS News) – As humans continue to stay indoors under lockdown due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Earth is slowly healing. Wild animals have taken to roaming the streets, clear waters have returned to the Venice canals and the world is literally shaking less.  With billions of people quarantined and businesses closed, travel has all but […]

Satellite photography and UV aerosol index showing smoke from the Australia bushfires being transported across the Atlantic Ocean from 27 December 2019 to 8 Kanuary 2020. Graphic: Colin Seftor / NASA

Australia fire smoke will complete a full circuit of Earth, NASA says

14 January 2020 (BBC News) – Smoke from the massive bushfires in Australia will soon circle the Earth back to the nation, says NASA. Massive infernos have raged along the nation’s east coast for months, pushing smoke across the Pacific. NASA said plumes from blazes around New Year’s Day had crossed South America, turning skies […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial