Free air CO2 enrichment experiments using native Australian forests. Elevated CO2 levels are used to examine the effects on native forests, animals, soils and grasses. Photo: Western Sydney University

Leaving microbes out of climate change conversation has major consequences, experts warn – “Climate change is literally starving ocean life”

By Ivy Shih 19 June 2019 (UNSW) – An international group of leading microbiologists have issued a warning, saying that not including microbes – the support system of the biosphere – in the climate change equation will have major negative flow-on effects. More than 30 microbiologists from 9 countries have issued a warning to humanity […]

Indians stand in queues to fill vessels with drinking water from a water tanker in Chennai, capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, Wednesday, 19 June 2019. Millions of people are turning to water tank trucks in the state as house and hotel taps run dry in an acute water shortage caused by drying lakes and depleted groundwater. Some private companies have asked employees to work from home and several restaurants are closing early and even considering stopping lunch meals if the water scarcity aggravates. Photo: R. Parthibhan / AP Photo

Life in India’s first city that’s almost out of water – “I’m scared for my daughter”

By Divya Karthikeyan and Swati Gupta 22 June 2019 Chennai, India (CNN) – As Manjula Sridhar went into the operation theater of a maternity ward in Chennai, the capital of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, her mother began arguing with the doctor over a water shortage that threatened to delay the delivery. Cradling her little girl, […]

Surface temperature anomaly forecast for Europe, 22 June 2019. Graphic: weathermodels.com

Europe braces for scorching heatwave with temperatures “unprecedented for the month of June”

22 June 2019 (AFP) – Forecasters say Europeans will feel sizzling heat next week with temperatures soaring as high as 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) in an “unprecedented” June heatwave hitting much of Western Europe. From Great Britain to Belgium to Greece, a wave of hot air coming from the Maghreb in North Africa […]

Permafrost forms a grid-like pattern in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska in Alpine, Alaska, a 22.8 million acre region managed by the Bureau of Land Management on Alaska's North Slope. USGS has periodically assessed oil and gas resource potential there. Photo: David Houseknecht / USGS

Warming Arctic permafrost releasing 12 times more nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas, than previously thought – “This needs to be taken more seriously than it is right now”

By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy 6 June 2019 (The Harvard Gazette) – About a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, it turns out these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They’re thawing at an increasing rate. Human-induced climate change is warming these lands, melting the ice […]

Student leaders with the lobbying group Renew Oregon, which helped craft landmark climate change legislation currently under debate in Oregon, pose to show their T-shirts after a news conference in Salem, Oregon, on 20 June 2019. Minority Republican senators walked out Thursday to block a vote on the proposal, which would be the second of its kind in the nation. That prompted Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, to activate the state police to bring absentee senators back against their will. Photo: Gillian Flaccus / AP Photo

Oregon governor sends police after Republican senators who fled Capitol over climate legislation

By Sarah Zimmerman and Gillian Flaccus 20 June 2019 SALEM, Oregon (Associated Press) – Republican senators in Oregon engaged in a high-stakes game of brinksmanship Friday with Democratic lawmakers and prepared to remain absent from the Capitol for a second day to block a vote on a landmark climate plan that would be the second […]

Warming stripes for Washington state, 1895-2018. Graphic: Climate Central

Show your stripes: Iconic global warming imagery goes local

By Bob Henson 20 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – The summer solstice arrives on Friday, 21 June 2019, and so does the second year of “warming stripes”. Launched in 2018, this growing campaign builds on a set of imagery developed by University of Reading climate scientist Ed Hawkins: colored stripes that portray a century-plus of global […]

A dog sled team travels through meltwater on sea ice in northwest Greenland, 13 June 2019. Steffen Malskaer got the difficult task of retrieving oceanographic moorings and weather station. Rapid melt and sea ice with low permeability and few cracks leaves the melt water on top. This photo was taken around mid afternoon local time on sea ice, in the middle of Inglefield Bredning. Photo: Steffen M. Olsen / Danmarks Meteorologiske Institut

Image of the Day: Sled dogs running through Greenland sea ice melt

By Eric Mack 18 June 2019 (CNET) – Over the past week temperatures in northern Greenland have been comparable to the weather in Seattle, causing the top layer of sea ice near the village of Qaanaaq to turn into the Arctic equivalent of a kiddie pool. Danish climate researcher Steffen Olsen took the above photo of a […]

Map of the 105,000 square miles of coal-rich outback land known as the Galilee Basin in Queensland, Australia. Graphic: The Times

Australia approves vast coal mine near Great Barrier Reef – “An act of climate vandalism that represents everything that has gone wrong with politics in Australia”

By Andrew Beatty 13 June 2019 (AFP) – Australia approved Thursday the construction of a controversial coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, paving the way for a dramatic and unfashionable increase in coal exports. Queensland’s government said it had accepted a groundwater management plan for the Indian-owned Adani Carmichael mine—the last major legal hurdle […]

An emaciated polar bear wanders far from its natural habitat up north to the industrial city of Norilsk, Russia, scavenging for food, 17 June 2019. Photo: Putoranatour / Reuters

Video: Starving polar bear wanders into Russian city of Norilsk, hundreds of miles from home

By Gianluca Mezzofiore and Nathan Hodge 19 June 2019 (CNN) – A hungry and exhausted young polar bear was spotted wandering in the suburbs of the Siberian industrial city of Norilsk this week, hundreds of miles from its usual habitat. [Over the years, Desdemona has developed a pretty think skin for doom and mass animal […]

Fine-resolution transect across the abyssal boundary current near the Orkney Passage sill, showing squared vertical shear (color), neutral density (black contours), and rate of turbulent kinetic energy dissipation (ε, shaded bars). Graphic: Garabato, et al., 2019 / PNAS

First “Boaty McBoatface” outing sheds new light on the warming ocean abyss

17 June 2019 (University of Southampton) – The first mission involving the autonomous submarine vehicle Autosub Long Range (better known as Boaty McBoatface) has for the first time shed light on a key process linking increasing Antarctic winds to rising sea temperatures. Data collected from the expedition, published today in the scientific journal PNAS, will […]

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