U.S. carbon emissions surged in 2018 even as coal plants closed – “We haven’t yet successfully decoupled U.S. emissions growth from economic growth”

By Brad Plumer8 January 2019 WASHINGTON (The New York Times) – America’s carbon dioxide emissions rose by 3.4 percent in 2018, the biggest increase in eight years, according to a preliminary estimate published Tuesday. Strikingly, the sharp uptick in emissions occurred even as a near-record number of coal plants around the United States retired last […]

Air conditioning use emerges as one of the key drivers of global electricity-demand growth

15 May 2018 (IEA) – The growing use of air conditioners in homes and offices around the world will be one of the top drivers of global electricity demand over the next three decades, according to new analysis by the International Energy Agency that stresses the urgent need for policy action to improve cooling efficiency. […]

North China Plain could face killer heat due to global warming – “This is just going to be the hottest spot for deadly heat waves in the future”

By David L. Chandler 31 July 2018 (MIT News) – A region that holds one of the biggest concentrations of people on Earth could be pushing against the boundaries of habitability by the latter part of this century, a new study shows. Research has shown that beyond a certain threshold of temperature and humidity, a […]

(a) ERA-Interim wet bulb temperature (T) in India on 21 May 2016. (b) Monthly maximum of the wet bulb temperature in May 2016 (◦C). (c) Anomalies of the maximum wet bulb temperature in May 2016 (K), see text for details on the very high wet bulb temperatures in May 2016. (d–f) Same as (a–c) but for 22 May 2015. Graphic: Oldenborgh, et al., 2018 / Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences

Graph of the Day: Wet bulb temperature in India during record heat wave, May 2016

24 January 2018 (Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences) – On 19 May 2016 the afternoon temperature reached 51.0◦C in Phalodi in the northwest of India – a new record for the highest observed maximum temperature in India. The previous year, a widely reported very lethal heat wave occurred in the southeast, in Andhra Pradesh […]

Decadal mean changes of maximum near-surface air temperature (ΔTx) and wet-bulb temperature (ΔTW) for 30-year future periods in the Middle East and North Africa. The figure is generated using the results of the ensemble mean of 17 RCMs. Graphic: Ahmadalipour Moradkhani, 2018 / Environment International

Deadly heat waves in Middle East and North Africa to increase by 8–20 times if global warming isn’t slowed

By Ali Ahmadalipour and Hamid Moradkhani 12 May 2018 (Environment International) – Climate change will substantially exacerbate extreme temperature and heatwaves. The impacts will be more intense across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region mostly characterized by hot and arid climate, already intolerable for human beings in many parts. In this study, daily […]

Standing perfectly still: no progress in replacing fossil fuels for the past twenty years

15 July 2018 (Desdemona Despair) – It’s well known that human population is increasing relentlessly, with no peak in sight for at least the next century. Various projections estimate that the population will be somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to twelve billion by the year 2100 (cf. New projection shows human population could reach […]

Global warming has quadrupled ocean dead zones – “The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth’s environment”

4 January 2018 (SERC) – In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than 10-fold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as […]

Sumatra region heats up as rainforests are razed for palm oil plantations – “The land use change does not only impact biodiversity and stored carbon, but also has a surface warming effect, adding to climate change”

By Hans Nicholas Jong 29 October 2017(Mongabay) – The wholesale destruction of rainforests across parts of Indonesia’s Sumatra island to make way for cash-crop plantations has not just devastated animal and plant biodiversity in the region, but may also be driving an alarming rise in temperatures on the ground, a new study suggests. Average temperatures […]

Temporal distribution of insect biomass at selected locations in nature protection areas in Germany, 1989-2016. (A) Daily biomass (mean ±1 se) across 26 locations sampled in multiple years (see S4 Fig for seasonal distributions). (B) Distribution of mean annual rate of decline as estimated based on plot specific log-linear models (annual trend coefficient = −0.053, sd = 0.002, i.e. 5.2% annual decline). Graphic: Hallmann, et al., 2017 / PLOS ONE

Three-quarters of the total insect population lost in protected nature reserves – “Whatever the causal factors responsible for the decline, they have a far more devastating effect on total insect biomass than has been appreciated previously”

18 October 2017 (IWWR) – Since 1989, in 63 nature reserves in Germany the total biomass of flying insects has decreased by more than 75 percent. This decrease has long been suspected but has turned out to be more severe than previously thought. Ecologists from Radboud University together with German and English colleagues published these […]

Raging wildfire north of downtown Los Angeles grows to one of the largest blazes in city history

By Ruben Vives, Andrea Castillo, and Alene Tchekmedyian 2 September 2017 (The Los Angeles Times) – A brush fire in the Verdugo Mountains north of downtown Los Angeles has burned more than 5,000 acres, making it one of the largest fires in the city’s history and one that officials warn could grow larger if erratic weather […]

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