climate change – Page 57 – Desdemona Despair

Astronomers Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) and her PhD adviser, Dr Randall Mindy (Leonardo DiCaprio), discover a “planet killer” comet that will impact the Earth in just over six months the Netflix film “Don’t Look Up”. Naturally, the scientists are ignored by politicians and the commercial mass media. Photo: Netflix

January 3, 2022

Climate scientists love “Don’t Look Up” – Satirical film “captures the madness I see every day”

By Eithne Dodd 1 January 2022 (Buzz) – The Netflix film Don’t Look Up has divided opinion between critics and audiences. One of the most popular pieces of content on Netflix’s platform since it debuted, Rotten Tomatoes, a site that gives a cumulative critical score show’s just a 55 per cent approval from critics. So while many […]

Truck drivers bound for Metro Manila celebrate Christmas Eve 2021 under a makeshift tent along the national highway in Surigao City as the Lipata port remained closed due to heavy damage from Super Typhoon Rai (Odette). Photo: Erwin M. Mascariñas / Philippine Daily Inquirer

January 2, 2022

Death toll from Super Typhoon Rai passes 400 – People in wrecked city of Surigao see hope in New Year amid typhoon ruins

By Divina M. Suson and Erwin M. Mascariñas 2 January 2022 SURIGAO CITY, Surigao del Norte, Philippines (Philippine Daily Inquirer) – When asked about their fishing boats during a disaster damage assessment just days after Typhoon Odette (international name: Rai) struck on 16 December 2021, many fishermen in the city’s coastal villages replied, “zero visibility.” […]

Gwendolyn, 2, stands in the house her family has already started rebuilding on 20 December 2021 after Super Typhoon Rai/Odette destroyed homes in Barangay Fatima, Purok 1 in Ubay, Bohol, Philippines. Almost all of the houses near the shore in this area were completely destroyed by Typhoon Rai/Odette. Photo: Hogsholt/ UNICEF / UN0570018

January 1, 2022

Filipino children affected by Typhoon Rai face uncertain New Year in 2022 – 846,000 children need help after typhoon destroyed their homes

31 December 2021 (UNICEF) – As Filipino families gather this New Year’s Eve to welcome 2022, there are 846,000 children who need help after Typhoon Rai/Odette destroyed their homes. A more infectious strain of COVID-19 and continued heavy rainfall over typhoon-affected areas pose an additional danger and can further slow down aid efforts. Working with […]

Smoke fills the air over the suburb of Superior, Colorado, as a wind-driven wildfire forced evacuations on 30 December 2021. Photo: Trevor Hughes

December 30, 2021

“Life-threatening” wildfires driven by 100-mph winds force evacuation of thousands near Boulder, Colorado

By Trevor Hughes and Doyle Rice 30 December 2021 BOULDER, Colorado (USA TODAY) – Several grass fires near Boulder, Colorado, forced thousands of people to flee their homes Thursday, officials said, as high winds knocked down live power lines. The National Weather Service called it a “life-threatening” situation, as one gust of 110 mph was […]

Alaska temperature record of 67°F (19°C) on 26 December 2021. The Kodiak Tide Gauge station recorded 67°F, a new statewide temperature record for December. The Kodiak Airport recorded 65°F, which broke their monthly record by 9°F. Graphic: NWS Alaska Region

December 30, 2021

Alaska sets December temperature record at 67°F (19°C) – “In late December, I would not have thought such a thing possible”

By Andrew Freedman 27 December 2021 (Axios) – A weather station mounted on a tide gauge on the picturesque island of Kodiak, Alaska, recorded an air temperature of 67°F on 26 December 2021, which if verified would become the state’s record high for the month. The big picture: Such astonishingly mild conditions in America’s Arctic state come at […]

Map showing global land and ocean surface temperature anomaly for June 2020. On 14 December 2021, WMO announced verification of the highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic, 38C (100F). The high temperatures across Siberia led to massive sea ice loss and played a major role in 2020 being one of the three warmest years on record, the WMO said. Averaged as a whole, the global land and ocean surface temperature for June 2020 was 0.92°C (1.66°F) above the 20th century average of 15.5°C (59.9°F), tying with 2015 as the third highest June temperature departure from average in the 141-year record. June 2020 marked the 44th consecutive June and the 426th consecutive month with temperatures, at least nominally, above the 20th century average. Nine of the 10 warmest Junes have occurred since 2010; the seven warmest Junes have occurred in the last seven years (2014–2020). Graphic: NCEI

December 29, 2021

Arctic heat record is like Mediterranean, says WMO – “The record is clearly indicative of warming across Siberia”

14 December 2021 (BBC News) – The highest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic, 38C (100F), has been officially confirmed, sounding “alarm bells” over Earth’s changing climate. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Tuesday verified the record, reported in the Siberian town of Verkhoyansk on 20 June last year. The temperature was 18C higher than […]

Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea surface temperature (SST) fingerprint. Multimodel mean correlation map between the low-frequency AMOC at 26°N and SST (12). Stars numbered 1 to 16 denote location of sites referred in the figures. The reconstructed AMV at South Sawtooth Lake (1), August temperature in Vøring Plateau off Norway (2), Eastern Fram Strait IRD (3), Atlantic water influence based on C. neoteresis in Western Fram Strait (4), East Greenland Strait N. labradorica (5), North Icelandic shelf temperature based on δ18O from bivalve shells (6), IRD in Denmark Strait (7), the RAPiD-35-COM δ18O T. quinqueloba (8), percentage of Atlantic species in Disko Bugt (9), the RAPID-21-COM sortable silt in the ISOW (10), Gulf of Maine reconstructed SST from bivalve shells (11), titanium (%) in the Cariaco Basin (12), Quelccaya ice record δ18O (13), Huagapo speleothem δ18O (14), and Lake Bosumtwi lake level inferred from δ18O (15). The James Ross Island ice core record with annually resolved δD is shown (16). Graphic: Lapointe and Bradley, 2021 / Science Advances

December 25, 2021

Researchers uncover the surprising cause of the Little Ice Age – “We may be underestimating future ice loss from the Greenland ice sheet”

AMHERST, Massachusetts, 15 December 2021 (University of Massachusetts Amherst) – New research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst provides a novel answer to one of the persistent questions in historical climatology, environmental history and the earth sciences: what caused the Little Ice Age? The answer, we now know, is a paradox: warming. The Little Ice […]

Satellite view of changes to the Sierra Nevada snowpack, 2006-2021. Photo: NASA

December 25, 2021

Sierra Nevada snowpack, a crucial water resource, could disappear in 25 years – “A low-to-no-snow future has massive implications for where and when water is stored in the western U.S.”

By Denise Chow 1 December 2021 (NBC News) – The Sierra Nevada snowpack, a major source of water for California, could largely disappear in 25 years if global warming continues unchecked, according to a recent study. The worrisome findings, published 26 October 2021 in the journal Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, have serious implications for California’s […]

Aerial view of flattened homes after Typhoon Rai hit Surigao City, southern Philippines on 16 December 2021. Photo: Jilson Tiu / AP

December 24, 2021

Super Typhoon Rai leaves trail of destruction in Philippines – Desperation grows for 400,000 people – “Red Cross emergency teams are reporting complete carnage in the coastal areas. Homes, hospitals, school, and community buildings have been ripped to shreds.”

By Matt Hills 23 December 2021 (The Guardian) – Typhoon Rai has devastated the Philippines, killing at least 375 people, and causing damage in excess of $500m (£375m). The system developed on 13 December, tracked westwards across the Philippines on the 16th and 17th, before crossing the South China Sea on the 18th. Rai reached […]

Debt as percentage of GDP in emerging market and developing economies (EMDEs), 1970-2020. COVID-19 pushed debt in developing economies to the highest level in more than 50 years. By the end of 2020, private debt in EMDEs reached a record 142 percent of GDP. Graphic: World Bank

December 24, 2021

World Bank’s 2021 Year in Review in 11 Charts: The Inequality Pandemic

By Venkat Gopalakrishnan, Divyanshi Wadhwa, Sara Haddad, and Paul Blake 21 December 2021 (World Bank) – From uneven economic recovery to unequal access to vaccines; from widening income losses to divergence in learning, COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on the poor and vulnerable in 2021. It is causing reversals in development and is dealing a […]