Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg listens to a speech by President Trump during the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, 21 January 2020. Photo: Gian Ehrenzeller / EPA-EFE / Shutterstock

As Trump lashes out at “prophets of doom” in Davos, Greta Thunberg calls for climate action – “I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.”

By Rick Noack 21 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg and President Trump offered two opposing visions at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Tuesday, with Trump lashing out at what he said were “perennial prophets of doom and their predictions of the apocalypse” as Thunberg inveighed against […]

People break into a warehouse with supplies believed to have been from when Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017 in Ponce, Puerto Rico on 18 January 2020, after a powerful earthquake hit the island. Photo: Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty Images

Discovery of unused disaster supplies from Hurricane Maria angers Puerto Rico

By Danica Coto 19 January 2020 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong […]

Aerial views showing Australia landscape before and after the megafires of 2019 and 2020. Photo: Nearmap

Australia bushfires from the air: before and after images show scale of devastation

By Naaman Zhou 16 January 2020 (The Guardian) – More than 10.7m hectares of land have burnt so far in Australia’s bushfires – larger than the total area of South Korea, or Portugal, and 1.3 times the size of Scotland. The ongoing and unprecedented bushfire crisis has spread across six states and multiple months. In New South Wales alone, the […]

Dead salmon on the shores of the Ugashik, Alaska in July 2019. More than 100,000 fish in Bristol Bay were killed by heat stress in 2019. Photo: Birch Block

Record summer heat in Alaska wiped out at least 100,000 Kuskokwim salmon in Bristol Bay – “I’ve never seen a salmon that is still ocean-bright acting in such a way”

By Isabelle Ross 15 January 2020 DILLINGHAM, Alaska (Alaska Public Media) – The sun beat down relentlessly on Bristol Bay this summer, heating up the rivers and lakes where millions of sockeye salmon returned to spawn. July was the region’s hottest month on record, and in some rivers, that heat was lethal. Tim Sands, an […]

The Global Risks Report’s top 10 risks for 2019, ranked by likelihood and impact, shed light on significant trends that may shape global development over the next 10 years. Graphic: World Economic Forum

These are the biggest risks facing our world in 2019 – “Of all risks, it is in relation to the environment that the world is most clearly sleepwalking into catastrophe”

By Joe Myers and Kate Whiting 16 January 2019 (WEF) – What keeps you up at night? For leaders surveyed for the latest edition of the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report, environmental threats dominate the list for the third year in row – both in terms of impact and likelihood. “Of all risks, it is […]

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 […]

On 1 January 2016 and 2 January 2016, 6,540 common murre carcasses were found washed ashore near Whitter, Alaska, translating into about 8,000 bodies per mile of shoreline — one of the highest beaching rates recorded during the mass mortality event. Photo: David B. Irons

Huge “hot blob” in Pacific Ocean caused mass starvation in largest seabird die-off – “The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent”

By Michelle Ma 15 January 2020 (UW News) – The common murre is a self-sufficient, resilient bird. Though the seabird must eat about half of its body weight in prey each day, common murres are experts at catching the small “forage fish” they need to survive. Herring, sardines, anchovies and even juvenile salmon are no […]

A boy plays on a phone after the flood in Bekasi, Indonesia, on 3 January 2020. Photo: Sijori Images / Barcroft Media / Getty Images

Flooding in Jakarta is the worst for over a decade, more rainfall expected – “It was like the end of the world”

9 January 2020 (The Economist) – “It was like the end of the world,” says Nurhayati, dabbing her eyes with the hem of her hijab. On December 31st swollen clouds emptied over Indonesia’s capital, dumping 377 millimetres of rain in one day. That is the most since records began in 1886, according to the state […]

Precipitation averages in the contiguous U.S. for overlapping two-year calendar periods, 1895-2019. The period 2018-19 was the wettest of these, with 69.43” coming in well above the previous record of 68.62” from 1982-83. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

Second wettest year in U.S. history – Warmest year on record in Alaska

By Bob Henson 8 January 2020 (Weather Underground) – Capping a spectacularly soggy period that spanned parts of two calendar years, the contiguous United States saw its second wettest year on record in 2019, according to NOAA’s annual summary issued on Wednesday. The national average temperature wasn’t especially hot by recent standards, but there were […]

A boy cradles the body of dead endangered Brush-tailed rock-wallaby, found near a muddy puddle of water after a bushfire in Gosford, New South Wales, Australia, on 6 January 2020. The boy asked his father, Tim Faulkner, “They’re all dying aren’t they Dad?” Faulkner told him it was his job to save the world. Photo: Tim Faulkner / Facebook

Estimated number of animals killed in Australia bushfires rises to more than one billion – “Events like this may well hasten the extinction process for a range of species”

8 January 2020 (University of Sydney) – Professor Chris Dickman has revised his estimate of the number of animals killed in bushfires in NSW to more than 800 million animals, with a national impact of more than one billion animals. Several weeks ago Professor Dickman, from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science, estimated that 480 […]

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