climate change – Page 80 – Desdemona Despair

As many fires are still burning in Australia, a regular GLOBE Observer (Glenn Evans in Coogee, New South Wales, about 10 km/6 miles southeast of Sydney), has been taking consistent clouds observations from the same location over the last few weeks, sometimes multiple observations on the same day. In this short video, you can see a compilation of their ground observations in December 2019, facing west and south alongside satellite imagery from the same day taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Notice the sky coloration when heavy smoke plumes are visible in the satellite image, as well as the days when there is both haze and other types of clouds in the sky. Video: NASA GLOBE Observer

January 13, 2020

A megafire measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge – “It is too late to leave”

By Andrew Freedman 10 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Australia’s bushfire crisis worsened Thursday night into Friday as hot, dry and windy conditions redeveloped across the country’s hard-hit southeast, causing two large blazes to merge into one. The new “megafire” measures about 1.5 million acres, about the size of the state of Delaware or […]

Beth Ford, CEO of Land O’Lakes, spoke on Thursday, 9 January 2020, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ 2020 Regional Economic Conditions Conference. Photo: Land O’Lakes

January 12, 2020

“We will lose rural America” warns Land O’Lakes CEO at annual Fed summit – “The towns are rolling up on us. That is the truth.”

By Joy Wiltermuth 11 January 2020 (MarketWatch) – Rural America needs help. That was the key message from Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., while speaking Thursday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ annual economic outlook conference for the Ninth District. “Farmers want trade. They want a robust marketplace and they […]

Net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2005-2019. Graphic: Rhodium Group

January 12, 2020

Preliminary U.S. carbon emissions estimates for 2019 – Coming up short on climate targets

By Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt 7 January 2020 (Rhodium Group) – After a sharp uptick in 2018, we estimate that US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fell by 2.1% last year based on preliminary energy and economic data. This decline was due almost entirely to a drop in coal consumption. Coal-fired power generation fell by […]

Worldwide natural catastrophe loss events in 2019. Tropical cyclones, extreme storms, and floods caused overall losses of $150 billion. Video: Munich RE

January 11, 2020

Tropical cyclones causing billions in losses dominated the natural catastrophe picture of 2019 – “Cyclones are becoming more frequently associated with extreme precipitation”

8 January 2020 (Munich RE) – 820 natural catastrophes caused overall losses of US$ 150bn, which is broadly in line with the inflation-adjusted average of the past 30 years. A smaller portion of losses was insured compared with 2018: about US$ 52bn. This was due, among other things, to the high share of flood losses, which are […]

Danielle and Jacob Stenger are raising their two children — Colten and Delaney — on a farm near Milford Lake outside Junction City, Kansas. Danielle is a proud ambassador for farming in the state and applauds the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s efforts to help farmers in mental health distress. Photo: Danielle Stenger

January 11, 2020

Kansas state steps in as farmers die by suicide – “The increase in suicide rates among farmers and ranchers is alarming”

By Lisa Gutierrez 28 December 2019 KANSAS CITY, Missouri (The Kansas City Star) – He fought it as long as he could. Mick Rausch didn’t know what was wrong until he finally hit a wall he could no longer climb on his own. It was 10 years ago. His brother — younger by just a […]

The “Devil face” seen in smoke from the east Gippsland bushfire in New South Wales, Australia, 3 January 2020. Photo: Channel 7 News Melbourne

January 9, 2020

We are seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass in these bushfires – “The thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future”

By Joëlle Gergis 2 January 2020 (The Guardian) – I had goosebumps watching surreal footage of the mass evacuation of people stranded on the south-east Australian coast. Once again, catastrophic bushfire conditions are bearing down on communities during increasingly horrific summers in Australia. It has been an unprecedented continuation of the horrendous bushfires that started […]

Animation showing pathways for reducing carbon emissions to prevent breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target by year, 2000-2019. Graphic: Carbon Brief

January 7, 2020

The sad truth about our boldest climate target – Limiting global warming to 1.5˚C is almost certainly not going to happen. Admitting this need not end hope.

By David Roberts 3 January 2020 (Vox) – In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to a common target: to hold the rise in global average temperature “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even […]

Glaciers in New Zealand have turned a caramel colour from bushfire ash blown across from Australia, 1 January 2020. Photo: Fabulousmonster @Rachelhatesit / Twitter

January 7, 2020

New Zealand glaciers turn brown from Australian bushfires’ smoke, ash and dust – May increase glacier melt in 2020 by 30 percent

By Eleanor Ainge Roy 1 January 2020 WANAKA (The Guardian) – Snow and glaciers in New Zealand have turned brown after being exposed to dust from the Australian bushfires, with one expert saying the incident could increase glacier melt this season by as much as 30 percent. On Wednesday many parts of the South Island woke […]

Global surface temperature anomalies, 1880-2019, compared with the 1880-1899 average. The year 2019 was the second warmest year on record, capping the warmest decade since measurements began. Data: Gavin Schmidt / NASA GISTEMP. Graphic: InsideClimate

January 7, 2020

2010-2019: Earth’s hottest decade on record marked by extreme storms, deadly wildfires – “The climate of the 20th Century is gone. We’re in a new neighborhood.”

By Bob Berwyn 19 December 2019 (InsideClimate News) – Deadly heat waves, wildfires and widespread flooding punctuated a decade of climate extremes that, by many scientific accounts, show global warming kicking into overdrive. As the year drew to a close, scientists were confidently saying 2019 was Earth’s second-warmest recorded year on record, capping the warmest […]

A helicopter carries water through smoky skies as it flies near the town of Bilpin, located west of Sydney in New South Wales, Australia, on Sunday, 29 December 2019. Photo: Bloomberg

January 7, 2020

Global apathy toward the fires in Australia is a scary portent for the future

By David Wallace-Wells 31 December 2019 (New York magazine) – Right now, on the outskirts of a hyper modern first world megapolis, at the end of a year in which the public seemed finally to wake up to the dramatic threat from global warming, a climate disaster of unimaginable horror has been unfolding for almost two […]