Flowers grow in new meadows in Western Siberia above the 70th parallel, only 1000 miles away from the North Pole. An expedition organised by Tomsk State University in the summer of 2019 found oases of rich vegetation formed in places of actively thawing permafrost. Russian scientists were surprised to find carpets of herbs and flowers, with daisies, dandelions, polar poppies, horsetail, several types of wormwood, cereals, and even willow growing in Arctic “oases”. Photo: Sergey Loiko / Tomsk State University

Poppies, dandelions, and daisies bloom in never-before-seen Arctic oases

By Olga Gertcyk 16 October 2019 (The Siberian Times) – ‘Blooming’ might be the last word to associate with the Arctic, yet pictures below show meadows bursting with life as brightly-coloured flowers blossom in lush green grass. And while vegetation in khasyreis, basins of drained Arctic lakes, is less of a surprise, researchers discovered ‘bursts […]

This animation shows Arctic sea ice decline from 1979 to 2019 from pink to purple, with dark purple in 2019. This animation is based on the Chartic Interactive Sea Ice Graph. Graphic: M. Scott / NSIDC

Falling up: A look back at the 2019 Arctic summer – New record daily lows for sea ice extent in July and early August

3 October 2019 (NSIDC) – Arctic sea ice began its autumn regrowth in the last 12 days of September, with the ice edge expanding along a broad front in the western Arctic Ocean. Overall, the summer of 2019 was exceptionally warm, with repeated pulses of very warm air from northern Siberia and the Bering Strait. […]

Wild reindeer cross a river in the Taymyr Peninsula in Siberia. More than 40,000 wild reindeer have perished since the last count in 2017, say scientists who returned from an expedition to the Taymyr Peninsula. Photo: Zapovedniki Taymyra / The Siberian Times

Northern reindeer that roamed Taymyr peninsula are at the brink of extinction – “The losses are catastrophic”

By Olga Gertcyk 30 September 2019 (The Siberian Times) – More than 40,000 wild reindeer perished since the last count in 2017, said scientists who returned from a major expedition to the Taymyr Peninsula. The Yenisei group of reindeer has disappeared entirely while the westernmost group living along the Tareya River has dramatically shrunk in […]

In Doha, Qatar, Fans equipped with misters blow moist air on evening diners who sit beside cooling units. Overnight lows rarely dip below 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer. Photo: Salwan Georges / The Washington Post

Facing unbearable heat, Qatar has begun to air-condition the outdoors – “The Persian Gulf is a prophecy of what’s to come”

By Steven Mufson 16 October 2019 DOHA, Qatar (The Washington Post) – It was 116 degrees Fahrenheit in the shade outside the new Al Janoub soccer stadium, and the air felt to air-conditioning expert Saud Ghani as if God had pointed “a giant hair dryer” at Qatar. Yet inside the open-air stadium, a cool breeze was blowing. […]

Top: firefighters spray water on fire-damaged mobile home at the Journey’s End Mobile Home Park in Santa Rosa, California, 9 October 2017. Bottom: the same mobile home, a year later. “We really didn’t have two years,” said Lisa Frazee, who lost her Santa Rosa home in the Tubbs fire. “We had to get our infrastructure back – the bridges, the roads – before we could even start personally thinking of rebuilding. The cities and counties were inundated with that first. Then we had to get builders and there aren’t enough builders. There aren’t enough laborers.” Photo: Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

Two years after California wildfires, survivors poised to lose housing funds – Dealing with insurance companies is “the disaster after the disaster”

Bu Vivian Ho 8 October 2019 SAN FRANCISCO (The Guardian) – Two years ago, they lost everything – their homes, baby photos, family heirlooms, keepsakes, jewelry, mementos – in a flurry of wildfires that ripped through California’s wine country. Now, on the second anniversary of these fires that killed 44 and destroyed thousands of buildings, survivors are […]

Statewide rankings for average temperature and precipitation for September 2019 compared to each September since records began in 1895. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

September 2019 hottest on record globally, second hottest in U.S. history – All-time record for 12-month rainfall in U.S.

5 October 2019 (Copernicus Climate Change Service) – In Europe, temperatures were above average over most of the continent, especially in the south and south-east. Below-average temperatures occurred over much of Norway and Sweden, and over the far east of the continent. Globally September 2019 was 0.57°C warmer than the average September from 1981-2010, making […]

Satellite view of Super Typhoon Hagibis as a Category 5-equivalent storm on 7 October 2019. Photo: NOAA / RAMMB

Deadly Typhoon Hagibis packed devastating punch in Japan with record rainfall totals – 2,667 bags of Fukushima waste leaked

By Andrew Freedman 14 October 2019 (The Washington Post) – Typhoon Hagibis proved to be extraordinarily devastating for northern Japan when it struck this weekend, unleashing more than three feet of rain in just 24 hours in some locations, causing widespread flash flooding as well as river flooding. The storm has killed at least 58, according […]

A mourner, dressed in black, stands in the Swiss Alps where the Pizol glacier once existed. The “funeral march” was held on 22 September 2019 to mark the disappearance of the Pizol glacier. Photo: Fabrice Coffrini

Swiss glacier volume reduced by 10 per cent in only five years – More than 500 small glaciers have vanished – Over the past 12 months, two percent of total Swiss glacier volume lost

15 October 2019 (Swiss Academy of Sciences) – During the summer heatwaves of 2019, glacier melt rates reached record levels. This led to another year of major losses of ice volume, as reported by the Cryospheric Commission of the Swiss Academy of Sciences. Switzerland’s glaciers have thus shrunk by 10 per cent over the past […]

The pattern of normalized relative sea-level (RSL) from Glacial Isostatic Adjustement (GIA) simulations of a 20-m rise in eustatic sea level (ESL). Graphic: Grant, et al., 2019 / Nature

If warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 meters in coming centuries

By Georgia Rose Grant and Timothy Naish 2 October 2019 (The Conversation) – We know that our planet has experienced warmer periods in the past, during the Pliocene geological epoch around three million years ago. Our research, published today, shows that up to one third of Antarctica’s ice sheet melted during this period, causing sea levels to rise […]

Global variability in nature’s contributions to people, for water quality regulation, coastal risk reduction, and crop pollination. Graphic: Chaplin-Kramer, et al., 2019 / Science

Billions face food, water shortages over next 30 years as nature fails – Study paints “a deeply worrying picture of the societal burdens of losing nature”

By Stephen Leahy 10 October 2019 (National Geographic) – As many as five billion people, particularly in Africa and South Asia, are likely to face shortages of food and clean water in the coming decades as nature declines. Hundreds of millions more could be vulnerable to increased risks of severe coastal storms, according to the first-ever model […]

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