A herd of wild buffalo wade through floodwaters at Kaziranga National Park in the India's northeast state of Assam, 24 July 2019. Photo: Biju BORO / AFP Photo

Rare rhinos among more than 200 animals killed by devastating India floods

GUWAHATI, 24 July 2019 (AFP) – Devastating floods have killed more than 200 wild animals—including 17 threatened one-horned rhinos—in one of India’s best-known national parks, officials said Wednesday. Forty percent of Kaziranga National Park in Assam has been left under water following 10 days of torrential rains that have also killed more than 71 people […]

Difference between future and current climate for London and an example of a similar current counterpart, Barcelona. Graphic: Bastin, et al., 2019 / PLOS ONE

By 2050, many cities will have weather like they’ve never seen – “The fate of major tropical cities remains uncertain as many will experience unprecedented climate conditions”

By Stephen Leahy 10 July 2019 (National Geographic) – Climate forecast for 2050: New York City winters will have the weather of today’s Virginia Beach, damp and cold London will be hot and dry like Barcelona, wet Seattle will be like drier San Francisco, and Washington D.C. will be more like today’s Nashville but with […]

Smoke rises from the Swan Lake Fire, southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, on 18 June 2019. Photo: Alaska DNR

It is probably too late to stop dangerous global warming – “The hard truth is that we are not on track”

By Sam Arie 17 July 2019 (Financial Times) – Few things should make you as optimistic — or as pessimistic — as the rise of renewable energy. Optimism comes from a new sense of urgency as the UK, Germany, and Spain set record highs for use of wind and solar power, and record lows for […]

An early morning rower glides through the glare of the rising sun on the Potomac River on Saturday, 20 July 2019. The Potomac River, which flows through the U.S. capital Washington, D.C., hit a record high temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) over the weekend following a major heat wave. Photo: J. David Ake / AP

Potomac River hits record high temperature of 34°C (94°F) after weeks of relentless heat

24 July 2019 (AFP) – The Potomac River, which flows through the US capital Washington, hit a record high temperature of 94 degrees Fahrenheit (34 degrees Celsius) over the weekend—as warm as bathwater—following a major heat wave. The previous highs came in the summers of 2011 and 2012, though record keeping began only in 2007. […]

Map of wildfires around Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk, 21 July 2019. Graphic: The Siberian Times

Major Siberian cities choking from wildfire smoke

22 July 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Krasnoyarsk and Novosibirsk are suffering smoke pollution and infernos rage in forests after hot, dry weather. Pictures show the scale of the smoke in major population centres from the raging wildfires with the cause seen mainly as out-of-control forest fires in Krasnoyarsk region, the second largest in Russia. […]

Forecast high-temperature departures from average for the European heat wave through Saturday, 27 July 2019. Areas in darker red and pink contours are expected to see temperatures the most above average each day. Graphic: The Weather Channel

Another Europe heat wave shatters all-time records in Belgium and the Netherlands with more records possible

By Jonathan Erdman 24 July 2019 (The Weather Channel) – Another Europe heat wave is building that may shatter the all-time record in Paris and set national records in at least three countries as it spreads into Scandinavia. On Wednesday, all-time record highs were broken in Belgium and the Netherlands when temperatures reached 102.3 degrees and 101.8 […]

A firefighter monitors the progression of a wildfire at Amendoa, in Macao, Portugal, on 21 July 2019. Photo: Patricia De Melo Moreira / AFP / Getty

Photo gallery: Wildfires rage in Central Portugal, July 2019

By Alan Taylor 23 July 2019 (The Atlantic) – Over the past few days in Portugal’s Castelo Branco region, strong winds and temperatures greater than 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) have driven devastating wildfires through several villages, destroying structures and injuring 39 people. Nearly 2,000 firefighters worked to bring the three major fires largely […]

Aerial view of Millstone Power Station. Unit 2 of Millstone Power Plant near New London was shut down on 12 August 2012 after temperatures in the sound exceeded 75 degrees for 24 hours, the maximum temperature at which the nuclear power plant has permits to extract cooling water for the unit. Photo: Roger Ressmeyer / Corbis

Nuclear power, once seen as impervious to global warming, threatened by heat waves – “You need to solve global warming for nuclear plants to survive”

By Alan Neuhauser 1 July 2019 (US News) – There’s a reason nuclear plants are built close to water. Harnessing the enormous power of nuclear fission, plants generate steam, which shoots through pipes to spin a turbine that generates massive amounts of electricity. To keep from getting dangerously hot, the plants suck up surrounding water […]

Stability diagram of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS), rate R versus duration T of mass addition with unstable regime in red and stable regime in blue. Interpolation of the field is based on the conducted ensemble of stabilization experiments (gray circles). The critical threshold Rc (white curve) of stabilization is approximated by function given at the top right corner. White stars highlight simulations that share the same total amount of deposited mass (M = 8000 Gt), added at differing rate and duration, showing that the combination of both determines potential stabilization. Graphic: Feldmann, et al., 2019 / Science Advances

Adding 8 trillion tons of artificial snow to the West Antarctic Ice Sheet could stop it from collapsing – “The fundamental trade-off is whether we as humanity want to sacrifice Antarctica to save the currently inhabited coastal regions”

By Katherine J. Wu 17 July 2019 (PBS) – Gird your loins, humans: The time has come to turn part of the South Pole into our own giant snow globe. Or has it? In a study published today in the journal Science Advances, a team of German researchers suggests that dumping 8 trillion tons of artificial snow onto […]

Radar estimates of rainfall in Arkansas from Tropical Depression Barry, 16 July 2019. Arkansas is now the fifth state to post a new tropical storm or hurricane rainfall record since 2017, joining Texas, Hawaii, North Carolina, and South Carolina. These exceptional rainstorms keep happening and appear to be part of a trend toward more extreme events connected to climate change. Graphic: WeatherMatrix

Tropical Depression Barry’s 14.58” of rain in Arkansas breaks all-time state record – Arkansas becomes fifth U.S. state to set tropical storm rainfall record in past two years

By Dr. Jeff Masters 17 July 2019 (Weather Underground) – Rainfall from Tropical Depression Barry deluged southwest Arkansas over the past three days, with the 14.58” that fell at Murfreesboro on July 14 – 16 breaking the all-time state record for precipitation from a tropical cyclone. Barry’s heavy rains that fell over southwest Arkansas inundated multiple highways, including […]

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