The carcass of an elephant that died during the drought is seen in the Shaba National Reserve, Isiolo county, Kenya, 22 September 2022. Photo: Baz Ratner / REUTERS

Reuters pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

30 December 2022 (Reuters) – From historic droughts to floods, climate change worsened weather extremes in 2022. See more 2022 extreme weather and environment photos from Reuters here and here. Pictures of the year: Extreme weather in 2022

Maasai children stand beside a zebra that local residents say died due to drought, as they graze their cattle at Ilangeruani village, near Lake Magadi, in Kenya, on 9 November 2022. Photo: Brian Inganga / AP Photo

In 2022, AP photographers captured pain of a changing planet

By Peter Prengaman 16 December 2022 (AP) – In 2022, Associated Press photographers captured signs of a planet in distress as climate change reshaped many lives. That distress was seen in the scarred landscapes in places where the rains failed to come. It was felt in walloping storms, land-engulfing floods, suffocating heat and wildfires no […]

Energy footprints of British households in 2019, from international and domestic aviation (red) and everything else (grey), in the top 10 percent and the bottom 20 percent of incomes. The 102 gigajoules (GJ) used for flying by the average adult in the top 10% of earners in that year was more than the average person in the bottom fifth of earners used for everything, including flying, driving, and heating their homes. Data: Baltruszewicz, et al., 2022 / Ecological Economics. Graphic: Tom Prater / Carbon Brief

Richest people in UK use more energy flying than poorest do overall – “There is so much social injustice engrained in those who don’t have enough energy”

By Josh Gabbatiss 14 December 2022 (Carbon Brief) – The wealthiest people in the UK burn through more energy flying than the poorest use in every aspect of their lives, according to new research. The analysis of data from 2019 highlights “significant inequalities” in energy use across the country. Those in the top 10% of […]

People walk between homes that are covered in ice on Wednesday, 28 December 2022 in the waterfront community of Crystal Beach in Fort Erie, Ontario. Photo: Cole Burston / AFP / Getty Images

Buffalo’s “blizzard of the century” and Southwest’s 2,900 canceled flights prompt closer look at climate change and severe storms – “Nobody ever said global warming would eliminate winter”

By Rachel Koning Beals 27 December 2022 (MarketWatch) – Snowed-in Buffalo, N.Y., braced Tuesday for more wintry accumulation just days after an epic blizzard that killed at least 34 people, stranded some motorists in cars for days over the Christmas holiday and brought the city’s airport to a standstill. About 4,000 domestic flights were canceled […]

A local resident fights a forest fire with a shovel during a wildfire in Tabara, north-west Spain, Tuesday, 19 July 2022. Spain’s national weather service said preliminary data indicates that 2022 will finish with average daily temperatures above 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time since records started in 1961. It says that the four hottest years on record for the southern European country have all come since 2015. Photo: Bernat Armangue / AP Photo

Spain records hottest year ever in 2022 – Four hottest years on record for Spain have all come since 2015

MADRID, 21 December 2022 (AP) – Spain is about to conclude its hottest year on record, the nation’s weather service said Wednesday. Spain’s national weather service said preliminary data indicates that 2022 will finish with average daily temperatures above 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time since records started in 1961. The […]

Map showing the Rainfall Accumulation Anomaly in the Horn of Africa during the 2010-2011, 2016-2017, and 2020-2022 droughts. Communities in the Horn of Africa are in the midst of a likely fifth consecutive failed rainy season — with the October-December 2022 rains beginning poorly and forecasts indicating they are likely to underperform — and may face a sixth failed season in March-May 2023. The October-December 2020, March-May 2021, October-December 2021 and March-May 2022 seasons were all marred by below-average rainfall, leaving large swathes of Somalia, southern and south-eastern Ethiopia, and northern and eastern Kenya facing the most prolonged drought in recent history, while the March-May 2022 rainy season was the driest on record in the last 70 years. The 2020-2022 drought has now surpassed the horrific droughts in 2010-2011 and 2016-2017 in both duration and severity and will continue to deepen in the months ahead, with catastrophic consequences. Data: USGS FEWS NE (Africa CHIRPS Anomaly 3-Monthly, MAM and OND). Graphic: OCHA

UNICEF: More than twenty million children suffering in Horn of Africa as drought intensifies – Two million people displaced internally, 9.5 million livestock dead – “We fled hunger, but hunger followed us here”

NAIROBI, 22 December 2022 (UNICEF) –The number of children suffering dire drought conditions across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia has more than doubled in five months, according to UNICEF. Around 20.2 million children are now facing the threat of severe hunger, thirst and disease, compared to 10 million in July, as climate change, conflict, global inflation, and grain […]

A youth runs over what remains of the glacier that lost most of its volume during the last years, on top of the Zugspitze Mountain near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Saturday, 25 June 2022. Once the world had hope that when nations got together, they could stop climate change. Thirty years after leaders around the globe first got together to try, that hope has melted. Photo: Michael Probst / AP Photo

Climate negotiations: 30 years of melting hope and U.S. power – “Such innovative, exciting proposals were put forward in the early years, which if they had been implemented, we would be in a so much better situation”

By Seth Borenstein 4 November 2022 (AP) – Thirty years ago there was hope that a warming world could clean up its act. It didn’t. The United States helped forge two historic agreements to curb climate change then torpedoed both when new political administrations took over. Rich and poor nations squabbled about who should do what. During […]

The effect of Arctic wildfires on carbon release: Arctic wildfires accelerate the release of organic carbon from the soil into the atmosphere, which can strengthen the feedback to warming. Graphic: V. Altounian / Science

Unprecedented Arctic wildfires fuel climate warming cycle – “Larger and more intense wildfires could substantially accelerate the release of permafrost carbon into the atmosphere”

By Kat Kerlin 8 November 2022 (UC Davis) – From Sierra Nevada forests to Arctic peatlands, climate warming is turning some long-held carbon sinks into carbon sources as wildfires increasingly send stored carbon up in smoke. In the Arctic, vast amounts of carbon have been locked beneath frozen soil, much of it in peatlands. Climate warming dries […]

A heavy vehicle loads coal from the barge into a truck to be distributed, at the Karya Citra Nusantara port in North Jakarta, Indonesia, 13 January 2022. Photo: Willy Kurniawan / REUTERS

Drops of climate finance start to fill an ocean of need – “When you see the announcements, it never feels significant enough”

By Simon Jessop and Aidan Lewis 22 November 2022 SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) – The biggest deal to date to forge the kind of private-public sector low-carbon collaboration sought at U.N. climate talks promises $20 billion to shut down Indonesian coal-fired power plants – and it’s a drop in the ocean. Estimates of how much external funding […]

A boat sails in front of a wave caused by the advance of sea water on the river during the dry season in the Bailique Archipelago, district of Macapa, state of Amapa, northern Brazil, Monday, 12 September 2022. During a full moon, the sea invades the river with such strength that, in some places, it turns into a single giant wave of up to 4 meters (13 feet), a phenomenon known as pororoca. Photo: Eraldo Peres / AP Photo

Climate migration: Açai growers flee salty Amazon water – “The village is approaching its end”

By Fabiano Maisonnave and Eraldo Peres 10 November 2022 MACAPA, Brazil (AP) – Where the mother of all rivers meets the Atlantic Ocean in coastal Brazil, it’s not a single channel, instead it braids around 230 kilometers (142 miles) of islands including the Bailique Archipelago. A native of the mouth of the Amazon, Elielson Elinho, […]

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