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. […]
By Yuliya Fedorinova 19 October 2019 (Bloomberg) – A dam collapsed at a gold mine in Russia’s Krasnoyarsk region, leaving at least 15 people dead, the Ministry of Emergency Situations said on its website. The collapse happened at about 2 a.m. Moscow time near one of the small local gold mining companies’ operations, the ministry […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
By Jason Samenow and Andrew Freedman 10 October 2019 (The Washington Post) – A letter sent Thursday from the chair of the House Science Committee to Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross reveals that it was the Commerce Department, not the leadership of its National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, that drafted a controversial NOAA statement on 6 […]
By Bellamy Pailthorp 8 October 2019 (KNKX) – Their goal is clear: to prevent Puget Sound’s iconic Southern Resident killer whales from going extinct. Solving that problem is anything but simple. The task force convened by Gov. Jay Inslee to save the orcas added 13 new recommendations this week, at its final meeting. The additions […]
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 […]
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 […]
