A male cycad. On 22 August 2019, Chris Kidd, the curator of Ventnor Botanic Gardens, said, “For the first time in 60 million years in the UK we’ve got a male cone and a female cone at the same time. It is a strong indicator of climate change being shown, not from empirical evidence from the scientists but by plants.” Photo: Ventnor Botanic Garden

Ancient plants set to reproduce in UK after 60 million years – “It is a strong indicator of climate change being shown, not from empirical evidence from the scientists but by plants”

By Patrick Barkham 22 August 2019 (The Guardian) – An exotic plant has produced male and female cones outdoors in Britain for what is believed to be the first time in 60 million years. Botanists say the event is a sign of global heating. Two cycads (Cycas revoluta), a type of primitive tree that dominated […]

Weather projection on 21 August 2019 showing extreme low pressure headed for the northern Canada, causing an “Arctic ice smasher” storm that is arriving about two months early for the Arctic. Graphic: The Weather Network

Extreme ice smasher storm headed for the Arctic, two months early

By Tyler Hamilton 21 August 2019 (The Weather Network) – This storm is about two months early for the Arctic. Later this week a rare system will make its way into the Arctic Ocean. This system’s pressure centre is expected to dip to an unusually low value for the month of August. Just how low? […]

Satellite view of wildfires in South America on 21 August 2019. Wildfires raging in the Amazon rainforest hit a record number in 2019, with 72,843 fires detected in August by Brazil’s space research center INPE. Graphic: INPE

Record number of fires burning in Brazil rainforest – Bolsonaro blames conservationists, after he defunded environmental agencies

21 August 2019 (BBC News) – Brazil’s Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of fires this year, new space agency data suggests. The National Institute for Space Research (INPE) said its satellite data showed an 84% increase on the same period in 2018. It comes weeks after President Jair Bolsonaro sacked the head of the […]

Aerial view of Siberia wildfires in Buryatiya, 14 August 2019. Photo: The Siberian Times

5.4 million hectares ablaze in Siberia – “Almost four million hectares that are burning now are impossible to extinguish with any group of forces”

14 August 2019 (The Siberian Times) – Territory covered with wildfires across Russia has reached its peak for the year so far, with some 5.4 million hectares ablaze mostly in Siberia and the country’s far east. The total land destroyed by flames will soon exceed 2018 with weeks of the burning season still to go. […]

Comparison of normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) trends over the globally vegetated areas between two periods of 1982–1998 and 1999–2015. (A) NDVI trend of 1982–1998. (B) NDVI trend of 1999–2015. (C) Differences of NDVI trend between 1999–2015 and 1982–1998. The insets (I) show the relative frequency (percent) distribution of significant decreases (Dec*; P < 0.05), decreases (Dec), increases (Inc), and significant increases (Inc*), and the insets (II) show the frequency distributions of the corresponding ranges. Graphic: Yuan, et al., 2019 / Science Advances

Atmospheric vapor deficit causing worldwide loss of vegetation

By Bob Yirka 15 August 2019 (Phys.org) – A large international team of researchers has found evidence of a connection between an increase in the atmospheric vapor deficit and worldwide vegetation loss. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their analysis of climate datasets and the correlation of an increase in […]

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these images of several fires burning in the states of Rondônia, Amazonas, Pará, and Mato Grosso on 13 August 2019. Data: MODIS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview and VIIRS data from NASA EOSDIS/LANCE and GIBS/Worldview, and the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership Photo: Lauren Dauphin / NASA Earth Observatory

Image of the Day: Satellite view of forest-clearing fires in the Amazon, August 2019

By Adam Voiland 16 August 2019 (NASA) – In the Amazon rainforest, fire season has arrived. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured these images of several fires burning in the states of Rondônia, Amazonas, Pará, and Mato Grosso on August 11 and August 13, 2019. In the Amazon region, fires are rare for much […]

Excitation near the saddle-node bifurcation and steady-state solutions for global carbon cycle model. Graphic: Rothman, 2019 / PNAS

Breaching carbon threshold could lead to mass extinction – Carbon dioxide emissions may trigger “reflex” in global carbon cycle, with devastating consequences

By Jennifer Chu 8 July 2019 (MIT News) – In the brain, when neurons fire off electrical signals to their neighbors, this happens through an “all-or-none” response. The signal only happens once conditions in the cell breach a certain threshold. Now an MIT researcher has observed a similar phenomenon in a completely different system: Earth’s […]

Large rivers of melting water form on an ice sheet in western Greenland on 1 August 2019 and drain into moulin holes that empty into the ocean from underneath the ice. The heat wave that smashed high temperature records in five European countries a passed over Greenland, accelerating the melting of the island's ice sheet and causing massive ice loss in the Arctic. Photo: Caspar Haarløv / Into the Ice / AP

Bizarre happenings in the Arctic: Lightning, tropical moisture, and more

By Bob Henson 14 August 2019 (Weather Underground) – You’ll have to forgive the Arctic. It’s had a rough summer. Sea ice is running neck and neck with 2012 for the lowest values on record for this time of year. Wildfires are ringing the Arctic, pouring more carbon dioxide into the air than in any comparable period in 17 […]

People watch sockeye salmon it the fish allder at the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks in Seattle, on 23 June 2017 Photo: Hiram M. Chittenden Locks

Lowest sockeye salmon count on record at the Ballard Locks – “The salmon population is just not healthy anymore”

By Meghan Walker 15 August 2019 (My Ballard) – The number of sockeye salmon passing through the Ballard Locks Fish Ladder is at all-time low, according to yearly counts dating back to the 1970s. According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife’s daily count, just 18,000 sockeye have been counted at the fish ladder during […]

Satellite views of the Okjökull glacier in Iceland in 1986 and 2019. Data: Landsat / U.S. Geological Survey. Photo: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

Iceland commemorates first glacier lost to global warming – “The world that we learned how it was, learned by heart as some kind of eternal fact, is not a fact any more”

By Toby Luckhurst 18 August 2019 (BBC News) – Mourners have gathered in Iceland to commemorate the loss of Okjokull, which has died at the age of about 700. The glacier was officially declared dead in 2014 when it was no longer thick enough to move. What once was glacier has been reduced to a […]

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