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 […]

Linkages between Amundsen Sea winds and global SST and SLP. Time series of zonal wind and zonal total stress over the PITT box, the SOI and the IPO. The legend shows the unit for each time series, and scaling for the axis values where appropriate. Graphic: Holland, et al., 2019 / Nature Geoscience

First evidence of human-caused climate change melting the West Antarctic Ice Sheet

12 August 2019 (British Antarctic Survey) – A new study published this week reveals the first evidence of a direct link between human-induced global warming and melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. UK-US researchers say that curbing greenhouse gas emissions now could reduce the future sea-level contribution from this region. Ice loss in West […]

July 2019 blended land and sea surface temperature anomalies in degrees Celsius and in percentiles. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

July 2019 was Earth’s hottest month in recorded history – 2019 almost certain to be among the five warmest years on record

By Dr. Jeff Masters 15 August 2019 (Weather Underground) – July 2019 was the planet’s warmest July and warmest month in absolute terms since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI)  on Thursday. Earth’s previous warmest month on record was July 2016. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) rated July 2019 in a […]

George Luber spoke at Monsanto Auditorium about the health threats of climate change at the MU Life Sciences & Society Program’s 12th annual symposium, “Confronting Climate Change,” held on 12 March 2016 in the Bond Life Sciences Center. Photo: Bond Life Sciences Center

U.S. scientist to file whistleblower complaint after agency halts his climate work – “As our climate spins out of control, bureaucrats eager to please the Trump administration have worked feverishly to destroy the reputations of climate scientists who stand in its way”

By Timothy Gardner 15 August 2019 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A climate scientist for the Trump administration’s health protection agency who was ordered to drop work on climate issues will file a whistleblower complaint this week with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, his lawyers said on Wednesday. George Luber, who ran the climate and health […]

Gas storage tanks receiving natural gas from feeder pipelines before compression for transport in high-pressure pipelines at the Haynseville shale formation, Texas. This photo was taken with a forward-looking infrared (FLIR) camera tuned to the infrared spectrum of methane, allowing visualization of methane, which is invisible in the normal camera view and to the naked eye. Photo: Sharon Wilson / Howarth, 2019 / Biogeosciences

Fracking prompts global spike in atmospheric methane – “This recent increase in methane in massive”

By Blaine Friedlander 14 August 2019 (Cornell Chronicle) – As methane concentrations increase in the Earth’s atmosphere, chemical fingerprints point to a probable source: shale oil and gas, according to new Cornell research published 14 August 2019 in Biogeosciences, a journal of the European Geosciences Union. The research suggests that this methane has less carbon-13 relative […]

Satellite view of Chennai Lake as it dries up, from 5 Feb 2019 to 15 July 2019. Photo: Copernicus / FT

No end to crisis in sight as drought grips India’s Chennai – “The civil strife in this country will start from water, not from religion”

By Stephanie Findlay 3 August 2019 CHENNAI (Financial Times) – Murugan Sundaramurthy’s water business is buoyant. His fleet of tanker trucks have been fanning out across the countryside around Chennai for two decades, sucking water from boreholes and delivering it to homes to quench the city’s thirst. But demand today is as high as he […]

Pope Francis arrives for his weekly general audience in Paolo VI hall at the Vatican on 7 Aug 2019. Photo: Maurizio Brambatti / EPA-EFE / REX / Shutterstock

Pope Francis again warns against nationalism, says recent speeches sound like “Hitler in 1934”, fears “devastation of nature that can lead to the death of humanity”

By Siobhán O’Grady 9 August 2019 (The Washington Post) – Pope Francis called for a united Europe in an interview published by Italian daily La Stampa on Friday, saying recent political rhetoric has echoed that of Nazi Germany. “I am concerned because we hear speeches that resemble those of Hitler in 1934,” he said. “ ‘Us […]

Dead fish lie on the parched bed of the Chembarambakkam reservoir in India, 19 May 2019. Photo: The News Minute

Amid drought, plants in Chennai guzzle 21 million liters of groundwater per day – “We are moving towards a groundwater disaster. On one hand, the surface water resources are being destroyed, and on the other groundwater resources are being over-exploited.”

By Yogesh Kabirdoss 22 July 2019 CHENNAI (TNN) – Drought-prone Tamil Nadu has the highest number of licensed packaged drinking water and carbonated beverages units in the country. These water-guzzling plants operating in and around Chennai draw at least 21 million litres of water every day. For the record, water-starved Tamil Nadu has 40 percent […]

Map of world water stress projected to 2020, 2030, and 2040. Data: World Resources Institute; United Nations. Graphic: The New York Times

A quarter of humanity faces looming water crises – “The picture is alarming in many places around the world”

By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai 6 August 2019 BENGALURU, India (The New York Times) – Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, […]

Media article co-visibility network-individual level. Clustered representation of the co-visibility network: nodes are climate change contrarians (CCCs) and climate change scientists (CCSs) who have at least one media article associated with at least one other individual. Links are colored according to three types: links between members of the CCC (CCS) group are red (blue) and links between groups are black; the percentages of links by type are reported in parentheses (e.g., 52 percent of links are within the CCC group). We used a modularity-maximizing clustering algorithm48 to identify three communities, with nodes ordered along each spine according to its network centrality—as such, the most prominent individuals are located at the apex. Two communities are well mixed, whereas the third represents an extremely polarized echo chamber comprised primarily of CCC. (inset) Magnification of the apex showing the most prominent individuals. Graphic: Peterson, et al., 2019 / Nature Communications

Media coverage creates false balance on climate science, study shows – “Climate change contrarians” receive 49 percent more media coverage than scientists

By Lorena Anderson 13 August 2019 (UC Merced) – The American media lends too much weight to people who dismiss climate change, giving them legitimacy they haven’t earned, posing serious danger to efforts aimed at raising public awareness and motivating rapid action, a new study shows. While it is not uncommon for media outlets to […]

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