Millennium-scale evolution of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), 400 - 2020. SST-based AMOC reconstructions (light and dark blue) compared to various proxy reconstructions, including land and sea surface temperature reconstructions, sortable silt data, δ18O in benthic foraminifera, δ15N of deep-sea gorgonian corals, and relative abundance of Turborotalita quinqueloba. Since at least 400 AD relatively stable, the AMOC began to decline during the 19th Century which is evident in all proxy records. Around 1950 a phase of particularly rapid decline started that is found in several, largely independent proxies. A short-lived recovery is evident in the 1990s before a return to decline from the mid-2000s. Together these data consistently show that the modern AMOC slowdown is unprecedented in over a thousand years. Graphic: Levke Caesar

Gulf Stream System at its weakest in more than a millennium – “This could bring us dangerously close to the tipping point at which the flow becomes unstable”

25 February 2021 (PIK) – Never before in over 1000 years the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), also known as Gulf Stream System, has been as weak as in the last decades. This is the result of a new study by scientists from Ireland, Britain, and Germany. The researchers compiled so-called proxy data – taken […]

Global map showing large-scale protests against COVID-19 control measures, defined as those that lead to arrests, in January 2021. Nations in green imposed large-scale lockdowns in 2021. Graphic: Al Jazeera / World Happiness Report

World Happiness Report 2021: Reasons for Asia-Pacific success in suppressing COVID-19 – Death rate in Asia-Pacific nations 42 times lower than North Atlantic nations

By Jeffrey D. Sachs 20 March 2021 (Sustainable Development Solutions Network) – […] Perhaps the most notable variation across world regions of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the far lower mortality rate (deaths per million) in the Asia-Pacific region (northeast Asia, southeast Asia, and Oceania) compared with the North Atlantic region (the US, Canada, the […]

A before-and-after satellite view of flooding at Port Macquarie, captured by radar data from the European Union Earth Observation Programme's Sentinel-1 satellite on 12 March 2021 19 March 2021. Photo: Copernicus European Earth Observation Programme

Heavy rains in Australia’s east bring worst floods in 50 years – “Yesterday, we were hoping it will only be a one-in-20-year event, now it looks like a one-in-50-year event”

By Angus Thompson, Rachel Clun, and Lucy Cormack 21 March 2021 (Sydney Morning Herald) – The collision of two powerful weather systems over the east coast of NSW on Monday night may see more evacuations as western Sydney residents were forced to flee to higher ground on Sunday when floodwaters inundated their neighbourhoods. The State […]

Screenshot of the EPA Climate Change website, which was relaunched on 17 March 2021 after President Biden reversed the antiscience policies of the Trump administration. Graphic: EPA

EPA brings climate science back to website after Trump purge – “Climate facts are back”

By Richard Luscombe 20 March 2021 (The Guardian) – Canceled four years ago by a president who considered global warming a hoax, climate crisis information has returned to the website of the US government’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as part of Joe Biden’s promise to “bring science back”. The revival of a page dedicated to the […]

An Asian-American man who did not want to be identified pauses at a makeshift memorial on 17 March 2021 in front of Gold Spa, one of three spas in Georgia where Robert Aaron Long is accused of opened fire, killing eight people. Six of the victims were Asian-American women. Photo: Chris Aluka Berry / The Washington Post

Asian Americans see shooting as a culmination of a year of racism – Anti-Asian attacks rise along with online vitriol – “I’ve never been this afraid to be Asian in America”

By Silvia Foster-Frau, Marian Liu, Hannah Knowles, and Meryl Kornfield 17 March 2021 (The Washington Post) – As Helen Kim Ho learned that a White man with a self-described sex addiction was charged with killing eight people — including six Asian women — at spas in the Atlanta area on Tuesday, she imagined the stereotypes of Asian […]

Anti‐Asian hate crime incidents reported to police in select U.S. cities, 2019‐2020. Graphic: CSUSB Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism

Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by nearly 150 percent in 2020, mostly in N.Y. and L.A. – “What Trump did is that he weaponized it”

By Kimmy Yam 9 March 2021 (NBC News) – An analysis of police department statistics has revealed that the United States experienced a significant hike in anti-Asian hate crimes last year across major cities. The analysis released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, this month examined hate […]

Aerial view of a power outage in Austin, Texas, on 25 February 2021, after the power grid failed during Winter Storm Uri. Austin residents with medical conditions struggled to survive amid widespread power outages and no water. Photo: Brontë Wittpenn and Ana Ramirez / Austin American-Statesman

Living in Texas feels like an exercise in survival – “The message is clear: You’re on your own”

By Karen Attiah 5 March 2021 DALLAS, Texas (The Washington Post) – As spring makes inroads down here in North Texas, the impending reopening of the state feels ominously like a death trap. At a Mexican restaurant in Lubbock this week, Gov. Greg Abbott (R)proclaimed that he would issue an executive order to open Texas up “100 […]

Western Monarch butterfly abundance at 149 overwintering sites in California, 2017-2021. These critically low numbers follow two years with fewer than 30,000 butterflies—the previous record lows, indicating that the western monarch butterfly migration is nearing collapse. Sites were visited during both the Thanksgiving and New Year’s Counts during the 2020–2021 count season. Graphic: Xerces Society

Western Monarch butterfly population closer to extinction – No Endangered Species Act protection in sight – “In only a few decades, a migration of millions has been reduced to less than two thousand butterflies”

PORTLAND, Oregon, 19 January 2021 – The Xerces Society today announced that only 1,914 monarch butterflies were recorded overwintering on the California coast this year. This critically low number follows two years with fewer than 30,000 butterflies—the previous record lows—indicating that the western monarch butterfly migration is nearing collapse. The final results from the 24th annual Western […]

A Geiger counter shows a radiation level of 231 microsieverts per hour near the damaged No. 3 reactor building at the tsunami-crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma town, Fukushima prefecture, Japan, 1 March 2021. Photo: Sakura Murakami / REUTERS

Ten years on, Japan mourns victims of earthquake and “profoundly man-made” Fukushima disaster

By Eimi Yamamitsu 10 March 2021 IWAKI, Japan (Reuters) – With a moment of silence, prayers, and anti-nuclear protests, Japan on Thursday mourned about 20,000 victims of the massive earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan 10 years ago, destroying towns and triggering nuclear meltdowns in Fukushima. Huge waves triggered by the 9.0-magnitude quake – one […]

Icicles hang from machinery at the Entergy power plant in Houston, Texas, after Winter Storm Uri, 16 February 2021. Photo: Lauren Talarico / KHOU / Twitter

Texas electric bills were $28 billion higher under deregulation – “Texas froze by design”

By Tom McGinty and Scott Patterson 24 February 2021 (The Wall Street Journal) – Texas’s deregulated electricity market, which was supposed to provide reliable power at a lower price, left millions in the dark last week. For two decades, its customers have paid more for electricity than state residents who are served by traditional utilities, a Wall […]

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