wildfire – Page 12 – Desdemona Despair

Infographic showing costs of natural disasters in 2020. Global losses from natural disasters in 2020 came to US$210 billion. The hurricane season in the North Atlantic was hyperactive, with a record-setting 30 storms, 13 of which reached hurricane status. Graphic: Munich Re

January 10, 2021

Global natural disaster figures for 2020 – “The hurricane season in the North Atlantic was hyperactive”

7 January 2021 (Munich Re) – Global losses from natural disasters in 2020 came to US$ 210bn, of which some US$ 82bn was insured. Both overall losses and insured losses were significantly higher than in the previous year (2019: US$ 166bn and US$ 57bn respectively). The US share of losses was rather high: Natural disasters in the […]

Average annual global temperature (deg C) relative to 1850-1900. 2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year on record. Data: ERA5 / Copernicus Climate Change Service. Graphic: The Guardian

January 9, 2021

2020 tied 2016 for hottest year ever recorded – “The extraordinary climate events of 2020 show us we have no time to lose”

By Damian Carrington 8 January 2021 (The Guardian) – The climate crisis continued unabated in 2020, with the joint highest global temperatures on record, alarming heat and record wildfires in the Arctic, and a record 29 tropical storms in the Atlantic. Despite a 7% fall in fossil fuel burning due to coronavirus lockdowns, heat-trapping carbon dioxide continued to build […]

Satellite view of wildfires on the U.S. West Coast between 12 September 2020 and 16 September 2020. Video: Michael Benson / CIRA / NOAA

December 30, 2020

Watching Earth burn – “The war has started. We’re losing.”

By Michael Benson 28 December 2020 (The New York Times) – I have a pastime, one that used to give me considerable pleasure, but lately it has morphed into a source of anxiety, even horror: earth-watching. Let me explain. The earth from space is an incomparably lovely sight. I mean the whole planet, pole to […]

Map showing highest-impact disasters in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic (over 250,000 people affected). The map shows only a snapshot of disasters that took place from the beginning of the month when the epidemic was declared (March 2020) for a six-month period. More than 100 disasters occurred during this period and affected over 50 million people. There were also a number of ongoing crises, including measles in DRC and droughts in parts of east and southern Africa. Graphic: IFRC

December 24, 2020

Red Cross faced record number of climate-related disasters in 2020 – “This year has tested the resilience of tens of millions of people to breaking point”

KUALA LUMPUR, 16 December 2020 (IFRC) – In a record-breaking year, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has responded to more climate-related disasters across Asia Pacific than any other time this century so far. The IFRC has already responded to 25 climate-related disasters in the Asia Pacific, including floods, typhoons, […]

GOES-17 satellite view of the largest known stratospheric smoke injection, from Australia wildfires, 2 January 2020. This photo shows the first phase (29-31 December 2019) of the Australian New Year Super Outbreak (Anyso), which had unprecedented fire and pyrocumulonimbus cloud (pyroCb) activity. this event was the first known pyroCb “super outbreak”, with 32 updrafts over ~45hrs (day and night). Previous events recorded less than 10 updrafts in less than 24 hours. Photo: CIRA

December 16, 2020

Towering pyrocumulonimbus clouds can spew as much aerosol as volcanic eruptions – The Australian 2019-2020 outbreak exceeded previously unprecedented events “on almost every level”

By Carolyn Gramling 15 December 2020 (Science News) – A massive tower of smoke generated by Australian wildfires in late 2019 set a new record for the loftiest and largest fire-spawned thunderstorms ever measured. It also may represent a new class of volcanic-scale “pyrocumulonimbus” events, scientists said in an online news conference 11 December 2020 at […]

Map showing the age of sea ice in the Arctic at winter maximum in 2000 (left, week of March 18) and 2020 (right, week of March 21). Ice older than 5 years (white) is very rare today; only a small ribbon remains along the islands of the Canadian Arctic. Age is a stand-in for ice thickness and durability; young ice is thinner and more likely to melt in the summer. NOAA Climate.gov map, based on data from the National Snow and Ice Data Center. Graphic: NOAA

December 14, 2020

Sea ice loss and extreme wildfires mark another year of Arctic change – “The transformation of the Arctic to a warmer, less frozen, and biologically changed region is well underway”

8 December 2020 (NOAA) – NOAA’s 15th Arctic Report Card catalogs for 2020 the numerous ways that climate change continues to disrupt the polar region, with second-highest air temperatures and second-lowest summer sea ice driving a cascade of impacts, including the loss of snow and extraordinary wildfires in northern Russia. The Arctic Report Card is […]

Overall state of all natural World Heritage sites in 2014, 2017, and 2020. Graphic: IUCN

December 7, 2020

Climate change now top threat to natural World Heritage sites – Great Barrier Reef declines to “critical” status

GLAND, SWITZERLAND, 2 December 2020 (IUCN) – Climate change is now the biggest threat to natural World Heritage, according to a report [pdf] published today by IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature). A third (33%) of natural World Heritage sites are threatened by climate change, including the world’s largest coral reef, the Great Barrier […]

Global map of temperature anomalies relative to the 1981-2010 long-term average from the ERA5 reanalysis for January to October 2020. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

December 2, 2020

WMO: 2020 on track to be one of three warmest years on record – More than 80 percent of the global ocean experienced a marine heatwave in 2020

GENEVA, 2 December 2020 (WMO) – Climate change continued its relentless march in 2020, which is on track to be one of the three warmest years on record. 2011-2020 will be the warmest decade on record, with the warmest six years all being since 2015, according to the World Meteorological Organization. Ocean heat is at […]

August 2020 blended land and sea surface temperature percentiles. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

September 16, 2020

August 2020 was the world’s second-warmest August on record – The year 2020 has more than a 99.9 percent chance to rank among the five warmest years on record

By Jeff Masters, Ph.D. 15 September 2020 (Yale Climate Connections) – August 2020 was the second-warmest August since global record keeping began in 1880, NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, or NCEI, reported September 14. The month was just 0.04 degrees Celsius behind the record set in August 2016. NASA rated the month as the third-warmest August on […]

The Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) and the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) on the NOAA-NASA Suomi NPP satellite captured this extremely think blanket of smoke along the West Coast on 9 September 2020. OMPS measured smoke clouds over the western U.S. with higher aerosol index values than anything Colin Seftor, an atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, says he has ever seen with the instrument. Graphic: Joshua Stevens / NASA Earth Observatory

September 12, 2020

California’s wildfire smoke plumes are unlike anything previously seen – California fire carbon emissions in 2020 exceed previous record by nearly 2 times

By Matthew Cappucci 12 September 2020 (The Washington Post) – More than 3.1 million acres have burned in California this year, part of a record fire season that still has four months to go. A suffocating cloud of smoke has veiled the West Coast for days, extending more than a thousand miles above the Pacific. And the […]