Image of the Day: River of smoke flows from Canada wildfires into Central U.S.

By Adam Voiland1 July 2015 (NASA) – The 2015 fire season got off to an unusually early start in Canada when blazes broke out in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, and Alberta in late May. As the season has progressed, the air in western Canada—as well as large swaths of the United States—grew gray and […]

Worsening fine particulate matter pollution in Asia outweighs improvements in North America and Europe – Global exposures increasing by 2.1 percent per year

By Adam Voiland24 June 2015 (NASA) – People living in polluted areas inhale vast quantities of fine particulate matter, which is called PM2.5 because the pollution particles have diameters less than 2.5 micrometers. Such particles are so small—30 times smaller than the width of a human hair—that they can easily infiltrate human respiratory and circulatory […]

Turkish glaciers have shrunk by half since 1970

By Laura Rocchio2 July 2015 (NASA) – Researchers and citizens have known for some time that Turkey’s glaciers are shrinking. Now scientists have calculated the losses and found that more than half of the ice cover in this mountainous country has vanished since the 1970s. A team of researchers from Ege University (Turkey) and NASA’s […]

Siberia bakes with new record temperatures – Tuva Republic declares emergency as smoke from wildfires descends

4 July 2015 (The Siberian Times) – Our pictures show sun-seekers in Novosibirsk cooling off in the River Ob, and also at the ‘Ob Sea’, a huge artificial reservoir close to Siberia’s biggest city. The same scenes have been repeated over many time zones as summer came to the this vast Russian region. ‘If it […]

Carbon Counter: China not a ‘renewables powerhouse’

3 July 2015 (Carbon Counter) – A new piece at the Conversation claims that China is an emerging “renewables powerhouse”. And it is a classic example of twisting the facts to suit your narrative. It is also a classic example of the repeated failure to use meaningful statistics when comparing countries. Everything wrong with it, […]

Pink salmon struggle as freshwater becomes acidic

By Niina Heikkinen and ClimateWire30 June 2015 (ClimateWire) – Pink salmon are providing researchers with sobering hints to how carbon dioxide-induced acidity could affect freshwater fish species by the end of the 21st century. A study published yesterday in Nature Climate Change showed that early exposure to high levels of CO2 during the larval stage […]

BP to pay record $18.7 billion to settle claims in Gulf oil spill – ‘The largest settlement with a single entity in American history’

By Margaret Cronin Fisk, Laurel Calkins, and Del Quentin Wilber2 July 2015 (Bloomberg) – BP will pay a record $18.7 billion to resolve claims by the U.S. and five states along the Gulf of Mexico related to the 2010 oil spill. The payments will be spaced out over as long as 18 years, according to […]

As Alaska burns, Anchorage sets new records for heat and lack of snow

By Angela Fritz 2 July 2015 (Washington Post) – Hot and dry conditions in Alaska have been toppling records over the past few months — many of which have been held for decades. And now, with two million acres burned already, 2015 appears well on its way to becoming the worst fire season on record […]

John Gray: Steven Pinker is wrong about violence and war – ‘The picture of declining violence presented by this new orthodoxy is not all it seems to be’

By John Gray13 March 2015 (The Guardian) – For an influential group of advanced thinkers, violence is a type of backwardness. In the most modern parts of the world, these thinkers tell us, war has practically disappeared. The world’s great powers are neither internally divided nor inclined to go to war with one another, and […]

Heat wave in U.S. West enters second chapter – More record highs through holiday weekend

By Jon Erdman and Nick Wiltgen4 July 2015 (The Weather Channel) – While it may not be quite as hot as last weekend in some areas, there appears to be no end in sight to this torrid heat wave in the West. June and even a few all-time record highs have already been shattered in […]

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