Record drought withers California’s Cachuma Lake

By Scott Gold 27 January 2014 CACHUMA LAKE RECREATION AREA, California (Los Angeles Times) – When Jeff Bozarth retired after 20 years as a police officer and signed up as a park ranger here last spring, he knew what to expect and relished every bit of it. Hidden in the folds of the Central Coast […]

Lemurs could be extinct ‘very soon’ – ‘One cyclone or other natural event could wipe out the entire population. In fact, anybody who decides to go out lemur hunting could tip the species over the edge.’

By Kashmira Gander20 February 2014 (The Independent) – Lemurs could “very soon” be extinct, some of the world’s leading experts on the primates warned as they unveiled a three-year plan to save them, on Thursday. A combination of the destruction of their habitat and bush meat hunting by impoverished local people, means that Lemurs are […]

Graph of the Day: Northern Hemisphere temperature anomaly map forecast for 27 February 2014

20 February 2014By Sean Birkel (climatereanalyzer.org) – Today’s 7-day forecast from the GFS model shows another sizable bubble of cold air that will develop and waft down from the Arctic over the North American middle latitudes (Figure 1). Relatively warm air will invade the Arctic in its place. At first glance, it appears this latest […]

Climate change looming as threat to U.S. national security – ‘There’s a long chain of events between climate change to conflict to war, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist’

By Terrell Johnson 18 February 2014 (weather.com) – When he was asked last March to name the nation’s biggest long-term security threat in the Pacific region, U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel J. Locklear III gave a response many people didn’t expect: climate change. “People are surprised sometimes,” he said in an interview with the Boston Globe, […]

Climate sceptic to lead review of Australia renewable energy target

By Lenore Taylor17 February 2014 (theguardian.com) – The Abbott government has appointed a self-professed climate sceptic to head an “extensive” review of the renewable energy target. Dick Warburton, a veteran industrialist and current chairman of the Westfield Retail Trust, described his views on climate science in a 2011 interview on ABC. “Well I am a […]

Health experts warn of water contamination from California drought – Wildfire conditions are ‘what we would usually see in August’

By Sharon Bernstein; Editing by Richard Borsuk18 February 2014 SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) – California’s drought has put 10 communities at acute risk of running out of drinking water in 60 days, and worsened numerous other health and safety problems, public health officials in the most populous U.S. state said on Tuesday. Rural communities where residents […]

California drought: Why is there no mandatory water rationing? ‘Just drive by any reservoir and it’s horrifying. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand we’re in a drought.’

By Paul Rogers15 February 2014 (San Jose Mercury News) – Fourteen months into a historic drought, with reservoirs running low and the Sierra snowpack 27 percent of normal, a growing number of Californians are wondering: Why isn’t everyone being forced to ration? So far, Gov. Jerry Brown and most major water providers, from the Bay […]

Climate change, winter storms, and the future of European wine

By Peter Coy     13 February 2014 (Business Week) – You may have trouble believing that today’s mammoth snow-and-ice storm on the East Coast has anything to do with climate change, even though there’s strong scientific evidence that global warming makes erratic weather in the U.S. more likely by disrupting the jet stream. But while you […]

Image of the Day: Satellite view of extratropical cyclone over the United Kingdom, 12 February 2014

By Adam Voiland12 February 2014 (NASA) – Soggy winters are not unusual in the United Kingdom, but this winter has been in a category of its own. UK Met Office meteorologists had just declared January 2014 the wettest month on record for parts of southern Britain when another series of storms swept across the area […]

Cracks found in floor near Fukushima radioactive water tanks – Contaminated snowmelt may have seeped into ground

12 February 2014 (The Asahi Shimbun) – Two cracks were discovered in a concrete floor near radioactive water storage tanks on the grounds of the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the plant operator said Feb. 11. Officials with Tokyo Electric Power Co. said some of the contaminated water from the melting snow blanketing […]

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