By Tamasin Ford, with additional reporting by Iloniaina Alain Rakotondravony23 December 2013 CAP EST, Madagascar (The Guardian) – Blood-red sawdust coats every surface in the small carpentry workshop, where Primo Jean Besy is at the lathe fashioning vases out of ruby-coloured logs. Besy and his father are small-scale carpenters in Antalaha in north-east Madagascar, and […]
By Alok Jha and Laurence Topham24 December 2013 (The Guardian) – Every coast or sea we have visited in Antarctica, we have seen penguins. They come to the shoreline to investigate our ship as we sail past, they hop on and off ice floes, flocks of them fly in formation through the water. Night or […]
By Barbara Liston23 December 2013 ORLANDO (Reuters) – More than 1,000 migratory bottlenose dolphins have died from a measles-like virus along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard in 2013 and the epidemic shows no sign of abating, a marine biologist said on Monday. The death toll exceeds the 740 dolphins killed during the last big outbreak of […]
By Victoria Cavaliere and Edith Honan in New York, Tim Ghianni in Nashville, and Kevin Murphy in Kansas City, Missouri; editing by G Crosse23 December 2013 (Reuters) – A band of severe weather from tornadoes to icy blasts left at least seven people dead as winter storms and severe weather pushed up the East Coast […]
By Nicholas Watt, chief political correspondent 17 December 2013 (The Guardian) – The government has been accused of putting “anti-European ideology” before the needs of the most deprived people in society after Britain rejected help from a European Union fund to help subsidise the costs of food banks. David Cameron, who was heavily criticised […]
16 December 2013 (NASA) – While the continental U.S. shivered through an abnormally cold spell in December 2013, Alaska experienced record-breaking heat. Both extremes were caused by an unusual kink in the northern hemisphere’s polar jet stream, which caused frigid Arctic air to move south and warm air to head north. The jet stream is […]
By Nikolas Kozloff23 November 2013 (Huffington Post) – Despite mounting evidence that global warming is leading to devastating environmental disasters in the Pacific region, the U.S. and its partners are suspicious of climate change advocates. Rather brazenly, Washington and its Pacific allies spy on those who are intent on reining in global warming. Indeed, […]
By JOHN FLESHER, AP Environmental Writer19 December 2013 TRAVERSE CITY, Michigan (AP) – For visitors to Isle Royale National Park, nothing beats the spine-tingling thrill of a wolf’s howl piercing an otherwise silent night — or a glimpse of the wily beast slipping across a forest path. But such experiences are becoming increasingly rare, and […]
By Anna Fahey 16 December 2013 (sightline.org) – Reports released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) can be daunting, even for science and policy insiders. The full Physical Science Assessment, the first installment of the Fifth Assessment Report [PDF], released in manuscript form earlier this year, is over 2,000 pages long. And even […]
By John Vidal18 December 2013 (theguardian.com) – 2013 was the seventh warmest year on record and saw one of the strongest cyclones, some of the longest heatwaves and the most topsy-turvy weather experienced in decades. Nowhere is thought to have witnessed faster change than Nikkaluokta, a small Lapland village above the Arctic circle in northern […]
