By Jason Samenow19 September 2013 (Washington Post) – In the last 24 hours, a cyclone in the west Pacific has explosively intensified, and is on a track towards Hong Kong. The storm – named Usagi – has achieved super typhoon status, after an amazing burst in its peak winds from 75 mph Tuesday to over […]
Patrick J. Kiger19 September 2013 (National Geographic) – In the wake of unprecedented massive flooding over thousands of square miles in Colorado, government officials and private companies are rushing to secure the region’s heavy concentration of oil and natural gas wells, and prevent dangerous chemicals and toxic waste from contaminating the region’s water. (See related […]
By Craig Welch12 September 2013 HILO, Hawaii (Seattle Times) – It appears at the end of a palm tree-lined drive, not far from piles of hardened black lava: the newest addition to the Northwest’s famed oyster industry. Half an ocean from Seattle, on a green patch of island below a tropical volcano, a Washington state […]
By MICHAEL WEISSENSTEIN18 September 2013 ACAPULCO, Mexico (AP) – The toll from devastating twin storms climbed to 80 on Wednesday as isolated areas reported deaths and damage to the outside world, and Mexican officials said that a massive landslide in the mountains north of the resort of Acapulco could drive the number of confirmed dead […]
14 September 2013 (Yomiuri Shimbun) – About 150,000 tons of radioactive waste, including contaminated soil left over from decontamination efforts, have been left out in the open in areas affected by the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, The Yomiuri Shimbun has discovered. This figure accounts for about 30 percent of all […]
By Alyssa A. Botelho17 September 2013 (New Scientist) – A truly ferocious and exceptional event. That is how Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, describes the storm that pummelled his state last week. “This was a once-in-1000-year rainfall,” he says, meaning that the storm was of such an intensity […]
8 August 2013 (CalEPA) – Carbon dioxide (CO2) is considered to be the largest and most important anthropogenic driver of climate change (see Atmospheric Greenhouse Gases indicator, page 19). CO2 is continuously exchanged between land, the atmosphere, and the ocean through physical, chemical, and biological processes (IPCC, 2007c). The ocean absorbs nearly one quarter of […]
By Bill Kovarik16 September 2013 WILLIAMSBURG, Virginia (The Daily Climate) – Weary of debating the causes of climate change, mayors and other elected officials from Virginia’s battered coastal regions gathered here last week and agreed that local impacts have become serious enough to present a case for state action. “We are here to ask for […]
By SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN 13 September 2013 ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) – The New Mexico National Guard and other rescue crews evacuated dozens of campers and residents who were stranded by floodwaters along the Pecos River as New Mexico was drenched Thursday by another round of record rainfall. While the welcomed moisture is helping the state […]
By Rhitu Chatterjee16 September 2013 (NPR) – How often do whales clean their ears? Well, never. And so, year after year, their ear wax builds up, layer upon layer. According to a study published Monday, these columns of ear wax contain a record of chemical pollution in the oceans. The study, published in Proceedings of […]
