Desdemona Despair – Page 119 – Blogging the End of the World™

Precipitation averages in the contiguous U.S. for overlapping two-year calendar periods, 1895-2019. The period 2018-19 was the wettest of these, with 69.43” coming in well above the previous record of 68.62” from 1982-83. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

January 14, 2020

Second wettest year in U.S. history – Warmest year on record in Alaska

By Bob Henson 8 January 2020 (Weather Underground) – Capping a spectacularly soggy period that spanned parts of two calendar years, the contiguous United States saw its second wettest year on record in 2019, according to NOAA’s annual summary issued on Wednesday. The national average temperature wasn’t especially hot by recent standards, but there were […]

A boy cradles the body of dead endangered Brush-tailed rock-wallaby, found near a muddy puddle of water after a bushfire in Gosford, New South Wales, Australia, on 6 January 2020. The boy asked his father, Tim Faulkner, “They’re all dying aren’t they Dad?” Faulkner told him it was his job to save the world. Photo: Tim Faulkner / Facebook

January 13, 2020

Estimated number of animals killed in Australia bushfires rises to more than one billion – “Events like this may well hasten the extinction process for a range of species”

8 January 2020 (University of Sydney) – Professor Chris Dickman has revised his estimate of the number of animals killed in bushfires in NSW to more than 800 million animals, with a national impact of more than one billion animals. Several weeks ago Professor Dickman, from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Science, estimated that 480 […]

As many fires are still burning in Australia, a regular GLOBE Observer (Glenn Evans in Coogee, New South Wales, about 10 km/6 miles southeast of Sydney), has been taking consistent clouds observations from the same location over the last few weeks, sometimes multiple observations on the same day. In this short video, you can see a compilation of their ground observations in December 2019, facing west and south alongside satellite imagery from the same day taken by the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Notice the sky coloration when heavy smoke plumes are visible in the satellite image, as well as the days when there is both haze and other types of clouds in the sky. Video: NASA GLOBE Observer

January 13, 2020

A megafire measuring 1.5 million acres forms in Australia as bushfires merge – “It is too late to leave”

By Andrew Freedman 10 January 2020 (The Washington Post) – Australia’s bushfire crisis worsened Thursday night into Friday as hot, dry and windy conditions redeveloped across the country’s hard-hit southeast, causing two large blazes to merge into one. The new “megafire” measures about 1.5 million acres, about the size of the state of Delaware or […]

Beth Ford, CEO of Land O’Lakes, spoke on Thursday, 9 January 2020, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ 2020 Regional Economic Conditions Conference. Photo: Land O’Lakes

January 12, 2020

“We will lose rural America” warns Land O’Lakes CEO at annual Fed summit – “The towns are rolling up on us. That is the truth.”

By Joy Wiltermuth 11 January 2020 (MarketWatch) – Rural America needs help. That was the key message from Beth Ford, president and CEO of Land O’Lakes, Inc., while speaking Thursday at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis’ annual economic outlook conference for the Ninth District. “Farmers want trade. They want a robust marketplace and they […]

Camels in Australia. Photo: Imago Images / blickwinkel

January 12, 2020

Snipers to cull up to 10,000 camels in drought-stricken South Australia

8 January 2020 (AFP) – Snipers took to helicopters in Australia on Wednesday to begin a mass cull of up to 10,000 camels as drought drives big herds of the feral animals to search for water closer to remote towns, endangering indigenous communities. Local officials in South Australia state said “extremely large” herds have been […]

Net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2005-2019. Graphic: Rhodium Group

January 12, 2020

Preliminary U.S. carbon emissions estimates for 2019 – Coming up short on climate targets

By Trevor Houser and Hannah Pitt 7 January 2020 (Rhodium Group) – After a sharp uptick in 2018, we estimate that US greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions fell by 2.1% last year based on preliminary energy and economic data. This decline was due almost entirely to a drop in coal consumption. Coal-fired power generation fell by […]

Worldwide natural catastrophe loss events in 2019. Tropical cyclones, extreme storms, and floods caused overall losses of $150 billion. Video: Munich RE

January 11, 2020

Tropical cyclones causing billions in losses dominated the natural catastrophe picture of 2019 – “Cyclones are becoming more frequently associated with extreme precipitation”

8 January 2020 (Munich RE) – 820 natural catastrophes caused overall losses of US$ 150bn, which is broadly in line with the inflation-adjusted average of the past 30 years. A smaller portion of losses was insured compared with 2018: about US$ 52bn. This was due, among other things, to the high share of flood losses, which are […]

Danielle and Jacob Stenger are raising their two children — Colten and Delaney — on a farm near Milford Lake outside Junction City, Kansas. Danielle is a proud ambassador for farming in the state and applauds the Kansas Department of Agriculture’s efforts to help farmers in mental health distress. Photo: Danielle Stenger

January 11, 2020

Kansas state steps in as farmers die by suicide – “The increase in suicide rates among farmers and ranchers is alarming”

By Lisa Gutierrez 28 December 2019 KANSAS CITY, Missouri (The Kansas City Star) – He fought it as long as he could. Mick Rausch didn’t know what was wrong until he finally hit a wall he could no longer climb on his own. It was 10 years ago. His brother — younger by just a […]

The “Devil face” seen in smoke from the east Gippsland bushfire in New South Wales, Australia, 3 January 2020. Photo: Channel 7 News Melbourne

January 9, 2020

We are seeing the very worst of our scientific predictions come to pass in these bushfires – “The thing that really terrifies me is that weather conditions considered extreme by today’s standards will seem sedate in the future”

By Joëlle Gergis 2 January 2020 (The Guardian) – I had goosebumps watching surreal footage of the mass evacuation of people stranded on the south-east Australian coast. Once again, catastrophic bushfire conditions are bearing down on communities during increasingly horrific summers in Australia. It has been an unprecedented continuation of the horrendous bushfires that started […]

Animation showing pathways for reducing carbon emissions to prevent breaching the Paris climate agreement’s 1.5C target by year, 2000-2019. Graphic: Carbon Brief

January 7, 2020

The sad truth about our boldest climate target – Limiting global warming to 1.5˚C is almost certainly not going to happen. Admitting this need not end hope.

By David Roberts 3 January 2020 (Vox) – In the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the countries participating in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreed to a common target: to hold the rise in global average temperature “well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even […]