Blogging the End of the World™
[cf. MIT researchers predict ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 – ‘We are not on a sustainable trajectory’ and The Limits to Growth at forty: Is collapse now inevitable?] By Nafeez Ahmed19 April 2016 (Insurge Intelligence) – A report commissioned on behalf of a cross-party group of British MPs authored by a former UK government advisor, […]
[cf. Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the U.S. Southwest and Drought-induced tree mortality accelerating in forests] By Diana Madson18 April 2016 (Yale Climate Connections) – New research predicts that nearly all coniferous forests in the American Southwest could be lost to climate change by the end of the century. […]
By Matthew D. Palmer, Susan Wijffels, and John A. Church21 March 2016 (WMO) – In a stable climate, the amount of energy that the Earth system absorbs from the Sun is balanced by the amount of energy emitted back to space by the Earth as thermal infrared radiation. However, increases in greenhouse gas concentrations have […]
[cf. World discovers a $1 trillion ocean as Arctic sea ice vanishes – ‘These changes are like nothing we have seen. We don’t have anything to compare with in history.’] BEIJING, 20 April 2016 (Reuters) – China will encourage ships flying its flag to take the Northwest Passage via the Arctic Ocean, a route opened […]
By Bob Henson18 April 2016 (wunderground.com) – Fierce Tropical Cyclone Fantala stormed to Category 5 strength north of Madagascar over the weekend with an impressive burst of strengthening, making the cyclone the most powerful on record anywhere in the Indian Ocean. Fantala’s estimated peak sustained winds of 150 knots (173 mph), averaged over 1 minute […]
14 Apr 2016 (ReliefWeb) – [Download PDF] Highlights As Mongolia transitions to spring, 20 per cent of the country still has snow cover with 23 districts (soums) in six provinces (aimags) experiencing white dzud or nearly white dzud conditions. Conditions remain unseasonably cold and there are concerns of an iron dzud emerging in some parts. […]
18 April 2016 (UN) – The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced today it will launch an emergency operation in Haiti to assist one million people devastated by three years of prolonged drought exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon. An estimated 3.6 million people – or one-third of Haiti’s population – face food […]
By Mujib Mashal17 April 2016 KABUL, Afghanistan (The New York Times) – With nearly 2,000 civilians killed or wounded and more than 80,000 people displaced this year already, the Afghan conflict continues to affect lives in record numbers, the United Nations said on Sunday. The report came as fighting raged across several provinces. For a […]
By Lynn Jenner11 April 2016 As of 11 April 2016, as many as 1.3 million hectares (over 3.7 million acres) of forest cover in Nepal has been destroyed by wild fires the last two weeks. Two persons have been killed and there have been huge losses to property across the country. Historically April and May […]
By Sarah Loff15 April 2016 (NASA) – This image of early ice breakup of the Beaufort Sea, north of Alaska, was taken by the Suomi NPP satellite’s Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument infrared channel, at around 1148 UTC on 13 April 2016. Every year, the cap of frozen seawater floating on top of […]
