Blogging the End of the World™
By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY6 July 2012 Health officials are better prepared for heat waves than they used to be, but they have more to do in the face of climate change, experts say. “Nationally and internationally we are much more aware of the danger of extreme heat than we were in 1995,” says sociologist […]
MOSCOW (AP) – Intense flooding in the Black Sea region of southern Russia killed 103 people after torrential rains dropped nearly a foot of water, forcing many to scramble out of their beds for refuge in trees and on roofs, officials said Saturday. Many people were asleep when the flooding hit overnight in the Krasnodar […]
By Bryan Walsh5 July 2012 Triple-digit days. Weeks with little to no rain. Soil crumbling away. Stunted corn stalks. Right now the fertile fields of the U.S. Midwest are experiencing corn-killing weather, with parts of five corn-growing states in the region experiencing severe or extreme drought. In at least nine states, one-fifth to one-half of […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters7 July 2012 The extraordinary heat wave of late June/early July 2012 toppled more Dust Bowl-era records on Friday, with three cities in Michigan hitting their hottest temperatures ever recorded. Lansing hit 103°, the hottest day in Michigan’s capital city since record keeping began in 1863. Lansing has hit 102° four times, […]
By Miguel Llanos, msnbc.com5 July 2012 Coral reefs along Panama’s Pacific coast completely collapsed for 2,500 years due to natural climate cycles, researchers reported in a study Thursday, adding that there’s a lesson in the data for man-made climate change: ease up on greenhouse gasses and reefs will restore themselves. “We can prevent coral reefs […]
By Risa Maeda and Linda Sieg; Editing by Robert Birsel5 July 2012 TOKYO (Reuters) – Japan’s Fukushima nuclear crisis was a preventable disaster resulting from “collusion” among the government, regulators and the plant operator, an expert panel said on Thursday, wrapping up an inquiry into the worst nuclear accident in 25 years. Damage from the […]
3 July 2012 (Spiegel) – The high-altitude landscape of the Bavarian Alps is prized by mountain sports lovers around the world, but it could change significantly in the coming years. Temperatures in the region are rising at an above-average rate, which will likely melt most of the glaciers there within the next 20 to 30 […]
By Vanessa Ko, Harmeet Singh and Sara Sidner, CNN4 July 2012 (CNN) – Flooding described by India’s prime minister as the worst in recent times, has left at least 95 people dead and almost 2 million others homeless in the country’s remote Assam state. The Brahmaputra river overflowed during monsoon rains over the past week, […]
By Kate Galbraith3 July 2012 The historic Texas drought caused the Ogallala Aquifer to experience its largest decline in 25 years across a large swath of the Texas Panhandle, new numbers from a water district show. The 16-county High Plains Underground Water Conservation District reported this week that its monitoring wells showed an average decline […]
Washington, D.C. area before derecho, 28 June 2012 Washington, D.C. area after derecho, 30 June 2012 Caption by Aries Keck4 July 2012 These before and after images from NASA’s Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership satellite show the power outages in the clear skies over Washington, DC and Baltimore that occurred as a result of a […]
