Desdemona Despair – Page 92 – Blogging the End of the World™

Risk levels for climate-sensitive health outcomes based on different greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation scenarios. Graphic: IPCC WG 2 Sixth Assessment Report / AFP

June 23, 2021

Hunger, drought, disease: UN climate report reveals dire health threats – “The basis for our health is sustained by three pillars: the food we eat, access to water, and shelter. These pillars are totally vulnerable and about to collapse.”

By Patrick Galey 23 June 2021 (AFP) – Hunger, drought and disease will afflict tens of millions more people within decades, according to a draft UN assessment that lays bare the dire human health consequences of a warming planet. After a pandemic year that saw the world turned on its head, a forthcoming report by […]

Satellite view of Lake Mead in 2000 and 2020. The United States' largest reservoir is draining rapidly. Plagued by extreme, climate change-fueled drought and increasing demand for water, Lake Mead on 16 June 2021 registered its lowest level on record since the reservoir was filled in the 1930s. Photo: LANDSAT / Copernicus / Google Earth

June 21, 2021

The American West is drying out – Lake Mead, largest reservoir in U.S., drops to lowest level on record since it was filled in the 1930s

By Zachary B. Wolf 20 June 2021 (CNN) – The incredible pictures of a depleted Lake Mead, on the Nevada-Arizona border, illustrate the effects of drought brought on by climate change. Later this year, the US government will almost certainly declare the first-ever water shortage along the Colorado River. Maps show more than a quarter of the US […]

Potential heat stress risk in 2060-2099 due to combined climate and population projections. Periods of extremely high heat are projected to double across the lower 48 states by 2100 if the world continues to emit high levels of greenhouse gases. The heat stress will be felt most strongly in areas with growing populations. The Pacific Northwest, central California, and the Great Lakes region could experience as much as a threefold increase compared to the past 40 years. Graphic: Mukherjee, et al., 2021 / Earth’s Future

June 21, 2021

Heat stress in U.S. may double by century’s end

7 June 2021 (NSF) – Periods of extremely high heat are projected to double across the lower 48 states by 2100 if the world continues to emit high levels of greenhouse gases, according to a new study in Earth’s Future, an American Geophysical Union journal. The heat stress will be felt most strongly in areas with growing populations. […]

A home destroyed in the 2020 North Complex Fire sits above Lake Oroville on 23 May 2021, in Oroville, California. At the time of this photo, drought had reduced the reservoir to 39 percent of capacity and 46 percent of its historical average. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

June 20, 2021

Drought saps California reservoirs as hot, dry summer looms – “It makes me feel like our planet is literally drying up,”

By Adam Beam 17 June 2021 OROVILLE, Califorina (AP) – Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation’s crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires. But the mighty lake — a […]

Covid data from U.S. states plotted from 8 regions, as defined by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis. Surge patterns were independently examined for each of the 8 regions; epidemic patterns were similar and could be merged as shown, except a bimodal pattern in the Great Lakes region was distinctive and plotted separately. Negative excess deaths were plotted as zero. Between 1 March 2020, and 2 January 2021, the US experienced 2,801,439 deaths, 22.9% more than expected, representing 522,368 excess deaths. The excess death rate was higher among non-Hispanic Black (208.4 deaths per 100 000) than non-Hispanic White or Hispanic populations (157.0 and 139.8 deaths per 100 000, respectively); these groups accounted for 16.9%, 61.1%, and 16.7% of excess deaths, respectively. The US experienced 4 surge patterns: in New England and the Northeast, excess deaths surged in the spring; in the Southeast and Southwest, in the summer and early winter; in the Plains, Rocky Mountains, and far West, primarily in early winter; and in the Great Lakes, bimodally, in the spring and early winter. Graphic: Woolf, et al., 2021 / JAMA

June 20, 2021

U.S. excess deaths rose a staggering 23 percent in 2020 – “They said they were opening early to rescue the economy. The tragedy is that not only cost more lives but actually hurt their economy by extending the length of the pandemic.”

By Mary Kate Brogan 2 April 2021 (VCU News) – Extended surges in the South and West in the summer and early winter of 2020 resulted in regional increases in excess death rates, both from COVID-19 and from other causes, a 50-state analysis of excess death trends has found. Virginia Commonwealth University researchers’ latest study […]

Graph showing Earth Overshoot Day, 1970-2021. Each year, Earth Overshoot Day marks the date when humanity has used all the biological resources that Earth regenerates during the entire year. Humanity currently uses 74% more than what the planet’s ecosystems can regenerate—or “1.7 Earths.” From Earth Overshoot Day until the end of the year, humanity operates on ecological deficit spending. This spending is currently some of the largest since the world entered into ecological overshoot in the early 1970s, according to the National Footprint & Biocapacity Accounts (NFA) based on UN datasets. Graphic: Global Footprint Network

June 20, 2021

Earth Overshoot Day creeps back to July 29 in 2021 – “With almost half a year remaining, we will already have used up our quota of the Earth’s biological resources for 2021 by July 29th”

GLASGOW, UK, 4 June 2021 (Global Footprint Network) – Earth Overshoot Day 2021 lands on July 29, Councillor Susan Aitken, the Leader of Glasgow City Council, announced today on behalf of Global Footprint Network and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). “With almost half a year remaining, we will already have used up our quota […]

Atmospheric CO2 at Mauna Loa Observatory, 1958-2021. This graph depicts the upward trajectory of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as measured at the Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory by NOAA and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The annual fluctuation is known as the Keeling Curve. Graphic: NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory

June 20, 2021

Coronavirus barely slows rising carbon dioxide – Atmospheric CO2 peaks near 420 parts per million in 2021

7 June 2021 (NOAA) – Atmospheric carbon dioxide measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory peaked for 2021 in May at a monthly average of 419 parts per million (ppm), the highest level since accurate measurements began 63 years ago, scientists from NOAA and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego announced today. […]

FAO Food Price Index, May 2020-May 2021. The FAO Food Price Index (FFPI) averaged 127.1 points in May 2021, 5.8 points (4.8 percent) higher than in April and as much as 36.1 points (39.7 percent) above the same period last year. The May increase represented the biggest month-on-month gain since October 2010. It also marked the twelfth consecutive monthly rise in the value of the FFPI to its highest value since September 2011, bringing the Index only 7.6 percent below its peak value of 137.6 points registered in February 2011. The sharp increase in May reflected a surge in prices for oils, sugar and cereals along with firmer meat and dairy prices. Graphic: UN FAO

June 5, 2021

Global food prices rise at rapid pace in May 2021 – Food Price Index hits highest value since September 2011, only 7.6 percent below its all-time peak

ROME, 4 June 2021 (FAO) – Global food prices rose in May at their fastest monthly rate in more than a decade, even as world cereal production is on course to reach a new record high, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reported today. The FAO Food Price Index averaged 127.1 points in […]

Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), 1750-2020. For 2020, the AGGI was a record high 1.47, representing an increase in total direct radiative forcing of 47 percent since 1990. This increase in CO2 is accelerating — while it averaged about 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s and 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s, the growth rate increased to 2.4 ppm per year during the last decade (2009-2020). Pre-1978 changes in the CO2-equivalent abundance and AGGI based on the ongoing measurements of all greenhouse gases reported here, measurements of CO2 going back to the 1950s from C.D. Keeling [Keeling et al., 1958], and atmospheric changes derived from air trapped in ice and snow above glaciers [Machida et al., 1995, Battle et al., 1996, Etheridge, et al., 1996; Butler, et al., 1999]. Equivalent CO2 atmospheric amounts (in ppm) are derived with the relationship between CO2 concentrations and radiative forcing from all long-lived greenhouse gases. Graphic: Butler and Montzka, 2021 / NOAA

May 26, 2021

Another record high for NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index in 2020 – CO2 increase continues accelerating – No slowdown from Covid pandemic seen

26 May 2021 (NOAA) – […] The atmospheric abundance of CO2 has increased by an average of 1.85 ppm per year over the past 41 years (1979-2020). This increase in CO2 is accelerating — while it averaged about 1.6 ppm per year in the 1980s and 1.5 ppm per year in the 1990s, the growth rate increased to […]

Satellite view of Cyclone Tauktae several hours before making landfall in India on 17 May 2021. The image was captured by NASA / NOAA / Suomi NPP satellite. Photo: Suomi NPP-VIIRS / NASA / NOAA

May 18, 2021

India lashed by strongest cyclone ever to hit west coast as it reels from Covid disaster – “This cyclone is a terrible double blow for millions of people in India whose families have been struck down by record Covid infections and deaths”

By Jessie Yeung and Esha Mitra 18 May 2021 NEW DELHI (CNN) – India was slammed on Monday by the strongest storm on record to reach its west coast, hampering authorities’ response to the Covid-19 crisis in some of the country’s hardest-hit regions. Tropical Cyclone Tauktae, a storm with wind speeds equivalent to a high-end Category 3 hurricane that […]