Decadal mean changes of maximum near-surface air temperature (ΔTx) and wet-bulb temperature (ΔTW) for 30-year future periods in the Middle East and North Africa. The figure is generated using the results of the ensemble mean of 17 RCMs. Graphic: Ahmadalipour Moradkhani, 2018 / Environment International

Deadly heat waves in Middle East and North Africa to increase by 8–20 times if global warming isn’t slowed

By Ali Ahmadalipour and Hamid Moradkhani 12 May 2018 (Environment International) – Climate change will substantially exacerbate extreme temperature and heatwaves. The impacts will be more intense across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), a region mostly characterized by hot and arid climate, already intolerable for human beings in many parts. In this study, daily […]

June 2018: Earth’s 5th warmest June on record

Dr. Jeff Masters 16 July 2018 (Weather Underground) – June 2018 was the planet’s fifth-warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Monday. NASA rated June 2018 as tied for third-warmest June on record. NOAA found that the only warmer June months were 2016, 2015, 2017 […]

New study quantifies the link between smoggy air and diabetes: air pollution triggers diabetes in 3.2 million people each year

By Laurel Hamers 9 July 2018 (Science News) – Air pollution caused 3.2 million new cases of diabetes worldwide in 2016, according to a new estimate. Fine particulate matter, belched out by cars and factories and generated through chemical reactions in the atmosphere, hang around as haze and make air hard to breathe. Air pollution […]

Cape Town’s harrowing journey to the brink of water catastrophe

By Brett Walton 12 July 2018 CAPE TOWN, South Africa (Circle of Blue) – This is what a water panic looks like in a major global city.People hoard water. They queue for hours, well into the night, to fill jugs at natural springs. Like mad Christmas shoppers, they clear supermarkets of bottled water. They descend […]

Tens of thousands go hungry after Kenya floods – “They have nothing to go back to. Their homes and crops have been destroyed and they have not been given any help to rebuild their lives.”

By Nita Bhalla; editing by Claire Cozens 4 July 2018 NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) — After a severe drought last year, East Africa was hit by two months of heavy rains, disrupting the lives of millions of people in Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Uganda. Tens of thousands of survivors of Kenya’s worst floods in recent […]

2017 was the second-worst year on record for global deforestation – “We are trying to put out a house fire with a teaspoon”

By Damian Carrington, Niko Kommenda, Pablo Gutiérrez, and Cath Levett 27 June 2018 (The Guardian) – The world lost more than one football pitch of forest every second in 2017, according to new data from a global satellite survey, adding up to an area equivalent to the whole of Italy over the year.The scale of […]

The human cost of climate change – “If no action is taken, there may be more than 140 million climate migrants by 2050”

By Felipe Calderón 29 June 2018 (Newsweek) – Home is a place of stability and security. It is a place where families come together to work towards and celebrate mutual prosperity. But as the human and economic toll of climate change continues to rise, we face legitimate risk of this sense of home being uprooted. […]

Red-hot planet: All-time heat records have been set all over the world during the past week

By Jason Samenow 5 July 2018 (The Washington Post) – From the normally mild summer climes of Ireland, Scotland and Canada to the scorching Middle East, numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week.Large areas of heat pressure or heat domes scattered around the hemisphere led […]

Three rhino poachers eaten by lions in South Africa – “The lions are our watchers and guardians and the poachers picked the wrong pride and became a meal”

By Christina Zhao 5 July 2018(Newsweek) – A pride of lions ate a group of poachers after they broke into a game reserve earlier this week in South Africa to hunt rhinoceroses.Three men were believed to have been eaten alive by the predators sometime between Sunday night and Monday morning after they entered the Sibuya […]

Resettlement needs set to rise to 1.4 million people in 2019, UN refugee agency reports – Europe will need to shelter almost 40 percent more people

25 June 2018 (UN News) – Close to 1.4 million people will need resettlement in countries free from war and persecution in 2019, the UN refugee agency, said on Monday, citing growing forced displacement across the globe.Resettlement – the transfer of refugees from the country where they have claimed asylum to a safe “third country” […]

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