By Naaman Zhou 28 February 2019 (The Guardian) – Australia has endured its hottest summer ever, according to the Bureau of Meteorology, breaking the previous record set six years ago. The 2018-19 summer, which produced near 50C days and topped temperature highs across the country, has officially exceeded the previous record set in 2012-13, which […]
By Johnny Simon16 February 2019 (Quartz) – Australia is in the midst of a punishing drought that is kicking up massive dust storms and severely impacting the merino wool, wine and cattle industries. The state of Queensland was recently inundated with flood waters after the parched region received almost two weeks of rain. The flooding […]
23 January 2019 (UEA) – Research involving a University of East Anglia (UEA) academic has established a link between climate change, conflict, and migration for the first time. In recent decades climatic conditions have been blamed for creating political unrest, civil war, and subsequently, waves of migration, but scientific evidence for this is limited. One […]
By Ange Lavoipierre and Stephen Smiley 5 February 2019 (The Signal) – At the moment, Townsville is more or less underwater and large parts of Tasmania are on fire.Summer in Australia has always been extreme, but some corners of the country are experiencing climate-driven disasters that are worse than ever — and more of them […]
By Rod McGuirk 31 January 2019 CANBERRA, Australia (AP) – Australia sweltered through its hottest month on record in January and the summer of extremes continued with wildfires razing the drought-parched south and flooding in expanses of the tropical north. Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology confirmed the January record on Friday as parts of the northern […]
By Jonathan Amos 31 January 2019 (BBC News) – Colonisation of the Americas at the end of the 15th Century killed so many people, it disturbed Earth’s climate. That’s the conclusion of scientists from University College London, UK. The team says the disruption that followed European settlement led to a huge swathe of abandoned agricultural […]
By Faith Eherts and Adam Douty 2 February 2019 (AccuWeather) – Record-setting rainfall in recent days has led to widespread flooding, land slips, road closures and evacuations across Queensland. Flood dangers and travel disruptions will continue with little change expected in the coming week. In northern Queensland this past week, Cairns recorded a daily rainfall […]
By Jim Salinger and James Renwick 29 January 2019 (The Conversation) – As the Australian heatwave is spilling across the Tasman and pushing up temperatures in New Zealand, we take a look at the conditions that caused a similar event last year and the impacts it had. Last summer‘s heatwave gave New Zealand its warmest […]
By Rodrigo de Oliveira Andrade24 January 2019 SÃO PAULO (SciDev.Net) – Brazil’s new government, led by President Jair Bolsonaro, has quickly taken steps to loosen environmental law enforcement. Now a review paper shows that the deforestation that could result may have terrible consequences for the Amazon rainforest, including dramatic biodiversity loss, intensified dry seasons, droughts, […]
AUSTIN, Texas, 17 January 2019 (Earthjustice) – Toxic coal ash pollutants are leaking into groundwater surrounding 100 percent of Texas’s power plants for which data are available, with unsafe levels of arsenic, cobalt, lithium, and other pollutants seeping from the ash dumps, according to an analysis by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP). Industry groundwater monitoring […]