SHIMONOSEKI, YAMAGUCHI PREF., 7 December 2013 (KYODO) – Three ships have left Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture, to join the mother vessel Nisshin Maru and hunt up to 935 Antarctic minke whales and 50 fin whales through March. The Fisheries Agency had kept secret the departure date of the whaling fleet as a precaution against obstruction by […]
27 September 2013 (IPCC) – Global mean surface temperature increase as a function of cumulative total global CO2 emissions from various lines of evidence. Multi-model results from a hierarchy of climate-carbon cycle models for each RCP until 2100 are shown with coloured lines and decadal means (dots). Some decadal means are indicated for clarity (e.g., […]
By Stefan Rahmstorf27 September 2013 (RealClimate) – The time has come: the new IPCC report is here! After several years of work by over 800 scientists from around the world, and after days of extensive discussion at the IPCC plenary meeting in Stockholm, the Summary for Policymakers was formally adopted at 5 o’clock this […]
By Christopher C. Burt3 September 2013 (wunderground.com) – This past August was the warmest such on record at the South Pole’s Amundsen-Scott Station. The temperature averaged -53.3°C (-63.9°F) breaking the previous record of -53.5°C (-64.3°F) set in August 1996. The departure from normal was +6.3°C (+11.3°F). The ‘warmest’ temperature was -38.3°C (-37.0°F) on August 6th […]
By Tim Folger1 September 2013 (National Geographic) – By the time Hurricane Sandy veered toward the Northeast coast of the United States last October 29, it had mauled several countries in the Caribbean and left dozens dead. Faced with the largest storm ever spawned over the Atlantic, New York and other cities ordered mandatory evacuations […]
By Laura Poppick5 August 2013 (LiveScience) – Seaweed could smother polar underwater ecosystems as melting sea ice exposes the seafloor to more sunlight, new research shows. Animals that dwell on the seafloor of the Arctic and Antarctic spend most of their lives in total darkness: Sea ice blocks rays during the spring and early summer, […]
By Denise Chow10 July 2013 (LiveScience) – A massive iceberg, larger than the city of Chicago, broke off Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier on Monday and is now floating freely in the Amundsen Sea, according to a team of German scientists. The newborn iceberg measures about 278 square miles (720 square kilometers), and was seen by […]
By Andrew Darby, Hobart correspondent for Fairfax Media25 June 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – When Australia first went to court against Japan over whaling, it was against clear warnings from anti-whaling allies. The US commissioner at the International Whaling Commission, Monica Medina, called it a ”bet the whales” case – an uncertain gamble on whales’ […]
By Michon Scott 12 May 2013 (NASA) – Dust plumes blew out of southern Argentina and over the Atlantic Ocean in early May 2013. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this natural-color image on May 12. The dust blew out of the Patagonian Desert, and many of the plumes arose […]
By Darrell Kaufman21 April 2013 (RealClimate) – In a major step forward in proxy data synthesis, the PAst Global Changes (PAGES) 2k Consortium has just published a suite of continental scale reconstructions of temperature for the past two millennia in Nature Geoscience. More information about the study and its implications are available at the FAQ […]