NASA: The last three Octobers are the warmest Octobers on record

15 November 2016 (NASA) –  October 2016 was the second warmest October in 136 years of modern record-keeping, according to a monthly analysis of global temperatures by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York. October 2016’s temperature was 0.18 degrees Celsius cooler than the warmest October in 2015. Last month […]

Amid rapid change, major Arctic study highlights need to prepare for surprises

By Marion Davis25 November 2016 (SEI) – The Arctic Resilience Report [pdf], published today, is the first comprehensive assessment of ecosystems and societies in the region. It identifies 19 “tipping points” in natural systems that could radically reshape the Arctic in the coming century, and calls for urgent cooperation to build local communities’ resilience and […]

Trump advisor: NASA to lose climate research – ‘A loss of our observational capabilities would be like closing our eyes’

BY Lee Billings23 November 2016 (Scientific American) – Emerging victorious from a campaign in which he called climate change a hoax, promised to reinvigorate coal mining and vowed to overturn major international agreements and domestic regulations on greenhouse gas emissions, President-elect Donald Trump’s next target in his political denial of human-driven global warming might be […]

Huge puffin die-off linked to record-high Bering Sea temperatures – ‘We’re in uncharted territory’

By Craig Welch8 November 2016 (National Geographic) – The tufted puffins started washing ashore on St. Paul Island in mid-October—first a handful, then dozens, then so many that volunteers patrolling to collect dead birds began walking their four-wheelers rather than riding. It was easier than getting off every few feet. The hundreds of dead, emaciated […]

The North Pole is an insane 36 degrees warmer than normal as winter descends

By Chris Mooney and Jason Samenow 17 November 2016 (Washington Post) – Political people in the United States are watching the chaos in Washington in the moment. But some people in the science community are watching the chaos somewhere else — the Arctic. It’s polar night there now — the sun isn’t rising in much […]

80,000 reindeer have starved to death as Arctic sea ice retreats

By Andy Coghlan16 November 2016 (New Scientist) – It’s not just polar bears that are suffering as Arctic sea ice retreats. Tens of thousands of reindeer in Arctic Russia starved to death in 2006 and 2013 because of unusual weather linked to global warming. The same conditions in the first half of November led to […]

Meteorologists: Arctic warming demands action – ‘The Arctic is undergoing an unprecedented rate of change with consequences far beyond its boundaries’

28 September 2016 (WMO) – Dramatic and unprecedented warming in the Arctic is driving sea level rise, affecting weather patterns around the world, and may trigger even more changes in the climate system. The rate of change is challenging the current scientific capacity to monitor and predict what is becoming a journey into uncharted territory. […]

Climate scientist to Norway prime minister: ‘Your government’s actions are utterly at odds with the scientific consensus that underpins the Paris Agreement’

The Earth Institute, 475 Riverside Drive, 520, New York, New York 10115www.earth.columbia.edu18 October 2016 Dear Prime Minister Solberg, A year ago I wrote an open letter urging you to carry out an act of transformational climate leadership. I held the faint hope that your government might yet waken to the realities of climate change, heed […]

Uncharted waters: Mega-cruise ships sail the Arctic

[cf. As the world burns, the rich cruise in luxury through a melting Arctic] By Gwladys Fouche; Editing by Toby Chopra 10 October 2016 SVALBARD, Norway (Reuters) – A surge in Arctic tourism is bringing ever bigger cruise ships to the formerly isolated, ice-bound region, prompting calls for a clamp-down to prevent Titanic-style accidents and […]

Arctic methane gas emission significantly increased since 2014 – ‘The rate of degradation of underwater permafrost has increased’

  4 October 2016 (Siberian Times) – A new expedition in the Laptev Sea suggests an increase in the rate of underwater permafrost degradation. The findings come from an expedition now underway led by Professor Igor Semiletov, of Tomsk Polytechnic University, on the research vessel Academic M.A. Lavrentyev which left Tiksi on 24 September 2016 […]

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