Extreme weather causing record lows in UK butterfly populations

31 October 2016 (New Scientist) – British butterflies could be under threat from increasingly frequent episodes of extreme weather. In fact, heat waves, cold snaps, and heavy rain may have already contributed to reported butterfly population crashes. Researchers analysed data from the UK Butterfly Monitoring Scheme (UKBMS), which contains information on butterfly populations collected from […]

UN warns 330,000 people are ‘one step from famine’ in Madagascar drought

By Peter Lykke Lind 25 November 2016 (Antananarivo) – The severe drought afflicting southern Madagascar has left 330,000 people on the brink of famine, a senior UN official has warned. Three successive years of failed rains have left the island nation wrestling with crop failure and a chronic lack of food and clean drinking water, […]

Hurricane Otto still going as tropical cyclone, into the record books – 2016 was the ‘year-long’ hurricane season

26 November 2016 (7 News) – Since you were probably engrossed in turkey and football when it happened, you may have missed some big weather news.  Otto did some pretty unusual things. No. Not that Otto. Hurricane Otto made landfall near San Juan de Nicaragua, Nicaragua at 1 PM EST with 110 mph sustained winds […]

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 […]

Climate models: each 1°C increase in global temperature reduces global wheat production by average of 5.7 percent

By Janne Hansen23 November 2016 (PhysOrg) – Three independent methods of modelling climate change impact on yield display the same bleak tendency: When global temperature increases, wheat yield will decline. This is demonstrated in a study carried out by an international group scientists, including Professor Joergen E. Olesen and Postdoc Mohamed Jabloun from the Department […]

World’s hottest nights and highest minimum temperatures measured in 2016

By Christopher C. Burt 21 November 2016 (wunderground.com) – One of the interesting facets of global warming has been how, over the past several decades, nighttime minimum temperatures have become warmer relative to daytime maximum temperatures. There are several scientific explanations for this. A recent study (published in the International Journal of Climatology in February […]

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 […]

Perils of global warming could swamp coastal real estate – ‘The water always wins’

By Ian Urbina24 November 2016 MIAMI, Florida (The New York Times) – Real estate agents looking to sell coastal properties usually focus on one thing: how close the home is to the water’s edge. But buyers are increasingly asking instead how far back it is from the waterline. How many feet above sea level? Is […]

Graph of the Day: NOAA annual greenhouse gas index (AGGI), 1700-2015

30 April 2016 (NOAA) – The annual greenhouse gas index (AGGI) is a measure of the warming influence of long-lived trace gases and how that influence is changing each year. The index was designed to enhance the connection between scientists and society by providing a normalized standard that can be easily understood and followed. The […]

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 […]

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