19 April 2016 (Climate Nexus) – Heavy rains and flooding in Houston have taken six lives and put much of the city under water. Dozens of schools, roads, and freeways were closed after rainfall dumped more than a foot of water. More storms are predicted across the region, posing the threat of renewed flooding. The […]
22 April 2016 (UN) – As world leaders gathered at United Nations Headquarters in New York this morning to officially sign the Paris Agreement on climate change – the landmark accord that sets outs a global action plan to put the world on track to avoid dangerous global warming – Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called on […]
By Michael Slezak21 April 2016 (The Guardian) – The global coral bleaching event devastating the Great Barrier Reef has spread to reefs in Western Australia, where the federal government halted the implementation of marine parks, which would help the reefs recover. In light of worsening bleaching, the Greens have called on the government to urgently […]
By Lucy Lamble 21 April 2016 Harare and Lilongwe (The Guardian) – Chidyamakondo high school, near Masvingo in southern Zimbabwe, has won the national girls’ football championships three years in a row. But that cherished record – and far, far more – is now at risk. “Students are fainting, struggling to concentrate in lessons, dropping […]
By Sophie Vorrath 19 April 2016 (RenewEconomy) – The Turnbull Coalition government has kicked off its informal re-election campaign by repeating its desire to build a massive coal fired power station in north Queensland, only this time it proposes to use climate funds to help pay for the project. In confirmation that little has changed […]
18 April 2016 (Stockholm University) – When organic material released from thawing permafrost is transported to the sea it gets broken down in the seawater contributing to a more rapid acidification of the Arctic Ocean, finds new research by scientists from Stockholm University and colleagues. Ocean acidification is an important consequence of humankind’s release of […]
By Jason Samenow20 April 2016 (Washington Post) – In the past six months, the Earth has witnessed several of the freakiest, most intense storms in recorded history. Spurred by the highest ocean temperatures observed to date, record-breaking tropical cyclones — the class of storms that includes hurricanes and typhoons — have explosively developed in three […]
By Christopher C. Burt19 April 2016 (wunderground.com) – What is most likely the most intense heat wave ever observed in Southeast Asia has been ongoing for the past several weeks. All-time national heat records have been observed in Cambodia, Laos, and (almost) in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam. Meanwhile extreme heat has resulted in all-time […]
By Chris Mooney 20 April 2016 (Washington Post) – The conclusions are in from a series of scientific surveys of the Great Barrier Reef bleaching event — an environmental assault on the largest coral ecosystem on Earth — and scientists aren’t holding back about how devastating they find them. Australia’s National Coral Bleaching Task Force […]
[cf. Scientists say climate change could cause a ‘massive’ tree die-off in the U.S. Southwest and Drought-induced tree mortality accelerating in forests] By Diana Madson18 April 2016 (Yale Climate Connections) – New research predicts that nearly all coniferous forests in the American Southwest could be lost to climate change by the end of the century. […]