10 February 2016 (UN) – El Niño conditions have caused the lowest recorded rainfall between October and December across many regions of Southern Africa in at least 35 years, the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has reported in its latest report. The agency found that short-term forecasts from January to March indicate the high […]
By Yereth Rosen 5 February 2016 (Alaska Dispatch News) – Sea ice extent over the Arctic last month was the lowest for any January in the satellite record, with freeze-up slowed by unusually high air temperatures over the Arctic Ocean and an atmospheric pattern in the Atlantic side that moved cold weather to more southern […]
By Michael Slezak3 February 2016 (Guardian) – A national inquiry into the fires devastating world heritage forests in Tasmania is urgently needed, say conservationists and academics. The call comes as experts say fires like those could be the new normal. The Australian Conservation Foundation has called for the public inquiry as dozens of fires continue […]
By Andrew Mambondiyani; editing by Megan Rowling8 February 2016 MUTARE, Zimbabwe (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Shylet Mutsago, a 63-year-old who lives near the diamond fields of Marange, cannot hide her anger over how mining in this gem-rich part of eastern Zimbabwe has failed to improve the lives of local people. From a distance she watches […]
By Brian Lada8 February 2016 (AccuWeather) – The El Niño-influenced weather pattern over the past several months has brought above-normal temperatures in the Midwest and Northeast, causing the ice coverage on the Great Lakes to be significantly lower than it has been over the past two winters. As of 2 February 2016, the total ice […]
[This is a disaster. CSIRO is a world-class research organization for climate science, on par with the UK’s Hadley Centre for Climate Research, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and Germany’s Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research. Crippling Australia’s climate science capability deals a significant blow to humanity’s struggle to survive our greatest existential threat: […]
By Michael Mann25 January 2016 (RealClimate) – With the official numbers now in 2015 is, by a substantial margin, the new record-holder, the warmest year in recorded history for both the globe and the Northern Hemisphere. The title was sadly short-lived for previous record-holder 2014. And 2016 could be yet warmer if the current global […]
By Vanessa Schipani1 February 2016 (FactCheck.org) – While on the campaign trail in New Hampshire, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz gave a speech to local residents that contained inaccurate and misleading claims about climate science and its terminology: Cruz claimed “none of the alarmists say ‘global warming’ anymore — now it’s ‘climate change.’ ” That’s […]
September 2012 (Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory) – Ice cover on the Great Lakes has been declining since 1973. This figure shows the linear trends for the six lakes. The linear trend was estimated using the least squares regression (LSR). The linear equation is in the form: x=a+bt, where x is the ice cover (in […]
[Canada must shut down the Athabasca oil sand mines to have any hope of meeting its commitment. “Emissions from oil and gas are projected to increase by 28% (from 159 Mt to 204 Mt) over the 2005 to 2020 time frame. This is due mainly to increases in oil sands production.” See Projected Emissions Trends […]
