The ‘blue blob’: Changes in Atlantic happening sooner than expected – ‘We like to think of climate as an elephant moving slowly along, but the ocean system is not that simple’

[cf. Why some scientists are worried about a surprisingly cold ‘blob’ in the North Atlantic Ocean – ‘The fact that a record-hot planet Earth coincides with a record-cold northern Atlantic is quite stunning’] By Lisa Sorg4 November 2015 (Coastal Review) – There it is, hanging out in the northern Atlantic Ocean, off the southern tip […]

Photo gallery: Satellite views of smoke and fires in Indonesia, October 2015

By Adam Voiland19 October 2015 (NASA) – Heavy smoke continued to pour from peat fires in Borneo, Indonesia, when the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured this image on 19 October 2015. Red outlines indicate hot spots where the sensor detected unusually warm surface temperatures associated with fires. Gray smoke hovers […]

Malaysia environment minister: ‘Unless there is rain, there is no way human intervention can put out the Indonesia fires’

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, 19 October 2015 (AFP) – International efforts to douse raging Indonesia fires will fail and Southeast Asia could face several more weeks of choking smoke until the rainy season starts, Malaysia’s environment minister warned on Monday, October 19. Facing growing pressure, Indonesia earlier this month agreed to accept international help after failing […]

Vast Amazon wildfire destroys forest in Brazil and threatens uncontacted tribe – ‘We will suffer greatly without our forest’

By Jonathan Watts30 October 2015 (Rio de Janeiro) – Brazilian rangers, firefighters and indigenous communities are battling against a wildfire that has blazed for two months and devastated some of the last Amazonian forest in the northern state of Maranhão, including part of the territory of an uncontacted tribe. The fire – which has spread […]

New England cod fishery collapses as rapidly warming water and overfishing take toll – ‘The Gulf of Maine cod stock is in the worst shape we have seen in the 40 years that we have been monitoring it’

By Chris Mooney 29 October 2015 (Washington Post) – A new scientific study says that rapidly warming waters off the New England coast have had a severe consequence — the collapse of a cod fishery that saw too many catches even as overall cod numbers declined due to warmer seas. It’s just the latest in […]

Russian media take climate cue from skeptical Putin – ‘There is no global warming, this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries, including Russia

By Andrey Kuzmin, with additional reporting by Alister Doyle; Editing by Bruce Wallace and Kevin Liffey29 October 2015 MOSCOW (Reuters) – Wildfires crackled across Siberia this summer, turning skies ochre and sending up enough smoke from burning pines to blot out satellite views of the 400-mile-long Lake Baikal. To many climate scientists, the worsening fires […]

Video: Persian Gulf could experience deadly heat

By David L. Chandler26 October 2015 (MIT News) – Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models. The research reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also […]

Warmer beaches mean fewer Florida sea turtles – ‘We are going to lose the diversity of sea turtles as well as their overall ability to reproduce effectively’

By Eric Niiler17 October 2015 (Discovery News) – Sea turtles are the ocean’s “canaries in the coal mine” when it comes to climate change, according to researchers who are trying to find out how they are adapting to a warmer climate that may be leaving baby male turtles high and dry. Recent studies have shown […]

21 hurricanes and typhoons that shattered records in 2015

By Andrew Freedman and Johnny Simon23 October 2015 (Mashable) – UPDATED 2:45 p.m. ET: Since this story was posted, yet another storm — Hurricane Patricia — in the eastern Pacific intensified to Category 4 status [and then, Category 5 –Des], making it 22 Category 4 and 5 storms that have formed so far this year. […]

Smoke from Indonesia fires causes 500,000 cases of acute respiratory illness – ‘This is a crime against humanity of extraordinary proportions’

[Long-time Desdemona readers will recall that smoke from peatland fires killed many people in Moscow in 2010. Dense wildfire smog grips Moscow in heatwave, Heat probably killed thousands in Moscow –Des] By Kate Lamb26 October 2015 (Jakarta) – Raging forest fires across Indonesia are thought to be responsible for up to half a million cases […]

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