Armed Forces called in as thousands flee Saskatchewan wildfires – Province-wide wildfires blanket B.C. communities in smoke

5 July 2015 (CBC News) – More than 50 new wildfires have sprung up across British Columbia over the weekend, putting people out of their homes or on evacuation alert, resulting in several communities declaring states of emergency. Smoke from the fires cast an early morning haze over Vancouver and an eerie pall over Victoria […]

Image of the Day: River of smoke flows from Canada wildfires into Central U.S.

By Adam Voiland1 July 2015 (NASA) – The 2015 fire season got off to an unusually early start in Canada when blazes broke out in the Northwest Territories, British Columbia, and Alberta in late May. As the season has progressed, the air in western Canada—as well as large swaths of the United States—grew gray and […]

Turkish glaciers have shrunk by half since 1970

By Laura Rocchio2 July 2015 (NASA) – Researchers and citizens have known for some time that Turkey’s glaciers are shrinking. Now scientists have calculated the losses and found that more than half of the ice cover in this mountainous country has vanished since the 1970s. A team of researchers from Ege University (Turkey) and NASA’s […]

Siberia bakes with new record temperatures – Tuva Republic declares emergency as smoke from wildfires descends

4 July 2015 (The Siberian Times) – Our pictures show sun-seekers in Novosibirsk cooling off in the River Ob, and also at the ‘Ob Sea’, a huge artificial reservoir close to Siberia’s biggest city. The same scenes have been repeated over many time zones as summer came to the this vast Russian region. ‘If it […]

Pink salmon struggle as freshwater becomes acidic

By Niina Heikkinen and ClimateWire30 June 2015 (ClimateWire) – Pink salmon are providing researchers with sobering hints to how carbon dioxide-induced acidity could affect freshwater fish species by the end of the 21st century. A study published yesterday in Nature Climate Change showed that early exposure to high levels of CO2 during the larval stage […]

As Alaska burns, Anchorage sets new records for heat and lack of snow

By Angela Fritz 2 July 2015 (Washington Post) – Hot and dry conditions in Alaska have been toppling records over the past few months — many of which have been held for decades. And now, with two million acres burned already, 2015 appears well on its way to becoming the worst fire season on record […]

Heat wave in U.S. West enters second chapter – More record highs through holiday weekend

By Jon Erdman and Nick Wiltgen4 July 2015 (The Weather Channel) – While it may not be quite as hot as last weekend in some areas, there appears to be no end in sight to this torrid heat wave in the West. June and even a few all-time record highs have already been shattered in […]

Calving icebergs cause earthquakes in Greenland and Antarctica

By Chris Mooney 25 June 2015 (Washington Post) – If Greenland goes, it is becoming clear that it won’t go quietly. Scientists have already documented entire meltwater lakes vanishing in a matter of hours atop the vast Greenland ice sheet, as huge crevasses open beneath them. And now, they’ve cast light on the mechanisms behind […]

Graph of the Day: World arable land per capita, 1961-2012

3 July 2015 (Desdemona Despair) – Will world agriculture be able to support a human population of 12 billion people in the year 2100? The answer largely turns on how much land is available for growing crops. Unfortunately, the world’s arable land area is declining at an enormous rate. The UN Convention to Combat Desertification […]

Temperatures soar to danger point for sun-loving creatures – ‘They don’t have the flexibility in heat tolerance to keep up with global warming’

By Tim Radford16 June 2015 LONDON (Climate News Network) – Scientists in California have identified a cold-blooded killer as global warming brings new hazards for ectotherms − creatures that cannot regulate their own body heat. The suggestion may seem counter-intuitive, as vipers, lizards, fish and frogs all depend on ambient warmth to keep their metabolisms […]

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