Smoke haze greets Melbourne at dawn – ‘To think that in 24 hours this fire went from nothing to 40,000 hectares is quite staggering’

By  JASON DOWLING and BENJAMIN MILLAR 21 January 2013 (Cootamundra Herald) – Victoria is about to enter its most dangerous month historically for bushfires with the deadly Gippsland blaze still a major threat, Premier Ted Baillieu has warned. ”This is a big fire and it is likely to burn for some time,” Mr Baillieu said […]

U.S. plants flower nearly a month earlier than they did a century ago

By Joseph Stromberg16 January 2013 Compared to extreme drought, blistering heat, massive wildfires and tropical cyclones, the latest indicator of climate change is unexpectedly attractive: early spring flowers. According to a study published today in the journal PLOS ONE, unusually warm spring weather in 2010 and 2012 at a pair of notable sites in the […]

Video: On Victoria’s bushfire front – Blaze expands from 950 to 20,000 hectares – ‘It was unbelievable to see the whole sky light up’

19 January 2013 (10 News / Sydney Morning Herald) – Bushfires in Victoria’s east blaze out of control as one man dies, homes are lost, and thousands of hectares are burnt through. The blaze expanded from 950 to 20,000 hectares around Lake Glenmaggie and Coongulla. On Victoria’s bushfire front Technorati Tags: Australia,heat wave,drought,global warming,climate change,wildfire,forest […]

U.S. mayors focus on ‘local warming’, urge Obama to act

By Valerie Volcovici and Patrick Rucker 18 January 2013 WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Reeling from an historic drought, the hottest year on record and more frequent wild weather, mayors from a number of U.S. cities urged the White House this week to take the lead on setting an agenda to address climate change. City leaders said […]

Preparing Richardson Bay for rising sea levels – ‘There are two reactions to dealing with sea level rise: there is fight and there is flight’

By James Temple19 January 2013 (San Francisco Chronicle) – On a sunny Friday afternoon last fall, a Grand Banks trawler idled at the mouth of Richardson Bay, giving those aboard a close look at a battleground in the fight against climate change. The lobster claw-shaped estuary defines and occasionally redefines the southeastern edge of Marin […]

Video: Living with Beijing’s ‘air-pocalypse’ – ‘I haven’t seen the sun in four days’

[As usual, apologies for the ad.] By Jaime A. FlorCruz, CNN19 January 2013 Beijing, China (CNN) – “Let the sunshine, let the sunshine in …” my wife Ana blurted into a song this week, as she gazed eastwards through the window of our apartment in downtown Beijing. The old tune from the Broadway show Hair […]

80 percent of Australia’s Warrumbungle National Park incinerated

By Tim Barlass20 January 2013 The impact of the Coonabarabran fires is revealed in a startling new map obtained from the Rural Fire Service. Overlaying the heritage-listed Warrumbungle National Park with the area devastated by fire shows the nature reserve to be almost obliterated. Only a small area in the south-west of the park, the […]

Mercury emissions threaten aquatic environments – ‘It was amazing how fast the mercury got into the fish’

By Brian Bienkowski, Environmental Health News18 January 2013 (Scientific American) – As United Nations delegates end their mercury treaty talks today, scientists warn that ongoing emissions are more of a threat to food webs than the mercury already in the environment. At the same time, climate change is likely to alter food webs and patterns […]

Melt ponds cause Artic sea ice to melt more rapidly – ‘Climate change will permit more sunlight to reach the Arctic Ocean’

Bremerhaven, 15 January 2013 (AWI) – The Arctic sea ice has not only declined over the past decade but has also become distinctly thinner and younger. Researchers are now observing mainly thin, first-year ice floes which are extensively covered with melt ponds in the summer months where once metre-thick, multi-year ice used to float. Sea […]

Study finds megadrought jeopardizing Amazon rainforest

Contact: Alan Buis, Alan.buis@jpl.nasa.gov, 818-354-0474   Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California17 January 2013 PASADENA, California (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) – An area of the Amazon rainforest twice the size of California continues to suffer from the effects of a megadrought that began in 2005, finds a new NASA-led study. These results, together with observed recurrences of droughts […]

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