This chart shows the percentage of the land area of the lower 48 states with summer daily low temperatures well above normal. The bars represent individual years, while the line is a smoothed nine-year moving average. Heat waves occurred with high frequency in the 1930s, and these remain the most severe heat waves in the […]
Indus River, 18 August 2009 Indus River, 17 August 2010 Caption by Michon Scott18 August 2010 By mid-August 2010, some 20 million people in Pakistan had been affected by the intense monsoon rains, according to news reports. Roughly a fifth of the country was underwater, and extensive damage to agricultural lands was expected […]
By ROBERT MACKEYAugust 18, 2010, 6:57 pm In a radio interview broadcast on Wednesday, Daanish Mustafa, a scholar who studies the intersection of development and water resources, told the BBC that attempts to tame the Indus River, beginning during British rule in the 19th century, laid the foundations for the deadly floods that swept Pakistan […]
Bonn (Germany), 18 August 2010 – The catastrophic wildfires that have swept across Russia this summer have killed at least 50 people and could cost the country’s economy an estimated US$15 billion. But among the hidden victims of the fires are small, nocturnal animals that are fast losing their habitats. Russia’s bat population – which […]
Early clearing in the Northwest Passage Stephen Howell, Tom Agnew, and Trudy Wohlleben from Environment Canada report that sea ice conditions in the Northwest Passage are very light. Ice is still present at the mouth of the M’Clure Strait, in central Viscount-Melville Sound, and in Larsen Sound, as of early August. As a result, neither […]
By WAQAR GILLANIPublished: August 17, 2010 LAHORE, Pakistan — With disastrous flooding spreading yet more widely in Pakistan, reports of looting and protests over food on Tuesday deepened the sense of desperation across Punjab Province, the country’s most populous region and its agricultural hub. Flood survivors told stories of taking the search for aid upon […]
By Dmitry SolovyovTue Aug 17, 2010 10:50am EDT MOSCOW (Reuters) – Several thousand Muscovites are thought to have died in July alone from this year’s unprecedented heatwave and August could add more fatalities to the grim statistics, a Russian scientist said on Tuesday. Moscow, a metropolis of over 10 million people, suffered from intense heat […]
By Sajjad Tarakzai (AFP)16 August 2010 NOWSHEHRA, Pakistan — Six million children are suffering from Pakistan’s devastating floods: lost, orphaned or stricken with diarrhoea, they are the most vulnerable victims of the nation’s worst-ever natural disaster. At relief camps in government schools and colleges, and in tent villages on the edge of towns and by […]
TUCSON, Ariz.— A scientific review of federal endangered species recovery plans finds that scientists are increasingly identifying global warming as an extinction threat but government agencies have yet to respond with any national strategy. The lack of recovery plan guidance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has led to inconsistent efforts to save species […]
By Staff WritersAug 16, 2010 Fortaleza, Brazil (AFP) – The United Nations Monday launched a campaign to save the planet from deserts that are threatening a third of the planet along with the livelihoods of more than a billion people. The decade-long initiative aims to “reverse and prevent desertification” and to soften the effects of […]
