By Simon Shuster / MoscowMonday, Aug. 02, 2010 Russians are not used to heat waves. When the high temperatures that have overwhelmed Russia over the past six weeks first arrived in June, some 1,200 Russians drowned at the country’s beaches. “The majority of those who drowned were drunk,” the Emergencies Ministry concluded in mid-July, citing […]
By Michael Georgy Tue Aug 3, 2010 10:11am EDT ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – The worst floods in memory in Pakistan have devastated the lives of more than 3 million people, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday, while outrage over the unpopular government’s response to its people’s plight spreads. The catastrophe, which started almost a week […]
By TERENCE ROTH in London and WILLIAM MAULDIN in MoscowAUGUST 3, 2010, 9:12 A.M. ET The scorching temperatures and dry skies threatening Russia’s wheat harvests have also been beating down on Western Europe, which is forecasting lower output of crops from French wheat to Italian tomatoes. Russia’s Agriculture Ministry Tuesday cut its forecast for the […]
By Craig Welch, Seattle Times environment reporter July 31, 2010 at 8:36 PM DABOB BAY, Hood Canal — Inside the burbling tubs of the Taylor Shellfish hatchery here, oysters are incubating once again. But no one believes things are really back to normal. Several years after oyster larvae around the Northwest began dying by the […]
By John PlattJul 29, 2010 12:40 PM Few animals can live totally in the dark, and penguins are no exception. But new research shows that climate change could soon rob Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) of the sunlight they need to survive, and that could drive them into extinction. The problem comes from melting sea ice, […]
Pakistan is facing a “major humanitarian crisis” with up to two-and-a-half million people hit by the worst flooding in 80 years a United Nations official has said. By Ben Farmer in Kabul and Khalid Khan in Peshawar02 Aug 2010 7:00PM BST Flash floods triggered by heavy monsoon rains have killed 1,500 and officials fear the […]
This map shows trends in snow water equivalent in the western United States and part of Canada. Negative trends are shown by red circles and positive trends by blue. • From 1950 to 2000, April snow water equivalent declined at most of the measurement sites (see Figure 1), with some relative losses exceeding 75 percent. […]
The Macquarie Marshes – a vast, tangled sprawl of creeks and swamps between Nyngan and Walgett in the state’s northwest – has declined by about half since the 1960s because of the drought and the diversion of water for irrigation. … ”About 50 per cent of the wetland area is gone and more has been […]
By CARL HARTMAN, For The Associated Press Mon Aug 2, 6:53 am ET The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet (Harper, $25.99), by Heidi Cullen: Climatologist Heidi Cullen was taken aback at her lecture on the prospects for global warming when a member of the audience […]
Smoke from the fires has swept as far as Moscow, cloaking the city in a veil of smog, 30 July 2010. BBC In pictures: Russia fires A burnt-out car sits in front of a destroyed house in the village of Mokhovoye, some 130 kilometers from Moscow on July 31, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of firefighters, […]
