doomiestImage – Page 17 – Desdemona Despair

Views of the Manhattan skyline at 10:02 a.m., 11:56 a.m., 12:53 p.m., and 1:53 p.m. as smoke from Canada wildfires engulfed the Northeast U.S. on 7 June 2023. Photo: EarthCam

June 7, 2023

New York City air quality hits worst level on record as smoke from Canada wildfires engulfs the Northeast U.S. – “I can taste the air”

By Mike Ives and Liam Stack 7 June 2023 (The New York Times) – The sky in New York City rapidly darkened on Wednesday afternoon, as a plume of smoke from Canadian wildfires approached the nation’s largest city and sent the air quality index soaring past 324, the worst since the Environmental Protection Agency began […]

Map showing the number of subglobal climate (two local exposure boundaries), functional integrity, surface water, groundwater, nitrogen, phosphorus and aerosol safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) currently transgressed by location. No more than seven of these eight metrics have their ESBs transgressed in any one pixel. Since climate is a globally defined ESB, we use wet bulb temperatures of over 35°C for at least 1-day per year and low-elevation coastal zones (

June 3, 2023

Earth is “really quite sick now” and in danger zone in nearly all ecological ways, study says – “We are moving in the wrong direction on basically all of these”

By Seth Borenstein 31 May 2023 (AP News) – Earth has pushed past seven out of eight scientifically established safety limits and into “the danger zone,” not just for an overheating planet that’s losing its natural areas, but for the well-being of people living on it, according to a new study. The study looks not just […]

A beachgoer walks through sargassum seaweed that washed ashore on 18 May 2023, in Key West, Florida. A huge mass of sargassum seaweed formed in the Atlantic Ocean is headed for the Florida coastlines and shores in the Gulf of Mexico. Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

June 3, 2023

Seaweed full of flesh-eating bacteria hitting Florida, creating a “perfect pathogen storm”

By Jess Thomson 30 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The massive blob of seaweed creeping across the Atlantic Ocean toward Florida may contain deadly flesh-eating bacteria. The 5,000-mile wide clump of seaweed is made up of sargassum seaweed, which has bloomed massively to form the “Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt.” A study from Florida Atlantic University published […]

A worker uses a digital thermometer to record a surface temperature of 42.6°C (108.7°F) in Beijing, China on 15 May 2023. Photo: China Central Television / SCMP

June 3, 2023

Southern China swelters, power grids struggle under “relentless” heatwaves – Pigs, rabbits, and fish dying from searing temperatures – “It’s just been week on week on week of these records being shattered”

By David Kirton 2 June 2023 BEIJING (Reuters) – Heatwaves tormenting parts of southern and eastern China are set to persist through June, putting power grids under strain as air conditioners are turned on full blast at homes, offices and factories in mega-cities like Shanghai and Shenzhen. In the next three days, most of southern […]

The Butachimie chemical plant sits in Chalempe, eastern France, Tuesday, 8 November 2022. Photo: Jean-Francois Badias / AP Photo

May 30, 2023

Cracks emerging in Europe’s united front to battle climate change – “You can’t say I support the Green Deal, but not the ambition to restore nature. It’s not ‘à la carte menu.’”

By Samuel Petrequin 27 May 2023 BRUSSELS (AP News) – The European Union has been at the forefront of the fight against climate change and the protection of nature for years. But it now finds itself under pressure from within to pause new environmental efforts amid fears they will hurt the economy. With the next European […]

This Monday, 29 May 2023 satellite image released by NASA shows Typhoon Mawar approaching Philippines' northern provinces. Photo: NASA Worldview / Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) / AP

May 29, 2023

Thousands evacuated as Philippines warns of flooding, landslides from approaching Typhoon Mawar

By Jim Gomez 29 May 2023 MANILA, Philippines (AP News) – Philippine officials began evacuating thousands of villagers, shut down schools and offices and imposed a no-sail ban Monday as Typhoon Mawar approached the country’s northern provinces a week after battering the U.S. territory of Guam. The typhoon is packing maximum sustained winds of 155 […]

Aerial view near Jungersen Gletschur in Greenland. The white lines show where scientists believe the glacier edges were in 1900. Photo: Bob Elberling

May 29, 2023

Accelerated melting of glaciers in Greenland – Greenland’s glaciers have lost at least 587 cubic km of ice over the last century

26 May 2023 (University of Leeds) – A study has found widespread mass loss of glaciers and ice caps in Greenland since the start of the 20th century. The research provides critical insights into long-term changes to the glaciers and ice caps as a result of climate change, which has contributed about one fifth to […]

Angela Crawford watches as a wildfire called the McKinney fire burns a hillside above her home in Klamath National Forest, California, on Saturday, 30 July 2022. Crawford and her husband stayed, as other residents evacuated, to defend their home from the fire. Photo: Noah Berger / AP Photo

May 28, 2023

Insurance giant State Farm halts sale of new home policies in California due to wildfires – “State Farm General Insurance Company made this decision due to historic increases in construction costs outpacing inflation, rapidly growing catastrophe exposure, and a challenging reinsurance market”

By Gloria Oladipo 27 May 2023 (The Guardian) – The insurance giant State Farm, America’s biggest car and home insurer by premium volume, will halt the sale of new home insurance policies in California, citing wildfire risk and inflation of construction costs. Starting on Saturday, the company will not accept insurance applications for business and personal lines […]

Two of three male spotted owls released into the wild in the Fraser Canyon. Two died and the other was injured and returned to captivity. Photo: BC government

May 27, 2023

“All I see are ghosts”: fear and fury as the last spotted owl in Canada fights for survival

By Leyland Cecco 26 May 2023 Spô’zêm First Nation, Canada (The Guardian) – On a rainy spring morning, huddled under the shelter of an ancient cedar, Jared Hobbs hoots, whoops and squawks. In years past, he could lure curious owls by drawing on his extensive repertoire. Among them are the whoo whoo whoo whooo territorial calls, alarm […]

Satellite view of the Iberian Peninsula on 11 May 2023 and 11 May 2023. These images, acquired by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite, show where green vegetation in May 2022 turned brown by May 2023. The sparse rainfall further parched soils that were already unusually dry in 2022. According to a recent report by Copernicus Climate Change Services, soil moisture across all of Europe in 2022 was the second lowest in the past 50 years. Unseasonable heat exacerbated the prolonged drought. On 26 April 2023, hot air from North Africa swept over southern Spain and pushed the temperature at the Córdoba airport to 38.8°C (101.8°F), the highest April temperature recorded in continental Spain. Photo: Allison Nussbaum / NASA Earth Observatory

May 27, 2023

Drought in Spain spurs largest-ever claim for agricultural insurance – 2023 sees the highest number of fires and the most extensive burned area since 2006

By Akankshita Mukhopadhyay 26 May 2023 (Reinsurance News) – The drought in Spain would be the largest claim ever paid by the Spanish agricultural insurance, according to professional services firm Aon. Agroseguro, the leading agricultural insurance provider in Spain, is bracing for an unprecedented payout of over €300 million ($325 million) in compensations due to […]