It’s not your imagination: Allergy season gets worse every year – Pollen allergy seasons continue to get longer and more intense as temperatures rise

By Umair Irfan 21 May 2019 (Vox) – The weather is warming. The flowers are blooming. Noses are running. Eyes are watering. It’s allergy season, and this year it’s been severe in states like Georgia, and cities like Chicago, where the frigid winter delayed the onset. Now that it’s late May, we’re moving away from peak tree […]

Satellite view of forest loss in the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru, on 6 September 2018 NASA. Photo: Earth Observatory

Image of the Day: Satellite view of deforestation in Peru’s Madre de Dios region

By by Andrea Nicolau, Andi Thomas, and Leah Kucera 18 April 2019 (NASA) – Considered a hotspot for biodiversity, the Madre de Dios region of southeastern Peru is an exceptionally fertile landscape. Standing at the edge of the Amazon basin, Madre de Dios has a rich concentration of endemic species—plants and animals that are found nowhere […]

Abnormal high temperatures in Alaska disrupt isolated communities, upset subsistence hunting patterns, and cause deaths – “It’s hard to characterize this anomaly, it’s just pretty darn remarkable for that part of the world”

By Tim Lydon 29 May 2019 (Hakai Magazine) – Alaska in March is supposed to be cold. Along the north and west coasts, the ocean should be frozen farther than the eye can see. In the state’s interior, rivers should be locked in ice so thick that they double as roads for snowmobiles and trucks. […]

A mother elephant and her baby are attacked by villagers with fire in India. Photo: Biplab Hazra / The Independent

Image of the Day: Mother elephant and her calf attacked with firebombs as deforestation drives them into the paths of humans

26 April 2019 (The Science News Reporter) – Due to the deforestation across India, numerous elephants can be seen wandering in the villages and communities. [Sadly, this is very common, cf. Photo of baby elephant on fire after being attacked by mob wins international award – “The calf screams in confusion and fear as the […]

Graph of the Day: U.S. measles cases, 2010 to 24 May 2019

24 May 2019 (CDC) – From 1 January 2019 to 24 May 2019, 940 individual cases of measles have been confirmed in 26 states. This is an increase of 60 cases from the previous week. This is the greatest number of cases reported in the U.S. since 1994 and since measles was declared eliminated in […]

Deepest-ever sub dive in Mariana Trench finds plastic bag and candy wrappers

By Rebecca Morelle 13 May 2019 (BBC News) — An American explorer has found plastic waste on the seafloor while breaking the record for the deepest ever dive. Victor Vescovo descended nearly 11km (seven miles) to the deepest place in the ocean – the Pacific Ocean’s Mariana Trench. He spent four hours exploring the bottom […]

Pentagon warns about China’s increased activity in the Arctic, growing ambition to expand its presence

By Elizabeth Mclaughlin and Conor Finnegan 3 May 2019 (ABC News) – China is increasing its activity in the Arctic, building a second ice-breaking ship and looking to expand its footprint in Greenland, according to a new Pentagon report, and Beijing’s presence in the region could lead to the deployment of armed submarines, the report […]

“Extremely severe” Cyclone Fani prompts largest evacuation in India’s history – 880,000 people moved to more than 800 shelters

NEW DELHI, 2 May 2019 (AP) – Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated along India’s eastern coast on Thursday as authorities braced for a cyclone moving through the Bay of Bengal that was forecast to bring extremely severe wind and rain. The India Meteorological Department in New Delhi said Cyclone Fani was expected to […]

We’re losing the war on climate change – “The scale of the outrage in no way matches the magnitude of this disaster”

By John D. Sutter22 April 2019 (CNN) – For years now, people like environmentalist and journalist Bill McKibben have been screaming from the treetops that we need a World War II-scale mobilization to fight the scourge of climate change. They’re right, of course. And on Earth Day — that 24-hour sliver of the calendar when we […]

“Catastrophic” breeding failure at one of world’s largest emperor penguin colonies after three consecutive years of sea-ice collapse – “Such a complete failure to breed successfully is unprecedented at this site”

25 April 2019 (BAS) – Emperor penguins at the Halley Bay colony in the Weddell Sea have failed to raise chicks for the last three years, scientists have discovered. Researchers from British Antarctic Survey (BAS) studied very high resolution satellite imagery to reveal the unusual findings, published today (25 April 2019) in the journal Antarctic […]

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