Coastal erosion encroaches on a house in Happisburgh, Norfolk, UK. Photo: Philip Bird, LRPS CPAGB / Shutterstock

15 towns being slowly swallowed by the sea – Coastal communities fighting a losing battle with the ocean

4 March 2020 (Love Property) – Positioned on the frontline of climate change, the world’s most vulnerable shoreline communities face an uncertain future. Plagued by ever-worsening coastal erosion and rising sea levels, their existence hangs precariously in the balance. As the tide continues to draw in, take a look at 15 towns being gradually reclaimed […]

Blended land and sea surface temperature anomalies and percentiles, February 2020. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

February 2020 second warmest on record globally

By Bob Henson 13 March 2020 (Weather Underground) – Research groups across the world concur that this past northern winter (December-February) was the second-warmest on record globally, in records going back more than a century. The latest group to confirm this finding is NOAA, in its monthly State of the Climate report issued Friday. The winter result […]

COVID-19 cases in mainland China (orange) and worldwide (yellow), 20 January 2020 - 15 March 2020. Graphic: Johns Hopkins University

Graph of the Day: Worldwide COVID-19 cases surpass China cases

15 March 2020 (Desdemona Despair) – Des follows the Johns Hopkins University dashboard for COVID-19 on a daily basis. Today, the total number of cases outside of China (81.7k) exceeded the total number of cases in mainland China (81k). The exponential rise in global cases shows no sign of abating. Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by […]

Paying with fire: Most oil and gas executives are rewarded for chasing growth, but shareholders could get burned. Graphic: Carbon Tracker Initiative

Fanning the Flames: How executives continue to be rewarded to produce more oil and gas at odds with the energy transition

13 March 2020 (Carbon Tracker) – Company pay practice doesn’t yet live up to climate ambition, with the gap between stated ambition and demonstrable action widening. The energy transition is a challenge to the traditional business model of the oil and gas industry, and companies are increasingly exposed to transition-related financial risks. Over the past […]

A man and a girl on a scooter are backdropped by a Lombardy region campaign advertising, reading in Italian, “Coronavirus: let’s stop it together”, at the Porta Nuova business district in Milan, Wednesday, 11 March 2020. Italy is mulling even tighter restrictions on daily life and has announced billions in financial relief to cushion economic shocks from the coronavirus. For most people, the new coronavirus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia. Photo: Luca Bruno / AP Photo

WHO declares virus crisis a pandemic, urges global fight – “We are deeply concerned by the alarming levels of spread and severity and by the alarming levels of inaction”

By Maria Cheng, John Leicester, and Jamey Keaten 11 March 2020 GENEVA (AP) – Expressing alarm both about mounting infections and inadequate government responses, the World Health Organization declared Wednesday that the global coronavirus crisis is now a pandemic but added that it’s not too late for countries to act. By reversing course and using […]

The sky on a beach on Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands is red from the worst sandstorm in 40 years, on 22 February 2020. Photo: Elvira Urquijo A. / EPA / Shutterstock

Sandstorm wreaks havoc in Canary Islands, worst such storm to hit the islands in 40 years – “I’m old enough to know all about the calima, but I don’t recall it that strong. Everything just turned red.”

By Raphael Minder 24 February 2020 MADRID – Winds from the Sahara continued to send streams of sand drifting over the Canary Islands on Monday, creating chaos as the swirling sands forced planes to be grounded, disrupted traffic and exacerbated wildfires. Ángel Víctor Torres, the regional president of the islands, a Spanish archipelago, told Spanish […]

Surface air temperature anomaly for February 2020 relative to the average for the period 1981-2010. Data: ERA5. Graphic: Copernicus Climate Change Service / ECMWF

The boreal winter season 19/20 was by far the warmest winter season ever recorded in Europe – “Europe has been experiencing its mildest winter on record”

4 March 2020 (C3S) – With persistent mild weather over Europe, particularly in the north and east, the past winter was 3.4 °C warmer than the average winter for the period 1981-2010. The temperature was almost 1.4°C higher than that of the previous warmest winter, 2015/16. Back in November C3S seasonal predictions provided strong indications […]

Map showing Arctic temperature anomalies for December 2019, January 2020, and February 2020. Mainland Alaska and northwest Canada, along with parts of Greenland and Svalbard were the primary high latitude areas that were consistently colder than average during winter 2019/2020. Northern Eurasia was outlandishly mild. Graphic: Karsten Haustein / Twitter

Winter 2019/2020 warmest on record in Moscow, first winter to average above freezing – Temperature milestones set across Europe and North America – German ice wine harvest fails for first time on record

By Andrew Freedman 2 March 2020 (The Washington Post) – The meteorological winter of 2019-2020 shattered temperature records in Russia and France as well as other parts of Europe and the United States. In Moscow, this was the warmest winter in nearly 200 years of record-keeping, and the first winter there to have an average […]

Aerial view of flooding in Snaith, Yorkshire, UK, 1 March 2020. Video: Sky News

Wettest February on record in UK – 77 flood warnings issued with hours until water levels hit peak – 15 rivers hit their highest levels on record

By Kate Ng 2 March 2020 (The Independent) – Seventy-seven flood warnings remain in place across England and Wales as the UK prepares for river levels to peak in the aftermath of Storm Jorge. The Environment Agency (EA) has 74 flood warnings in place for England, with many concentrated in the southwest and along the […]

In Kastanies, Greece, with tear gas clouding the air, thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe clashed with riot police officers on the Greek border with Turkey on Saturday morning, 29 February 2020, signaling a new and potentially volatile phase in the migration crisis. About 4,000 migrants of various nationalities were pressed against the Turkish side of the border and an additional 500 or so people were trapped between two border posts, but still on the Turkish side. Photo: Bulent Kilic / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images

Thousands of migrants in Turkey face off with riot police at Greek border – President Erdogan says, “We opened the doors”

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Carlotta Gall 29 February 2020 KASTANIES, Greece (The New York Times) – With tear gas clouding the air, thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe clashed with riot police officers on the Greek border with Turkey on Saturday morning, signaling a new and potentially volatile phase in the migration crisis. The […]

Social media & sharing icons powered by UltimatelySocial