flood – Page 3 – Desdemona Despair

Aerial view of the Panamanian island of Carti Sugdupu. Hundreds are preparing to leave the island in the face of rising sea levels. Photo: Luis Acosta

September 10, 2023

“We’re going to sink”: hundreds abandon Caribbean island home – “Almost all the islands are going to be abandoned by the end of this century”

By Juan José Rodríguez 6 September 2023 (AFP) – On a tiny Caribbean island, hundreds of people are preparing to pack up and move to escape the rising waters threatening to engulf their already precarious homes. Surrounded by idyllic clear waters, the densely populated island of Carti Sugtupu off Panama’s north coast has barely an […]

Aerial view of houses in a flooded area after an extratropical cyclone hit southern cities, in Lajeado, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, 6 September 2023. Photo: Diego Vara / REUTERS

September 7, 2023

Brazilian state reels after its worst-ever cyclone disaster – “You have to escape. If you stay there, you die.”

By George Wright 6 September 2023 (BBC News) – Torrential rain and winds caused by a cyclone have left at least 27 people dead in southern Brazil, with more flooding expected. The governor of Rio Grande do Sul said it was the state’s worst-ever weather disaster. Thousands have been forced from their homes, officials said. […]

A Burning Man participant trudges through the mud in Black Rock City, in the Nevada desert, after a rainstorm flooded the site and stranded thousands, 2 September 2023. Photo: Trevor Hughes / USA TODAY

September 3, 2023

One dead at Burning Man as flooding strands thousands – “No one is going to have sympathy for us”

RENO, Nevada, 3 September 2023 (AP) – Authorities in Nevada were investigating a death at the site of the Burning Man festival where thousands of attendees remained stranded Saturday night as flooding from storms swept through the Nevada desert. [Related: Carbon footprint of Burning Man: 27,000 tons of CO2 per year –Des] Organizers closed vehicular […]

The location of climate tipping elements in the cryosphere (blue), biosphere (green) and ocean/atmosphere (orange), and global warming levels their tipping points will likely be triggered at 1.5°C. Researchers see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well. Graphic: Earth Commission / Globaïa

August 21, 2023

Climate collapse could happen fast – “For a long time, we were within the range of normal. And now we’re really not. And it has happened fast enough that people have a memory of it happening.”

By Lois Parshley 20 July 2023 (The Atlantic) – Ever since some of the earliest projections of climate change were made back in the 1970s, they have been remarkably accurate at predicting the rate at which global temperatures would rise. For decades, climate change has proceeded at roughly the expected pace, says David Armstrong McKay, a […]

(a) Linear trends in sea surface temperature (SST) (°C per decade) over the period 1982–2022. (b) Area-averaged time series of SST anomalies (°C) relative to the 1982–2022 reference period for the areas indicated in grey dashed lines in 5(a). Source: Derived from the Copernicus Marine Service remote sensing products available at https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00168 (for 1982–2021) and https://doi.org/10.48670/moi-00165 (for 2022). Graphic: WMO

August 20, 2023

Pacific island sea levels rising faster than global average, WMO says – Economic damage in Southwest Pacific due to flooding in 2022 was $8.5 billion, almost triple compared to the previous year

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber 17 August 2023 GENEVA (Reuters) – Sea levels in the South-West Pacific are rising faster than the global average, threatening low-lying islands while heat damages marine ecosystems, the U.N. meteorological agency said on Friday. In its State of the Climate in the South-West Pacific 2022 report, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said […]

People take photos of the sun as smoke from the wildfires in Canada cause hazy conditions in New York City in June 2023. Photo: Getty Images

August 20, 2023

How climate scientists feel about seeing their dire predictions come true – “I used to think, ‘I’m concerned for my children and grandchildren.’ Now it’s to the point where I’m concerned about myself.”

By Corinne Purtill 18 August 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – You are correct. It is, in fact, extremely unusual to be on hurricane watch in Southern California. If Hurricane Hilary continues on the trajectory forecasters are currently predicting, it will be the first tropical storm to make landfall in California since 1939, and only the second one to do […]

A woman reacts as she fails to find her house after flood waters devastate Nanxinfang village on the outskirts of Beijing, Friday, 4 August 2023. Severe floods in China’s northern province of Hebei brought by remnants of Typhoon Doksuri this month killed at least 29 people and caused billions of dollars in economic losses, its provincial government said Friday, 11 August 2023. Photo: Ng Han Guan / AP Photo

August 20, 2023

Heaviest rainfall in Beijing in at least 140 years causes more than $13 billion in economic losses – China’s Xi calls for measures to mitigate disastrous flooding amid economic slowdown

BEIJING, 17 August 2023 (AP) – Chinese leader Xi Jinping has called for measures to mitigate the effects of this year’s disastrous flooding which has left scores dead and inflicted massive damage on crops, homes and infrastructure, including in and around Beijing. At least 90 rivers have risen above warning levels and 24 have already overflowed their […]

Meridional winds in m/s (contours; purple: southerly, orange: northerly winds, in (a–c, e–g) contours start at an absolute value of 3 m/s and increase/decrease by 3 respectively, in (d, h) contours start an absolute value of 0.5 and increase/decrease by steps of one) and near surface temperature anomalies filled contours during (a–c) wave-7 and (e–g) wave- 5 events relative to the respective climatology in the northern hemisphere summer (JJA) based on (a, e) ERA5 reanalysis (1960–2014), (b, f) historical (1960–2014) and (c, g) future (SSP5-8.5, 2045–2099) bias-adjusted output from CMIP6 simulations (four models). d, h) Difference in meridional winds and temperature response during wave events comparing historical and future patterns in four bias-adjusted CMIP6 models (for twelve non adjusted models see Fig. S6). Hatching shows statistical significance on a 95% confidence level (a, d, e, h) or 100% model agreement in sign (4 out of 4 models, b, c, f, g) While the phase positions and intensity of the wave patterns (line contour) are well represented in the models their surface imprint are considerably underestimated in historical simulations. Changes in the temperature response are identified over North America, Eurasia and East Asia (d, h). Graphic: Kornhuber, et al., 2023 / Nature Communications

July 15, 2023

Study finds climate risk to crops greater than thought – Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions threaten global food security – “These types of concurring events are really largely underestimated”

By Kelly Macnamara 4 July 2023 (AFP) – The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and […]

Satellite view Townshend Dam in Vermont on 9 July 2023 (above) and 11 July 2023 (below). On 9 July 2023, the reservoir held just 1 percent of its maximum capacity. Two days later it was at 82 percent and rising. Southern Vermont experienced catastrophic, generational flooding during Tropical Storm Irene in July 2023. Photo: Evan Dethier

July 15, 2023

Vermont flood damage is so severe it can be seen from space

By Anna Skinner 12 July 2023 (Newsweek) – Flooding in Vermont this week was so severe that it showed up on satellite images. A long-duration rainstorm overwhelmed state creeks and rivers and pushed the Wrightsville Dam to its limits, severely flooding Mountpelier, Vermont’s capital. Water rose quickly, destroying roads and causing evacuations. Some people felt they couldn’t abandon […]

Map showing maximum land subsidence rates around the world, 2015-2020. Sea levels are rising at an average global rate of 3.4 millimeters. Many places are sinking (known as land subsidence) further than that in a year. Data: Wu, et al., 2022. Graphic: Kasha Patel / The Washington Post

June 3, 2023

Land around the U.S. is sinking. Here are some of the fastest areas.

By Kasha Patel 30 May 2023 (The Washington Post) – Imagine Earth’s surface is like a stack of pancakes. The pancakes, or layers of soil and rocks, may appear fairly evenly stacked and fluffy. Over time though, the stack can become compressed, thinner and shorter. Scientists observe this downward motion of land, called land subsidence, […]