Florida – Page 5 – Desdemona Despair

Observed sea-level rise in Rockport, Texas, 1969-2020 and projected to 2050. Rockport has the second-highest annual rise rate (7.1 mm/year in 2020), and the highest projected sea-level rise for 2050 at 0.82 meters (2.69 ft) above mean sea level in 1992. Graphic: VIMS

February 28, 2021

U.S. sea-level report cards: 2020 again trends toward acceleration – Water levels at 26 of 32 stations rose at higher rate than in 2019

By David Malmquist 24 January 2021 (VIMS) – Sea level “report cards” issued annually by researchers at William & Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science add further evidence of an accelerating rate of sea-level rise during 2020 at nearly all tidal stations along the U.S. coastline. The team’s web-based report cards project sea level to […]

A Florida manatee has the word “Trump” carved in its back, causing serious scarring. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is investigating the harassment of this manatee. The animal was reported to federal authorities over the weekend of 9 January 2021. The animal was reported swimming in the Blue Hole, the headwaters of the Homosassa River. The USFWS is looking for any information regarding the harassment of this animal. Call the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation hotline at 888-404-3922 to report information. Video: Citrus County Chronicle

January 14, 2021

Someone carved “Trump” on a Florida manatee, causing serious scarring – “This abhorrent action goes beyond the bounds of what is considered cruel and inhumane”

By Johnny Diaz 11 January 2021 (The New York Times) – The sighting in Florida this week of a manatee with “Trump” in block letters on its back has prompted an investigation and a plea for help from a nonprofit conservation group. The Center for Biological Diversity said it was offering a $5,000 reward for […]

National Risk Index (NRI) map of the United States. Graphic: FEMA

November 30, 2020

New FEMA index shows riskiest spot for rising seas is 50 miles from the ocean

By Thomas Frank 25 November 2020 (E&E News) – The county most at risk for coastal flooding is not in Florida, North Carolina or New Jersey, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It’s not even on a coast. It’s Cowlitz County, Washington, population 102,000, about 50 miles inland from the Pacific Ocean on the […]

Map showing tracks of tropical storms Arthur, Bertha, and Cristobal in 2020. “We did set a record for the earliest third named storm formation date on record, breaking the old record set in 2016,” says Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University. Graphic: CNN Weather

June 14, 2020

Records have been broken already, and the 2020 hurricane season just started – “We did not have to wait long for things to get rolling”

By Allison Chinchar 14 June 2020 (CNN) – The Atlantic hurricane season is already one for the record books and it’s only just getting started. With an early jump-start to the season, a record number of named storms, and a storm reaching states that don’t normally see tropical systems, this season is off to a […]

Simulated high temperatures in Florida on Tuesday, 14 April 2020 by the American NAM model. Graphic: WeatherBell

April 19, 2020

Miami is shattering heat records during a wildly-warm start to 2020 – Most of Florida has endured record heat in the past four weeks

By Matthew Cappucci 15 April 2020 (The Washington Post) – Florida is supposed to be warm. After all, it’s, well, Florida. But temperatures in the Sunshine State have been shattering records and rivaling typical readings during the heart of summer. Miami even endured its earliest heat wave on record last week, when it hit at […]

A pile of ripe squash sits in a field, in Homestead, Florida, 28 March 2020. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to rot because farmers can't sell to restaurants, theme parks or schools nationwide that have closed because of the coronavirus. Photo: Lynne Sladky / AP Photo

April 8, 2020

Coronavirus claims an unexpected victim: Florida vegetables

By Tamara Lush 8 April 2020 PALMETTO, Florida (AP) – Mounds of harvested zucchini and yellow squash ripened and then rotted in the hot Florida sun. Juicy tomatoes were left to wither — unpicked — in farmers’ fields. Thousands of acres of fruits and vegetables grown in Florida are being plowed over or left to […]

Map showing secondary locations of anonymized mobile devices that were active at a single Ft. Lauderdale beach during Spring break 2020, tracked as they went across the U.S. Graphic: Tectonix

April 1, 2020

Tracking mobile phone location data of Florida beachgoers during Spring break shows potential coronavirus spread

By Jason Murdock 27 March 2020 (Newsweek) – Heat maps created using data from citizens’ mobile devices are demonstrating just how quickly potential novel coronavirus cases can spread throughout the U.S. Location data from U.S. mobile technology company X-Mode is being fed into a mapping platform called Tectonix to analyze human movements during the COVID-19 […]

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

March 21, 2020

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 […]

Spring leaf index anomaly in the continental United States, 1 January 2020 - 7 March 2020. In parts of the Southeast U.S., the arrival of spring in 2020 is the earliest in the 39-year record. Graphic: National Phenology Network

March 7, 2020

Spring 2020 in southern U.S. arrives earlier than ever recorded, adding to climate trend

By Cassidy Randall 6 March 2020 (The Guardian) – Across the south-eastern US, trees are unfurling their clouds of leaves after winter. Yet this picturesque and usually welcome development is this year cause for consternation. New data from the USA National Phenology Network (USA-NPN) shows that in parts of North Carolina, South Carolina and northern Florida, […]

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

February 17, 2020

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

By Darryl Fears 12 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found. As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers […]