By Leo Hickman 3 July 2012 Whenever an episode of extreme weather – heatwave, flood, drought, etc – hits the headlines, someone somewhere is sure to point the finger of blame at human-induced climate change. Such claims are normally slapped down with the much-aired mantra: “You cannot blame a single episode of bad weather on […]
By Elizabeth Kolbert 16 July 2012 (23 July 2012 issue of The New Yorker) […] It is now corn-sex season across the Midwest, and everything is not going well. High commodity prices spurred farmers to sow more acres this year, and unseasonable warmth in March prompted many to plant corn early. Just a few months […]
Caption by Adam Voiland12 July 2012 As in the western United States and northern Canada, Russia is ablaze. On 11 July 2012, more than 25,000 hectares (97 square miles) of forests were burning, according to the Russian Federal Forestry Agency. Most of the fires—uncontrolled wildfires in boreal forests—were in central and eastern Siberia. Fires had […]
By Dr. Jon Ranson9 July 2012 […] The flight delays were caused by smoke from a large number of forest fires that are burning across central Russia. Coming from St. Petersburg to Krasnoyarsk on July 6, we were high-flying witnesses to a smoky scene. At 33,000 feet, our airspace was smoke-free. But a thick blanket […]
11 July 2012, Canadian Press – Smoke lingering over much of British Columbia from Siberian wildfires has pushed ozone levels in parts of the province to never-before-seen numbers. By Monday, ozone levels reached 84 parts per billion in the central Interior region, about three times the average for July. B.C. Ministry of Environment air-quality meteorologist […]
Caption by Adam Voiland10 July 2012 More than 30 taiga wildfires burned in the Far East of Russia on 10 July 2012. According to the ITAR-TASS news agency, the fires had burned more than 2,200 hectares (9 square miles) in Yakutia and 2,000 hectares in Khabarovsk Territory. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s […]
Prince George, B.C., 9 July 2012 – The bluish haze that has settled over the City is not the result of any local pollution. It is smoke from a forest fire, but not one that is raging in B.C. and, despite what you might think, it isn’t smoke that is being pushed north from the […]
By Amy Goodman8 July 2012 Evidence supporting the existence of climate change is pummeling the United States this summer, from the mountain wildfires of Colorado to the recent “derecho” storm that left at least 23 dead and 1.4 million people without power from Illinois to Virginia. The phrase “extreme weather” flashes across television screens from […]
CANBERRA, Australia, 5 July 2012 (AP) – Increasingly common experiences with extreme climate-related events such as the Colorado wildfires, a record warm spring and preseason hurricanes have convinced many Americans climate change is a reality, the head of a U.S. scientific agency said Friday. Many Americans had previously seen climate change as a “nebulous concept” […]
By Brandon Keim6 July 2012 The vast wildfires of this summer and last represent a new normal for the western United States. They may signal a radical landscape transformation, one that will make the 21st century West an ecological frontier. “These transitions could be massive. They represent the convergence of several different forces,” said Donald […]
