By Jason Hickel15 July 2016 (Guardian) – Earlier this year, media outlets around the world announced that February had broken global temperature records by a shocking amount. March broke all the records too. In June, our screens were covered with surreal images of flooding in Paris, the Seine bursting its banks and flowing into the […]
By Jessica Hamilton14 August 2016 (AP) – Emergency crews in Louisiana worked through Saturday night to rescue thousands of residents in the southern part of the state from their cars and homes overwhelmed with flood waters. At least three people were killed in the deadly flooding that state officials are calling “historic.” From the sky […]
By Andrew Mambondiyani28 July 2016 (mongabay.com) – Lyben Minyizeya’s homestead in Chisumbanje in eastern Zimbabwe resembles a dumpsite for disused tractors and other agricultural equipment. The broken and rusty machinery reminds him of the good old farming days. In this farming community near the border with Mozambique, it is sizzling hot in summer. Baobab, acacia, […]
By Maria-José Viñas, adapted by Kathryn Hansen4 August 2016 (NASA) – Though it seems counter-intuitive, Greenland’s thick ice sheet actually insulates the bedrock below from the cold air temperatures at the surface. As a result, the bottom of the ice—slowly warmed by heat coming from Earth’s depths—can be tens of degrees warmer than at the […]
By Olga Gertcyk10 August 2016 (Siberian Times) – The shoreline on remote island retreats by 74 metres in seven years due to increased wave power of unfrozen sea, and thawing permafrost. The stunning speed of the coastal erosion on Wiese Island in the northern Kara Sea – shown here – is a graphic example of […]
By Nika Knight10 August 2016 (Countercurrents.org) – It’s no secret that we have trashed, poisoned, and warmed oceans at an unprecedented rate via human-caused climate change and pollution. It seems that oceans may be paying us back in kind, according to a new study that found levels of bacteria responsible for life-threatening illnesses spiking in […]
By Hugh Naylor10 August 2016 BAGHDAD – Record-shattering temperatures this summer have scorched countries from Morocco to Saudi Arabia and beyond, as climate experts warn that the severe weather could be a harbinger of worse to come. In coming decades, U.N. officials and climate scientists predict that the mushrooming populations of the Middle East and […]
By Joe Sterling and Boris Sanchez13 August 2016 AMITE CITY, Louisiana (CNN) – Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards called the widespread flooding spawned by the region’s pounding rainfall across the southern part of the state a “truly historic event” that won’t be over anytime soon. The rainfall battered the parishes around Baton Rouge and […]
By Rebecca Lindsey2 August 2016 (NOAA) – A record-smashing hurricane season in the central North Pacific. Water rationing in Puerto Rico. The biggest one-year jump in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations on record. Severe drought in Ethiopia. The hottest global surface temperature—by one of the largest margins—on record. Those are just a few of 2015’s major […]
By Rebecca Morelle2 August 2016 (BBC News) – One of the last known groups of woolly mammoths died out because of a lack of drinking water, scientists believe. The Ice Age beasts were living on a remote island off the coast of Alaska, and scientists have dated their demise to about 5,600 years ago. They […]
