By Adam Voiland28 July 2015 (NASA) – A new analysis of 35 years of meteorological data confirms fire seasons have become longer. Fire season, which varies in timing and duration based on location, is defined as the time of year when wildfires are most likely to ignite, spread, and affect resources. In the map above, […]
By Laura Geggel 25 July 2015 (LiveScience) – The mighty megafauna of the last ice age, including the wooly mammoths, short-faced bears and cave lions, largely went extinct because of rapid climate-warming events, a new study finds. During the unstable climate of the Late Pleistocene, about 60,000 to 12,000 years ago, abrupt climate spikes, called […]
BANG PLA MA, Thailand, 9 July 2015 (AFP) – Ms Ranong Rachasing would normally be in her fields at this time of the year, toiling in ankle-deep water to make her rice paddies bloom through knowledge honed by years of cultivating Thailand’s most celebrated export. Now the wizened 57-year-old’s fields lie fallow, baking under a […]
By Jeff Masters 24 July 2015 (Weather Underground) – Record warm sea surface temperatures in Hawaii’s waters threaten to bring a second consecutive year of record coral bleaching to their precious coral reefs this summer. According to NOAA, ocean temperatures in the waters near and to the south of the Hawaiian Islands were 1 – […]
By Chris Mooney 26 July 2015 FAIRBANKS, Alaska (Washington Post) – Hundreds of wildfires are continually whipping across this state this summer, leaving in their wake millions of acres of charred trees and blackened earth. At the Fairbanks compound of the state’s Division of Forestry recently, workers were busy washing a mountain of soot-covered fire […]
By Keith Ridler27 July 2015 BOISE, Idaho (Associated Press) – More than a quarter million sockeye salmon returning from the ocean to spawn are either dead or dying in the Columbia River and its tributaries due to warming water temperatures. Federal and state fisheries biologists say the warm water is lethal for the cold-water species […]
By John H. Richardson7 July 2015 (Esquire) – The incident was small, but Jason Box doesn’t want to talk about it. He’s been skittish about the media since it happened. This was last summer, as he was reading the cheery blog posts transmitted by the chief scientist on the Swedish icebreaker Oden, which was exploring […]
By Lindsay Abrams22 July 2015 (Salon) – Wildfire season isn’t what it used to be. In Washington state, a combination of ongoing drought and rapid development made 2014 particularly nightmarish, and this year’s unusually hot conditions are fueling another season of dangerous blazes — more than 300 so far, including one, 3,000-plus acre wildfire that […]
By Keven Drews22 July 2015 WEST KELOWNA, B.C. (The Canadian Press) – Relentless forest fires burning across British Columbia may be the new normal, Premier Christy Clark warned as she stood not far from a raging fire that threatened homes in her own riding. Clark spoke near the Westside Road fire outside West Kelowna on […]
By Simon Evans21 July 2015 (Carbon Brief) – It is a truth almost universally acknowledged that the shale gas revolution has led to a fall in US emissions. But what if that wasn’t true? New research published in Nature Communications suggests it was the global financial crisis, not fracking, that has done most to reduce […]
