California waits anxiously for a ‘Miracle March’ or ‘Awesome April’ to offset the worst snowpack season on record in parts of the Sierra Nevada

By Bob Henson  27 February 2015 (Wunderground.com) – Californians are watching anxiously to see if a “Miracle March” or “Awesome April” salvages the worst snowpack season on record thus far in parts of the Sierra Nevada. Snow that piles up across the mountain range from autumn through spring furnishes more than 60% of the state’s […]

The winter of 2014-2015 was the warmest on record in Russia, may have been warmest winter ever recorded in Northern Hemisphere

MOSCOW, 2 March 2015 (TASS) – The outgoing winter, which ended a couple of days ago according to the calendar, has proved the warmest in the history of weather monitoring in Russia conducted since 1891, the Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring said on Monday. Over the past winter the average air temperatures in […]

Climate oscillations and the global warming faux pause

By Michael Mann26 February 2015 (RealClimate) – No, climate change is not experiencing a hiatus. No, there is not currently a “pause” in global warming. Despite widespread such claims in contrarian circles, human-caused warming of the globe proceeds unabated. Indeed, the most recent year (2014) was likely the warmest year on record. It is true […]

Drought-stricken São Paulo hit by floods, but little help for water reservoirs

By Everton Fox 26 February 2015 (Al Jazeera) – Downpours have wreaked havoc across São Paulo, causing widespread flooding. Almost 100mm of rain fell in little over an hour on Wednesday, turning streets and avenues into rivers. São Paulo’s Emergency Management Centre recorded 96mm of rain in just 60 minutes. Dozens of cars were submerged, […]

If you think that California is dry now, wait until mid-century – ‘We haven’t seen anything like this since at least the 1400s’

By Eric Holthaus12 February 2015 (Slate) – When it comes to drought in the West, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet. That’s the conclusion from a new study that links an increasing risk of decades-long drought episodes in the western United States to human-induced climate change. The study predicts drought severity outside the bounds of what’s […]

In a high-carbon dioxide world, canopy damage from insects limits forest growth – ‘This is the first time, at this scale, that insects have been shown to compromise the ability of forests to take up carbon dioxide’

By Kelly April Tyrrell2 March 2015 (UW-Madison News) – In a high carbon dioxide world, the trees would come out ahead. Except for the munching bugs. A new study published today [Monday, March 2, 2015] in Nature Plants shows that hungry, plant-eating insects may limit the ability of forests to take up elevated levels of […]

Global sea level rises to record high

(NASA) – Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water coming from the melting of land ice and the expansion of sea water as it warms. This chart tracks the change in sea level since 1993 as observed by satellites. Sea Level Technorati Tags: NASA,sea level,global warming,climate […]

Combined Arctic ice observations show decades of loss – ‘The ice is thinning dramatically’

By Hannah Hickey3 March 2015 (UW Today) – It’s no surprise that Arctic sea ice is thinning. What is new is just how long, how steadily, and how much it has declined. University of Washington researchers compiled modern and historic measurements to get a full picture of how Arctic sea ice thickness has changed. The […]

Polar ice loss worries photographer Camille Seaman – ‘It’s painful to see the devastation. It’s painful to know what is being lost’

By Duncan McCue 2 March 2015 (CBC News) – It was by chance that Camille Seaman first travelled north — a bumped flight on Alaska Airlines led to a free trip to Kotzebue on the Bering Strait. Little did the San Francisco-based photographer know it was the beginning of a decade-long quest, an unshakable compulsion […]

Global warming contributed to Syria’s 2011 uprising, scientists claim – Severe drought ‘more than twice as likely as a consequence of human interference in the climate system’

By Ian Sample2 March 2015 (The Guardian) – The prolonged and devastating drought that sparked the mass migration of rural workers into Syrian cities before the 2011 uprising was probably made worse by greenhouse gas emissions, US scientists say. The study is one of the first to implicate global warming from human activities as one […]

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