2014 set to be hottest year on record – Chances of record cold years now ‘astronomically small’

20 November 2014 By Andrea Thompson (Climate Central) – A surge of Arctic air has left much of the continental U.S. shivering in unusually bitter November cold. But this early foray into winter weather is just a small blip in the overall global picture, which is of a warming world that is still on track […]

Global appetite for resources pushing species to the brink of extinction – ‘These recent extinctions could have been avoided through better habitat protection’

17 November 2014 (IUCN) – Pacific Bluefin Tuna, Chinese Pufferfish, American Eel, Chinese Cobra, and an Australian butterfly are threatened with extinction. Fishing, logging, mining, agriculture and other activities to satisfy our growing appetite for resources are threatening the survival of the Pacific Bluefin Tuna, Chinese Pufferfish, American Eel and Chinese Cobra, while the destruction […]

Graph of the Day: Water storage anomalies in California, 2011-2013

By J. S. Famiglietti    29 October 2014 (Nature Climate Change) – The ongoing California drought is evident in these maps of dry season (Sept–Nov) total water storage anomalies (in millimeter equivalent water height; anomalies with respect to 2005–2010). California’s Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins have lost roughly 15 km3 of total water per year […]

World losing battle against global warming

By Doyle Rice10 November 2014 (USA TODAY) – In the battle to combat global warming, the world isn’t moving fast enough to stay in the fight. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — which releases a new report every few years — again gave grim news last week as emissions rose 2.3% […]

Polar bears among 31 new species issued protection status by UN conservation body

By Joaquim Moreira Salles 10 November 2014 (Climate Progress) – The Eleventh Meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS) has extended protections to scores of migratory birds, fish and mammals. Over 100 countries came together in Quito, Ecuador for a week […]

Despite phase-out promise, the G20 still heavily subsidize fossil fuels

13 November 2014 (Planet Experts) – To prevent potentially catastrophic climate change, the world’s largest economies agreed to phase out their subsidies for carbon-emitting fossil fuels in 2009. That anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions are influencing the global climate is now almost without dispute. The latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate […]

Australia’s chance of El Niño rises to 70 percent – Heatwaves and drought to persist

By Reissa Su21 November 2014 (IBT) – Australia will be facing drought as soon as the Bureau of Meteorology forecasts a 70 percent chance of El Niño in the Pacific Ocean. By summer’s end, Australians will see less rainfall as temperatures rise due to warmer weather. The weather bureau has revised its El Niño forecast […]

How the Kalahari bushmen and other tribespeople are being evicted to make way for ‘wilderness’

By John Vidal15 November 2014 (The Observer) – When Botswana’s president, Ian Khama, opened a giant $4.9bn diamond mine in the heart of the Central Kalahari Game Reserve in September, there were some notable absentees among the invited guests: the 700 bushmen whose hunter-gatherer families had been the traditional inhabitants of the desert, but who […]

Taps run dry in São Paulo drought, but water company barely shrugs

By Dom Phillips 18 November 2014 ATIBAIA, Brazil (Washington Post) – Seen from a micro-light aircraft, flying low near this small town in Brazil’s interior, the scale of the water crisis blighting São Paulo, a megalopolis 40 miles away, was frighteningly clear. Four of the five reservoirs in an interlinked system that supplies 6.5 million […]

Lightning expected to increase by 50 percent with global warming

By Robert Sanders13 November 2014 BERKELEY (UC Berkeley) – Today’s climate models predict a 50 percent increase in lightning strikes across the United States during this century as a result of warming temperatures associated with climate change. Reporting in the Nov. 14 issue of the journal Science [pdf], UC Berkeley climate scientist David Romps and […]

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