1 February 2013 (mongabay.com) – The rate of tree mortality in the Amazon rainforest due to storm damage and drought is 9-17 percent higher than conventionally believed, reports a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Comparing Landsat satellite images with on-the-ground observations, researchers from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, […]
By Jim Lynch 2 February 2013 (The Detroit News) – In the nearly 100 years researchers have catalogued the rise and fall of the Great Lakes, Michigan and Huron have never seen a month like January. The two-lake system recorded its lowest-ever level for a month, a mean of 576.02 feet above sea level. It’s […]
30 January 2013 (Bloomberg News) – Beijing’s air, which has exceeded the World Health Organization’s “healthy” limit every day this year, is similar to that in an airport smoking lounge. The CHART OF THE DAY shows Beijing’s daily peak and average concentrations of PM2.5, the airborne particulate matter that raises risks for lung and heart […]
By Mereseini Marau4 February 2013 NEW DELHI (Fiji Times) – The government of Kiribati will buy about 6000 acres of land near Savusavu for its food security as the country has started feeling the effects of the rising sea level. And it will ensure that it protects whatever part of Kiribati that can be saved […]
By Becky Oskin, OurAmazingPlanet 1 February 2013 The scene of the crime: The Arctic. The suspect: The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012. The victim: The Arctic sea ice, which melted to a record low area last year. “The Great Arctic Cyclone of August 2012″ arose in Siberia on 2 August 2012 and crossed the […]
By dana198130 January 2013 A paper recently published in Global Environmental Change by Brysse, et al., (2012) examined a number of past predictions made by climate scientists, and found that that they have tended to be too conservative in their projections of the impacts of climate change. The authors thus suggest that climate scientists […]
By RACHEL NUWER30 January 2013 (The New York Times) – Water, or the lack thereof, is one of the defining challenges of the 21st century. As temperatures rise and droughts become more frequent, the threat of dwindling water resources worries not just environmentalists and governments but companies and their investors, too. Nearly every industrial sector, […]
By HEATHER TIMMONS31 January 2013 NEW DELHI (The New York Times) – Beijing’s air pollution has reached such toxic levels recently that the Chinese government is finally acknowledging the problem – and acting on it. But in New Delhi on Thursday, air pollution levels far exceeded those in Beijing, only without any government acknowledgement […]
By Jeff Masters 30 January 2013 […] Today’s severe weather outbreak was helped by record levels of January moisture, as a flow of unusually moist air rode northwards from the Gulf of Mexico, where water temperatures were about 0.5°F above average. Meteorologists use a term called “precipitable water” to discuss how much water vapor is […]
By Dr. Jeff Masters 29 January 2013 (Weather Underground) – The calendar says it’s January, but the atmosphere looks more like April over the Midwest U.S., where a spring-like surge of warm air is interacting with a strong low pressure system to create a dangerous severe weather situation. The warm air surging northwards has already […]
