USGS expert explains how global warming likely contributes to East Africa’s brutal drought

By Joe Romm  19 October 2011 Somalia’s “mis-government” has turned a brutal drought into a horrific famine. But “if it weren’t in drought, it wouldn’t be in famine,” as Dr. Chris Funk, one of the world’s foremost authorities on East African drought explained to me in an exclusive interview today. And Funk’s work provides strong […]

Arctic ‘hurricane’ slams Alaska – ‘A powerful and extremely dangerous storm of record or near-record magnitude’

November 9 (CNN) – A winter storm of hurricane strength was slamming Alaska early Wednesday with winds of up to 100 mph, high seas and blizzard conditions. The National Weather Service called the storm moving into the state off the Bering Sea “a powerful and extremely dangerous storm of record or near-record magnitude.” Early Wednesday, […]

Contaminated floodwaters advance into Bangkok, carrying nearly four million tons of garbage

By PAILIN WEDEL, Associated Press; Associated Press writers Vee Intarakratug, Todd Pitman, and Chris Blake contributed to this report.7 November 2011 BANGKOK (AP) – Floodwaters from Thailand’s flood-ravaged central heartland pushed farther into Bangkok on Monday, as residents of long-submerged provinces north of the capital started to rebuild their lives. The water slowly advancing through […]

Graph of the Day: U.S. Extremes in 1-Day Precipitation, 1910-2010

Created by Jesse Enloe, Jesse.Enloe@noaa.gov How has the climate changed over the past 50 or more years? In what ways and by how much? Many people, including climatologists, have been struggling with these questions for some time now, not only for scientific interest, but also to aid in policy decisions (IPCC 2001) and to inform […]

Video: New Crack in Pine Island Glacier

“A lot of times when you’re in science, you don’t get a chance to catch the big stories as they happen because you’re not there at the right place at the right time. But this time we were,” John Sonntag, a scientist with the NASA survey team that captured the data said in a video […]

Record floods continue torrent of destruction in Thailand – Flooding reaches deeper into Bangkok, residents complain government sacrificing poorer areas

By Ann M. Simmons in Los Angeles4  November 2011 Floodwaters in Thailand have crept closer to central Bangkok, forcing new evacuations and the closure of one of the country’s largest shopping malls as the deluge threatened to swamp the Thai capital’s subway system, according to international news agencies. Bloomberg news service reported Friday that Thai […]

Global greenhouse gas emissions exceed worst-case scenario

By Seth Borenstein5 November 2011 WASHINGTON (AP) – The global output of carbon dioxide jumped by the biggest amount on record, the US Department of Energy has calculated, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming. The new figures for last year mean that levels of greenhouse gases are […]

The ethical dimension of tackling climate change

By Stephen Gardiner20 October 2011 Sometimes the best way to make progress on a problem is to get clearer on what that problem is. Arguably, the biggest issue facing humanity at the moment is the looming global environmental crisis. Here, the problem is not that we are unaware that trouble is coming. After all, the […]

Global warming: Middle East’s vital wet winters are disappearing

By Pete Spotts, Staff writer28 October 2011 Winter droughts have become increasingly common in the Mediterranean region, particularly over the past 20 years, and a new study finds that global warming has driven at least half of the change. Drought conditions in this politically explosive region are expected to grow more severe over the course […]

Anger grows in Bangkok as officials choose which neighborhoods flood – Disease threat looms across Thailand

By THOMAS FULLER, with additional reporting by Poypiti Amatatham in Bangkok. 1 November 2011 BANGKOK – In the rush to defend Bangkok from monsoon floodwaters on Tuesday, Thai officials were faced with the choice of saving men or machines. Angry residents of a northern Bangkok neighborhood are demanding that officials open a barrier that is […]

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