By Benjamin Wermund; Editing by Karen Brooks and Jerry Norton29 July 2011 MARFA, Texas (Reuters) – A historic Texas drought is driving bears into urban areas searching for food and water, the latest in a series of bizarre wildlife stories to come out of the deadly hot and dry weather across the nation. Authorities have […]
July 31 (New Scientist) – ANTARCTICA is rising like a cheese soufflé: slowly but surely. Lost ice due to climate change and left-over momentum from the end of the last big ice age mean the buoyant continent is heaven-bound. Donald Argus of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and colleagues used 15 years of […]
By John D. Cox28 July 2011 Before the last ice age, during a warm era some 125,000 years ago that was comparable to modern times, scientists know that the oceans reached levels that were some 15 to 20 feet higher than they are today. What they don’t know is, where did the extra water come […]
By BETSY BLANEY, Associated Press27 July 2011 Randy McGee spent $28,000 in one month pumping water onto about 500 acres in West Texas before he decided to give up irrigating 75 acres of corn and focus on other crops that stood a better chance in the drought. He thought rain might come and save those […]
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News28 July 2011 An exceptional wildfire in northern Alaska in 2007 put as much carbon into the air as the entire Arctic tundra absorbs in a year, scientists say. The Anaktuvuk River fire burned across more than 1,000 sq km (400 sq miles), doubling the extent of Alaskan tundra […]
By Rob Manning 28 July 2011 PORTLAND, OREGON – Northwest tribal leaders say they’re seeing climate change affect food sources that are vital to their culture. “All we can do is try to help these plants and animals adapt. If we don’t, the future of the tribes’ First Foods could be at stake” says Paul […]
By Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, www.guardian.co.uk28 July 2011 It was seen as one of the most distressing effects of climate change ever recorded: polar bears dying of exhaustion after being stranded between melting patches of Arctic sea ice. But now the government scientist who first warned of the threat to polar bears in a […]
MANDERA/WAJIR, 28 July 2011 (IRIN) – In his village, Kiliwehiri in northeastern Kenya, Abdullah Mohamed is known as “that mentally disturbed man”. “It is difficult to be normal after you have watched your entire life’s savings get wiped out before your eyes,” said Ibrahim Abdi, assistant chief of the village. “We are Somalis, we look […]
NYT Editorial27 July 2011 For centuries, the whitebark pine, Pinus albicaulis, has grown on hundreds of thousands of acres across the West. It is a keystone species of an entire ecosystem — one now seriously at risk. Most of the whitebark pines in Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks are dead. It has been declared an […]
By Michon Scott, based on The New Climate Normals by Jennifer FreemanJuly 6, 2011 In July 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center updated the U.S. Climate Normals: three-decade averages of weather observations, including temperature. The new annual normal temperatures for the United States reflect a warming world. Following procedures set by the World Meteorological Organization, […]
