Image of the Day: Macquarie Marshes at Quambone Station, NSW Australia

The Macquarie Marshes – a vast, tangled sprawl of creeks and swamps between Nyngan and Walgett in the state’s northwest – has declined by about half since the 1960s because of the drought and the diversion of water for irrigation. … ”About 50 per cent of the wetland area is gone and more has been […]

Climatologist sees disastrous weather in future

By CARL HARTMAN, For The Associated Press Mon Aug 2, 6:53 am ET The Weather of the Future: Heat Waves, Extreme Storms, and Other Scenes From a Climate-Changed Planet (Harper, $25.99), by Heidi Cullen: Climatologist Heidi Cullen was taken aback at her lecture on the prospects for global warming when a member of the audience […]

Photo Gallery: Russia Fires

Smoke from the fires has swept as far as Moscow, cloaking the city in a veil of smog, 30 July 2010. BBC In pictures: Russia fires A burnt-out car sits in front of a destroyed house in the village of Mokhovoye, some 130 kilometers from Moscow on July 31, 2010. Hundreds of thousands of firefighters, […]

Graph of the Day: Temperatures in the Lower 48 States, 1901–2009

This figure shows how average temperatures in the lower 48 states have changed since 1901. Surface data come from land-based weather stations, while satellite measurements cover the lower troposphere, which is the lowest level of the Earth’s atmosphere (see diagram on p. 20). “UAH” and “RSS” represent two different methods of analyzing the original satellite […]

Video: Russia mobilizes Army to fight deadly fires

Associated PressJuly 30, 2010 Vast sections of Russia were under a state of emergency Friday as more than 10,000 firefighters fought to save villages and forests from being reduced to ash and ember during the country’s hottest summer on record. Video: Russia Mobilizes Army to Fight Deadly Fires Technorati Tags: forest fire,wildfire,Asia,drought,heat wave,global warming,climate change

Pakistan flood death toll rises to more than 1,100 people, ‘whole villages’ destroyed in heavy rains

By Meredith Kolodner, DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERSunday, August 1st 2010, 10:50 AM More than 1,100 people are dead after record-breaking rains and devastating floods swept Pakistan, officials said Sunday. The death toll could rise as another 27,000 people are still trapped by surging waters, and disease threatens survivors in rescue camps. “Whole villages have washed […]

Wildfires spread across Russia’s West – Patriarch calls for Russians to pray for rain

By Katie Cassidy, Sky News OnlineSunday August 01, 2010 Firefighters in Russia are struggling to contain blazes sweeping across large swathes of the country. More than 214,000 acres of woodland and peat bog are burning and all of the army’s 300 firetrucks have been deployed to help local units. “There are thousands of small smouldering […]

After drought, Australia farmers now face a plague of locusts

By DEBRA JOPSONJuly 30, 2010 Peter Hammond cradles the tiny white eggs in his hand that could ruin his 2200-hectare sheep and cattle property near Lake Cowal when they hatch in spring. ”When you squash them, they create moisture, so you know that they’re actually alive, that there’s grasshoppers in them,” he said. Farmers are […]

UN: Russian fires are ‘world disaster’

UPDATE: Desdemona failed to notice that this story is from 1998 and thanks readers for the QA. BBCOctober 10, 1998 The scale of the damage caused by recent forest fires in Russia’s Far East amounts to a world-wide ecological disaster, a United Nations team has said. The Russian news agency, Itar-Tass, said the team was […]

Graph of the Day: Size of US Wildfires, 1983-2008

Data on wildland fires in the United States show that the number of acres burned per fire has increased since the 1980s. In the western United States, both the frequency of large wildfires and the length of the fire season have increased substantially in recent decades, due primarily to earlier spring snowmelt and higher spring […]

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