Massive permafrost thaw documented in Canada, portending huge carbon release

BY Bob Berwyn28 February 2017 (InsideClimate News) – Huge slabs of Arctic permafrost in northwest Canada are slumping and disintegrating, sending large amounts of carbon-rich mud and silt into streams and rivers. A new study that analyzed nearly a half-million square miles in northwest Canada found that this permafrost decay is affecting 52,000 square miles […]

White House proposes steep budget cut to NOAA – “A reduced investment now would virtually guarantee jeopardizing the safety of the American public”

By Steven Mufson, Jason Samenow, and Brady Dennis 3 March 2017 (The Washington Post) – The Trump administration is seeking to slash the budget of one of the government’s premier climate science agencies by 17 percent, delivering steep cuts to research funding and satellite programs, according to a four-page budget memo obtained by The Washington […]

Deep oceans face starvation by end of century – “The rate of change underway in our oceans is faster than at any point we know of in geological history”

23 February 2017 (Heriot-Watt University) – New research from Heriot-Watt, published on open-access journal Elementa today, shows that food supply to some areas of the Earth’s deep oceans will decline by up to half by 2100. Dr Andrew Sweetman, associate professor at the Lyell Centre for Earth and Marine Science, and colleagues from 20 of […]

Image of the Day: Map of protected Amazon forest and encroaching deforestation, February 2017

24 February 2017 (Imazon) – This map of protected areas in the south of the Amazon shows the deforestation pressure that already happens around conservation units that will be reduced, if the Provisional Measure is adopted. [Translation by Facebook.] Original text: Mapa de Áreas Protegidas do Sul do Amazonas aponta a pressão (desmatamento) que já […]

Study finds that tropics became uninhabitable during PETM mass extinction

WEST LAFAYETTE, Indiana, 3 March 2017 (Purdue University) – New research findings show that as the world warmed millions of years ago, conditions in the tropics may have made it so hot some organisms couldn’t survive. Longstanding theories dating to the 1980s suggest that as the rest of the earth warms, the tropical temperatures would […]

Global warming could deliver final blow for world’s threatened species

By Alex Dale15 February 2017 (BirdLife International) – A new study suggests that half of all threatened terrestrial mammals, and a quarter of threatened birds, are already being negatively impacted by climate change. Could it prove the tipping point? Scepticism of climate change may be on the rise in some political circles, but there’s no […]

Reduction in Brazil’s Jamanxim Forest protection benefits recent squatters, study says

By Eduardo Pegurier20 February 2017 (o Eco) – [Translation by Google.] A new analysis published by the NGO Imazon, based in Belém do Pará, rekindles the accusations against the reduction of the Jamanxim National Forest (Flona), made by the government through a Provisional Measure at the end of December 2016. Created only ten years ago, […]

“The blob” of abnormal conditions boosted Western U.S. ozone levels in 2015

By Hannah Hickey15 February 2017 (University of Washington) – An unusually warm patch of seawater off the West Coast in late 2014 and 2015, nicknamed “the blob,” was part of an offshore pattern that had cascading effects up and down the coast. Its sphere of influence was centered on the marine environment but extended to […]

America’s aging dams are in need of repair

By Troy Griggs, Gregor Aisch, and Sarah Almukhtar23 February 2017 (The New York Times) – After two weeks that saw evacuations near Oroville, Calif., and flooding in Elko County, Nev., America’s dams are showing their age. Nearly 2,000 state-regulated high-hazard dams in the United States were listed as being in need of repair in 2015, […]

Fish affected by Deepwater Horizon oil spill give clues to air pollution and human heart disease

16 February 2017 (The University of Manchester) – A study by Manchester and Stanford scientists into the effects on fish of a 2010 oil disaster could shed new light on how air pollution affects humans’ hearts. The 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster resulted in a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, an area of […]

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