Public health emergency declared over measles in anti-vax hotspot near Portland, Oregon

23 January 2019 (CBS News) – A public health emergency has been declared in Clark County, Washington, as a result of an ongoing measles outbreak. According to the latest update from the county’s Department of Health, 23 cases of measles have been confirmed and health officials are investigating two more suspected cases. The majority of […]

Adelaide breaks its all-time heat record, hitting 46.6C, in extreme Australia heatwave – 2,500 camels dying of thirst shot

By Naaman Zhou24 January 2019 (The Guardian) – Temperature records have tumbled across South Australia, with the city of Adelaide experiencing its hottest day on record, as the second heatwave in as many weeks hit southern parts of Australia Adelaide hit 46.6C on Thursday afternoon, the hottest temperature recording in any Australian state capital city […]

More animal species under threat of extinction, new method shows

17 January 2019 (Radboud University) – Currently approximately 600 species might be inaccurately assessed as non-threatened on the Red List of Threatened Species. More than a hundred others that couldn’t be assessed before, also appear to be threatened. A new more efficient, systematic and comprehensive approach to assess the extinction risk of animals has shown […]

Drilling toward disaster: Why U.S. oil and gas expansion Is incompatible with climate limits – “The U.S. is moving further and faster than any other country to expand oil and gas extraction”

By Ivana Kottasová18 January 2019 LONDON (CNN Business) – America’s push for oil and gas supremacy could lead to a “climate catastrophe,” a new report has warned. The report by Oil Change International said that the United States is set to “unleash the world’s largest burst” of carbon emissions from new oil and gas development […]

Tamino: The Oz heat distribution – In Alice Springs, “the number of very hot days each year (100°F or hotter) has nearly tripled” since early 20th century

By Tamino19 January 2019 (Open Mind) – We’ve spoken before (as have many before us) of the fact that climate isn’t just about the average, it’s about the whole distribution (the probability distribution if you want to get technical). We also emphasized that the tails of the distribution — the probabilities for extreme values (very […]

2018 was the fourth-costliest year since 1980 in terms of insured losses – Camp Fire in California caused highest overall wildfire loss on record

By Petra Löw8 January 2019 (Munich Re) – When compared with the record losses of the previous year from Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, the indications at the start of 2018 were that it would be a more moderate year. However, the second half of the year saw an accumulation of billion-dollar losses from floods, […]

World Economic Forum posts “Global Risks Report 2019” – In the “Age of Anger”, a tremendous increase in mutual hatred

20 January 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – At the beginning of each year, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report, which “presents the results of our latest Global Risks Perception Survey, in which nearly 1,000 decision-makers from the public sector, private sector, academia and civil society assess the risks facing the world.” In 2019, […]

Antarctic sea ice dips to record-low extent for early January

By Bob Henson  16 January 2019 (Weather Underground) – Just two years after shrinking to its lowest extent ever measured, Antarctic sea ice may challenge that record a few weeks from now. This depletion comes just as scientists reported a harrowing sixfold increase in the loss of Antarctic land ice over the last 40 years. […]

Davos climate obsessions contain clues for policymaking – The environment has replaced the economy and finance on the global elite’s worry list

By Gillian Tett17 January 2019 (Financial Times) – What are the biggest risks stalking the world today? A cynic might gripe that the list is so depressingly long that it is pointless even to try to choose: populism, cyber attacks, trade wars, weather shocks and global debt are all on the rise. However, during the […]

The hottest 15 places in the world today are all in Australia as record heatwave rages on – Thousands of flying foxes dead – “One of the worst things is in the aftermath and you hear the mums calling out for their pups”

16 January 2019 (The Journal) – The top 15 hottest places in the world today are all in Australia as a severe heatwave continues to roast the southeast of the continent. The Australian Bureau of Meteorology said the past four days were among the country’s top 10 warmest on record, with temperatures nearing 50 degrees […]

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