By Lacey Avery 15 July 2013 (mongabay.com) – In the next few months, the beating of fragile fiery orange and black wings will transport the monarch butterfly south. But the number of monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) reaching their final destination has steadily declined, dropping to its lowest level in two decades last winter, according to […]
By Ritchie King and Josh Kadis 12 July 2013 (Quartz) – The Tour de France has seen better days. A spate of recent doping scandals in the cycling world has severely undercut the sport’s credibility, starting with the discovery of a French team’s rolling pharmacy in 1998′s Tour and culminating in Lance Armstrong’s televised admission […]
By Claire Thompson9 Jul 2013 (Grist) – Having trouble beating the heat this summer? Imagine how your infrastructure feels. Last summer, we told you about extreme heat leading to buckling roads, melting runways, and kinky railroad tracks. Now we’re also hearing about droopy power lines and grounded airplanes. NPR’s Science Friday hosted a discussion last […]
5 July 2013 (ICTMN) – The horses, desperate for water, had come to drink from a pool of rainwater that had run off a hill and flooded land on the Navajo reservation. What they got was a mud bath that turned deadly as they became trapped in the bentonite clay of the Chinle Formation, which […]
By Julie Cart3 July 2013 BOISE, Idaho (Los Angeles Times) – Early morning is a frenetic time at a wildfire command post. Biologists, meteorologists, foresters and firefighters hustle into tents and grab laptops to review overnight reports, prepping for the day’s assault. Fire behavior analysts run computer models that spit out information crucial to putting […]
Tim Radford for Climate News Network8 July 2013 (The Guardian) – Global warming has increased five-fold the probabilities that Australians will bake in record hot summers, according to new research from the University of Melbourne. And human activities – including greenhouse gas releases from fossil fuels – must account for at least half of these […]
By Kaci Poor for The Times-Standard, and Alicia Chang and Seth Borenstein, AP Science Writers6 July 2013 (Eureka Times-Standard) – […] An updated U.S. drought monitor map for California — released each Thursday by the National Drought Mitigation Center — shows nearly all of California, including Humboldt County, falling under a severe drought designation. ”This […]
5 July 2013 (Associated Press) – There’s a dangerous but basic equation behind the killer Yarnell Hill, Arizona wildfire and other blazes raging across the West this summer: More heat, more drought, more fuel, and more people in the way are adding up to increasingly ferocious fires. Scientists say a hotter planet will only increase […]
By FELICITY BARRINGER and KENNETH CHANG, with additional reporting by Fernanda Santos and John Dougherty from Prescott, Arizona, and Jonathan Weisman from Washington1 July 2013 (The New York Times) – One of the deadliest wildfires in a generation vastly expanded Monday to cover more than 8,000 acres, sweeping up sharp slopes through dry scrub and […]
By Jason Samenow19 June 2013 (Washington Post) – After Monday’s record-breaking temperatures, it remains unseasonably warm in Alaska. And the heat may stick around – at least in the northern part of the state. Writes the NWS office serving Fairbanks: …REGARDLESS OF WHICH MODEL IS FOLLOWED…ALL OF THEM SPELL EXTREME HEAT FOR NORTHERN ALASKA ALL […]
