NOAA, USGS: Climate change impacts to U.S. coasts threaten public health, safety, and economy

28 January 2013 (NOAA) – According to a new technical report, the effects of climate change will continue to threaten the health and vitality of U.S. coastal communities’ social, economic and natural systems. The report, Coastal Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerabilities: a technical input to the 2013 National Climate Assessment, authored by leading scientists and experts, […]

Australia rainfall records tumble as storm heads south – Winds whip up bushfires in Victoria

By Peter Hannam, Carbon economy editor29 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Update A slew of January rainfall records were broken as the remnants of ex-tropical cyclone Oswald heads south along the NSW coast. Pine Ridge, south of Tamworth, copped 131 millimetres of rain in the 24 hours to 9am Tuesday, setting an annual record, […]

Four dead, two missing as heavy rain ravages Australia coast – ‘It was supposed to be a one-in-100-year flood, not a one-in-two-year flood’

By Ilya Gridneff, Nicole Hasham, and Amy Remeikis29 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – A week after  some of the hottest temperatures on record, four Queenslanders are dead and two men remain missing as winds and torrential rain lash the east coast and flooding wreaks havoc in parts of northern NSW. Ex-tropical cyclone Oswald has […]

Sydney braces for wild weather as cyclone system moves south – ‘The extent of the rainfall and how heavy it’s been would only be seen once every few decades’

By Sally Willoughby and Georgina Mitchell28 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – The heavy rainfall following cyclone Oswald which has caused widespread flooding in Queensland is forecast to hit Sydney on Monday as long-weekend holidaymakers return to the city. Experts describe the flooding and tornadoes battering the east coast as the worst they have seen […]

Five tornadoes hit Queensland towns during ‘unprecedented’ rainfall – Rivers swell to record levels

By Ellen Lutton and Anne Tarasov27 January 2013 (Sydney Morning Herald) – Several areas of Queensland have been declared disaster zones after five tornadoes ripped through the Bundaberg region on Saturday afternoon. The Premier, Campbell Newman, made the declarations as Gladstone began mass evacuations in the face of unprecedented rain expected over the next 24 […]

Typhoon Bopha decimated coral reefs in the Philippines – ‘It is incredible to see the damages’

By Jeremy Hance24 January 2013 (mongabay.com) – When Typhoon Bopha, also known as Pablo, ran ashore on Mindanao, it was the largest tropical storm ever to hit the Philippine island. In its wake, the massive superstorm left over 1,000 people dead and 6.2 million affected, with officials saying illegal logging and mining worsened the scale […]

Video: Sandstorm in Western Australia, 11 January 2013

By Ruth Doherty11 January 2013 (AOL) – Incredible pictures of an enormous wall of dust hitting Australia’s west coast have been captured by tugboat workers and plane passengers. The red sand and dust storm headed towards the town of Onslow in north-western Australia, after being picked up by winds in the Indian Ocean. Tugboat worker […]

U.S. roasts to hottest year on record by landslide – ‘A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat’

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer8 January 2013 WASHINGTON (AP) – America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012. A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That’s a full degree warmer than the […]

Munich Re: Natural catastrophe statistics for 2012 dominated by weather extremes in the United States – ‘These catastrophes clearly demonstrate the type of events we can expect to contend with more often’

Contact: Media Relations Munich, Michael Able, Tel.: +49 (89) 3891-2934Media contact in Asia, Nikola Kemper, Tel.: +852 2536 6936 Media Relations USA, Beate Monastiridis-Dörr, Tel.: +1 (609) 243-4622 3 January 2013 Munich (Munich Re) – The USA accounted for a higher proportion of global natural catastrophe losses than usual in 2012, due to a series […]

Climate Central: Hurricane Sandy tops list of 2012 extreme weather and climate events

By Andrew Freedman, Michael Lemonick, and Dan Yawitz27 December 2012 (Climate Central) – From unprecedented heat waves that shattered “Dust Bowl” era records from the 1930s, to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated coastal New Jersey and New York, 2012 was the year Mother Nature had it out for the U.S. No country on Earth rivaled the […]

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