Humans are disrupting natural “salt cycle” on a global scale

Production of selected salts in Mt/year for (a) the world and (b) the United States. Graphic: Graphic: Kaushal, et al., 2023 / Nature Reviews Earth and Environment

July 28, 2024

Humans are disrupting natural “salt cycle” on a global scale

31 October 2023 (University of Maryland) – The influx of salt in streams and rivers is an ‘existential threat,’ according to a research team led by a UMD geologist. The planet’s demand for salt comes at a cost to the environment and human health, according to a new scientific review led by University of Maryland Geology Professor Sujay Kaushal. Published […]

Map showing surface air temperature in Africa, Europe, Southwest Asia, and India on 25 June 2024. Heat waves rolled through parts of Europe, the Middle East, and South Asia, leaving vulnerable populations at risk. Data: GEOS data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC. Graphic: Lauren Dauphin / NASA Earth Observatory

July 5, 2024

In the grip of global heat – Early Summer 2024 heatwaves in the Northern Hemisphere have been fierce

By Adam Voiland 28 June 2024 (NASA) – It’s only the beginning of the summer season in the Northern Hemisphere, but Earth is already roasting. Scientists from NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies recently reported that May 2024, the hottest May in NASA’s global surface temperature analysis, marked a full year of record-high monthly temperatures. Likewise, NOAA recently reported that January through […]

Global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions in GTCO2e, 1990-2023. In 2023, global energy-related greenhouse gas emissions exceeded 40 gigatonnes for the first time ever. Graphic: Energy Institute

June 23, 2024

World energy report reveals 2023 was a year of record highs in an energy-hungry world – “In a year where we have seen the contribution of renewables reaching a new record high, ever increasing global energy demand means the share coming from fossil fuels has remained virtually unchanged at just over 80 percent for yet another year”

20 June 2024 (Energy Institute) – The Energy Institute (EI) and co-authors KPMG and Kearney today released the 73rd annual edition of the Statistical Review of World Energy, presenting for the first time full global energy data for 2023. Five key stories emerge from the 2023 data: EI President Juliet Davenport OBE HonFEI said: “Energy is central […]

A screenshot from a CBC video shows a girl in Sheikpura, India suffering from record-breaking heat on 29 May 2024. In the northeast of India, students fainted from the heat in their classrooms. Photo: CBC

June 1, 2024

Animals collapse, water shortages bite amid India’s searing heat – “I haven’t seen it so hot in 56 years”

By Sakshi Dayal, Tanvi Mehta, and Anushree Fadnavis 31 May 2024 NEW DELHI (Reuters) – Animals collapsed, people jumped on water tankers with buckets amid shortages, and government employees changed their work hours as blistering summer heat kept its grip on north India on Thursday. Although Thursday’s readings were marginally lower in Delhi than the […]

Map showing maximum temperatures in India during the period 16 May 2024 through 25 May 2024. Parts of Rajasthan, Bundelkhand, Madhya Pradesh, and west Haryana experienced maximum temperature in the range of 45°C to 48°C. Punjab, Delhi NCR, and Uttar Pradesh experienced between 43-46°C. Graphic: Navdeep Dahiya

May 30, 2024

“Unbearable” heat in Delhi is testing limits of human survival – “The rise in temperatures comes alongside water shortages, and together are making many areas simply unlivable”

By Karishma Mehrotra and Dan Stillman 29 May 2024 DELHI (The Washington Post) – India’s capital territory of Delhi experienced some of its hottest weather on record Tuesday and Wednesday, with highs in some neighborhoods near the landmark threshold of 50 degrees Celsius (122 degrees Fahrenheit). The exceptional heat has closed schools, endangered outdoor workers, […]

Map showing April 2024 mean temperature in South Asia. The blue outline shows the region with the most extreme heat. Graphic: World Weather Attribution

May 27, 2024

Sweltering heat across Asia in 2024 was 45 times more likely because of climate change, study finds – “Heat is now among the foremost risks in terms of personal health for millions across the world as well as nations’ economic development”

By Sibi Arasu 14 May 2024 BENGALURU, India (AP) – Sizzling heat across Asia and the Middle East in late April that echoed last year’s destructive swelter was made 45 times more likely in some parts of the continent because of human-caused climate change, a study Tuesday found. Scorching temperatures were felt across large swaths of Asia, […]

A man wades through an area flooded by heavy rains, in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil, 3 May 2024. Photo: Carlos Macedo / AP Photo

May 27, 2024

From flooding in Brazil and Houston to brutal heat in Asia, extreme weather seems nearly everywhere in 2024 – “We’re departing the climate of the 20th century right now and we just can’t handle these events”

By Seth Borenstein, Suman Naishadham, Sibi Arasu, and Fabiano Maisonnave 7 May 2024 (AP News) – In sweltering Brazil, flooding killed dozens of people and paralyzed a city of about 4 million people. Voters and politicians in India, amid national elections, are fainting in heat that hit as high as 115 degrees (46.3 degrees Celsius). […]

Twenty-first century groundwater-level trends in globally distributed monitoring wells. Each point represents one monitoring well, coloured to represent the Theil–Sen trend of annual median groundwater levels during the twenty-first century. Blue and red points indicate shallowing and deepening, respectively, of groundwater levels over time, with darker colours indicating faster rates. a, Spatial distributions of groundwater-level trends in globally distributed monitoring wells. b–o, Regional maps illustrating the substantial spatial variability in groundwater-level trends. Supplementary Notes 16 and 17 show monitoring wells and their groundwater-level trends at subcontinental scales (Supplementary Note 16) and in 207 individual aquifer systems. Graphic: Jasechko, et al., 2024 / Nature

April 28, 2024

Groundwater resources are drying up across the globe – “Climate variability and change can impact water supplies underground as well as above-ground”

By Matthew Rozsa 24 January 2024 (Salon) – Humans rely on groundwater for many things, but especially our food. Roughly 30 percent of all the planet’s available freshwater comes from groundwater, or water that is found underground in the spaces between rocks, soil and sand. It is primarily used for agriculture and billions of humans are dependent […]

Annual global mean surface temperature anomalies relative to 1850–1900. Global mean near-surface temperature in 2023 was 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above the 1850–1900 average. The analysis is based on a synthesis of six global temperature datasets. 2023 was the warmest year in the 174-year instrumental record in each of the six datasets. The past nine years – from 2015 to 2023 – were the nine warmest years on record. The two previous warmest years were 2016, with an anomaly of 1.29 ± 0.12 °C, and 2020, with an anomaly of 1.27 ± 0.13 °C. Globally, every month from June to December was record warm for the respective month. September 2023 was particularly noteworthy, surpassing the previous global record for September by a wide margin (0.46 °C–0.54 °C) in all datasets. The second-highest margin by which a September record was broken in the past 60 years (the period covered by all datasets) was substantially smaller, at 0.03 °C–0.17 °C in 1983. July is typically the warmest month of the year globally, and thus July 2023 became the warmest month on record. The long-term increase in global temperature is due to increased concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The shift from La Niña, which lasted from mid-2020 to early 2023, to fully developed El Niño conditions by September 2023 likely explains some of the rise in temperature from 2022 to 2023. However, some areas of unusual warming, such as the North-East Atlantic do not correspond to typical patterns of warming or cooling associated with El Niño. Other factors, which are still being investigated, may also have contributed to the exceptional warming from 2022 to 2023, which is unlikely to be due to internal variability alone. Graphic: WMO

April 28, 2024

WMO: Climate change indicators reached record levels in 2023 – “Sirens are blaring across all major indicators. Some records aren’t just chart-topping, they’re chart-busting. And changes are speeding-up.”

19 March 2024 (WMO) – A new report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) shows that records were once again broken, and in some cases smashed, for greenhouse gas levels, surface temperatures, ocean heat and acidification, sea level rise, Antarctic sea ice cover and glacier retreat. Heatwaves, floods, droughts, wildfires, and rapidly intensifying tropical cyclones […]

Global energy-related CO2 emissions and their annual change, 1900-2023. Total energy-related CO2 emissions increased by 1.1 percent in 2023. Far from falling rapidly – as is required to meet the global climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement – CO2 emissions reached a new record high of 37.4 Gt in 2023. This estimate is based on the IEA’s detailed, cutting-edge region-by-region and fuel-by-fuel analysis of the latest official national energy data, supplemented by data on economic and weather conditions. Graphic: IEA

April 28, 2024

IEA: CO2 emissions in 2023 reached record high – Weather effects and continued Covid-19 reopening played a significant role in driving emissions in 2023

March 2024 (IEA) – CO2 Emissions in 2023 provides a complete picture of energy-related emissions in 2023. The report finds that clean energy growth has limited the rise in global emissions, with 2023 registering an increase of 1.1 percent. Weather effects and continued Covid-19 reopening played a significant role in driving emissions in 2023. Advanced economies saw […]

Desdemona Despair

Tag: India