By Dr. Jeff Masters 15 August 2019 (Weather Underground) – July 2019 was the planet’s warmest July and warmest month in absolute terms since record keeping began in 1880, said NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI) on Thursday. Earth’s previous warmest month on record was July 2016. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) rated July 2019 in a […]
12 August 2019 (NCEI) – A new State of the Climate report [pdf] confirmed that 2018 was the fourth warmest year in records dating to the mid-1800s. Last year was the fourth warmest year on record despite La Niña conditions early in the year and the lack of a short-term warming El Niño influence until […]
By Gisele Galoustian 15 July 2019 (FAU) – Coral reefs are considered one of the most threatened ecosystems on the planet and are dying at alarming rates around the world. Scientists attribute coral bleaching and ultimately massive coral death to a number of environmental stressors, in particular, warming water temperatures due to climate change. A […]
By Caitlin McDermott-Murphy 6 June 2019 (The Harvard Gazette) – About a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in permafrost. Now, it turns out these permanently frozen beds of soil, rock, and sediment are actually not so permanent: They’re thawing at an increasing rate. Human-induced climate change is warming these lands, melting the ice […]
By Bob Henson 6 June 2019 (Weather Underground) – Propelled by a two-week siege of widespread severe weather and heavy rain in late May, the contiguous U.S. has once again broken its record for the wettest year-long span in data going back to 1895. According to the monthly U.S. climate summary released Thursday from the […]
4 June 2019 (NOAA) – Atmospheric carbon dioxide continued its rapid rise in 2019, with the average for May peaking at 414.7 parts per million (ppm) at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory. The measurement is the highest seasonal peak recorded in 61 years of observations on top of Hawaii’s largest volcano and the seventh consecutive […]
30 May 2019 (Desdemona Despair) – Last week, the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory posted its annual update to the NOAA Annual Greenhouse Gas Index (AGGI), which measures the climate-warming influence of long-lived trace gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. To nobody’s surprise, the AGGI continued its inexorable rise in 2018 because, for another year, […]
By Jonathan Mingle 13 May 2019 (Undark) – Every week, dozens of metal flasks arrive at NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, each one loaded with air from a distant corner of the world. Research chemist Ed Dlugokencky and his colleagues in the Global Monitoring Division catalog the canisters, and then use a series of […]
By Joseph Albanese 8 May 2019 (Princeton Environmental Institute) – As the planet continues to warm, multi-day heat waves are projected to increase in frequency, length and intensity. The additive effects of these extreme heat events overwhelm emergency service providers and hospital staff with heat-related maladies, disrupt the electrical grid and can even cause delays […]
By Bob Henson 8 May 2019 (Weather Underground) – The 12 months ending in April 2019 were the wettest year-long period in U.S. records going back to 1895, according to the monthly U.S. climate summary issued Wednesday by the NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. Averaged across the contiguous U.S., the total of 36.20” made the period from May […]