North America – Page 13 – Desdemona Despair

Map showing Arctic temperature anomalies for December 2019, January 2020, and February 2020. Mainland Alaska and northwest Canada, along with parts of Greenland and Svalbard were the primary high latitude areas that were consistently colder than average during winter 2019/2020. Northern Eurasia was outlandishly mild. Graphic: Karsten Haustein / Twitter

March 2, 2020

Winter 2019/2020 warmest on record in Moscow, first winter to average above freezing – Temperature milestones set across Europe and North America – German ice wine harvest fails for first time on record

By Andrew Freedman 2 March 2020 (The Washington Post) – The meteorological winter of 2019-2020 shattered temperature records in Russia and France as well as other parts of Europe and the United States. In Moscow, this was the warmest winter in nearly 200 years of record-keeping, and the first winter there to have an average […]

A car and home damaged by Hurricane Dorian show the extent of the damage to the island of Great Abaco even six months after the storm in February 2020. Photo: David Common / CBC

March 2, 2020

Six months after Hurricane Dorian levelled Bahamas, in places it still looks like it just hit – “What do people do? They have nowhere to come back to. When they do come, there is nothing.”

By David Common and Melissa Mancini 1 March 2020 (CBC News) – Ten minutes away from the restored and gleaming cruise ship terminals on Grand Bahama island, just beyond the multi-millionaires’ beach compounds, is the real Bahamas — and it lies in ruins. It’s six months since Hurricane Dorian made landfall on the island nation, […]

Spatial cumulative extents of the Deepwater Horizon (DWH) oil spill. (A) Cumulative NESDIS anomaly daily composites integrated from 20 April 2010 to 21 July 2010. Daily fishing closures are marked with gray lines; the cumulative fishing closure area is marked with a thick dashed yellow line. The black star represents the location of the DWH blowout. (B) Cumulative value of daily average oil concentrations (ppb), integrated across the same time span as (A) and across water depths. Vertical depth layers are 0 to 1 m, 1 to 20 m, and in 20-m increments down to 2500 m. Sediment and water samples with higher-than-background concentration are marked in bright green and dark blue circles, respectively. Red crosses in (B) represent approximate locations of DWH-related oil detections reported in previous studies. Daily fishery closures are marked with black polygons; the cumulative fishery closure area is marked with a dashed thick polygon. AB, Apalachee Bay; DP, Deep Plume; EFS, East Florida Shelf; FK, Florida Keys; LC, Loop Current System; TXS, Texas Shores; WFS, West Florida Shelf. (C) Categorization of the modeled oil spill are as follows: (i) nontoxic, PAH concentrations above background level and smaller than 0.5 and 1 ppb at the surface (depth, 0 to 1 m) and in the water column (depth, >1 m), respectively; (ii) toxic-to-biota and invisible, PAH concentrations 0.5 to 17 ppb at the surface and above 1 ppb in the water column; and (iii) toxic and visible, PAH concentrations above 17 ppb. In (C), categories were computed according to maximal concentrations across time. (D) Duration of toxic concentrations across the domain. (E) LC50 of 12 experiments examining the photoinduced toxicity to blue crab (31), fiddler crab (33), mahi mahi (29, 30), red drum (32), and speckled sea trout (32) (for more details, see table S2). (F) The spatial extent of the toxic concentrations from (E); color codes in (F) are according to bar colors in (E), representing concentrations exceeding LC50. In (F), toxic PAH of 0.5 ppb was concentrations were considered for surface waters only (depth, 0 to 1 m). Graphic: Berenshtein, et al., 2020 / Science Advances

February 17, 2020

The toxic reach of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill was much larger and deadlier than previous estimates – “Large areas of the Gulf of Mexico were exposed to invisible and toxic oil that extended beyond the boundaries of the satellite footprint and the fishery closures”

By Darryl Fears 12 February 2020 (The Washington Post) – The spread of oil from the Deepwater Horizon disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was far worse than previously believed, new research has found. As the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history approaches its 10th anniversary in April, a study by two University of Miami researchers […]

Average U.S. temperature for December and January combined, from December-January 1895-96 to 2019-20. Graphic: NOAA / NCEI

February 10, 2020

January 2020 sees warmest winter in U.S. history so far

By Bob Henson 6 February 2020 (Weather Underground) – The first two months of meteorological winter (December 2019 – January 2020) were the warmest on record for the contiguous U.S. in data going back to 1895. NOAA provided the January data and images on Thursday ahead of its monthly U.S. climate report. The average national temperature […]

Fireflies in Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo: Radim Schreiber

February 4, 2020

Fireflies face extinction threats of habitat loss, light pollution, pesticides

By Mike Silver 3 February 2020 MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, Massachusetts (Tufts Now) – Habitat loss, pesticide use and, surprisingly, artificial light are the three most serious threats endangering fireflies across the globe, raising the spectre of extinction for certain species and related impacts on biodiversity and ecotourism, according to a Tufts University-led team of biologists associated with […]

External carapace and pereopod exoskeleton of the Dungeness crab megalopae (a) in its undamaged form (b, c) and with dissolution presence ranging from mild (Stage 1; d) to severe (Stage 2; e, f) patterns showing similarity in the structural damages (g) or exposed crystals (h). Indicated is the scale of the measurements (μm). The undamaged megalopae originated from the offshore or northwards habitats characterized by low ∆Ωcal,60 vertical gradients, while the most severely affected megalopae came from the nearshore or coastal habitats with steep ∆Ωcal,60 conditions. Photo: Bednaršek, et al., 2020 / Science of The Total Environment

February 2, 2020

Dungeness crab larvae already showing effects of coastal acidification – “We found dissolution impacts to the crab larvae that were not expected to occur until much later in this century”

23 January 2020 (NOAA) – A new NOAA-funded study has documented for the first time that ocean acidification along the US Pacific Northwest coast is impacting the shells and sensory organs of some young Dungeness crab, a prized crustacean that supports the most valuable fishery on the West Coast. Analysis of samples collected during a […]

People break into a warehouse with supplies believed to have been from when Hurricane Maria struck the island in 2017 in Ponce, Puerto Rico on 18 January 2020, after a powerful earthquake hit the island. Photo: Ricardo Arduengo / AFP / Getty Images

January 19, 2020

Discovery of unused disaster supplies from Hurricane Maria angers Puerto Rico

By Danica Coto 19 January 2020 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) – People in a southern Puerto Rico city discovered a warehouse filled with water, cots and other unused emergency supplies, then set off a social media uproar Saturday when they broke in to retrieve goods as the area struggles to recover from a strong […]

Dead salmon on the shores of the Ugashik, Alaska in July 2019. More than 100,000 fish in Bristol Bay were killed by heat stress in 2019. Photo: Birch Block

January 19, 2020

Record summer heat in Alaska wiped out at least 100,000 Kuskokwim salmon in Bristol Bay – “I’ve never seen a salmon that is still ocean-bright acting in such a way”

By Isabelle Ross 15 January 2020 DILLINGHAM, Alaska (Alaska Public Media) – The sun beat down relentlessly on Bristol Bay this summer, heating up the rivers and lakes where millions of sockeye salmon returned to spawn. July was the region’s hottest month on record, and in some rivers, that heat was lethal. Tim Sands, an […]

On 1 January 2016 and 2 January 2016, 6,540 common murre carcasses were found washed ashore near Whitter, Alaska, translating into about 8,000 bodies per mile of shoreline — one of the highest beaching rates recorded during the mass mortality event. Photo: David B. Irons

January 17, 2020

Huge “hot blob” in Pacific Ocean caused mass starvation in largest seabird die-off – “The magnitude and scale of this failure has no precedent”

By Michelle Ma 15 January 2020 (UW News) – The common murre is a self-sufficient, resilient bird. Though the seabird must eat about half of its body weight in prey each day, common murres are experts at catching the small “forage fish” they need to survive. Herring, sardines, anchovies and even juvenile salmon are no […]

Total world fertility rates and median age by region, 1955-2030. Data: UN population projections. Graphic: Alan Smith / Financial Times

January 14, 2020

Europe’s demographic time-bomb – While global population is ageing, continent presents extreme example of this trend

By Valentina Romei 13 January 2020 LONDON (Financial Times) – With its low birth rate and fast-ageing population, Europe is facing a demographic crisis, one that economists fear could hit growth and public finances. While the global population overall is getting older, Europe is an extreme example of this trend, particularly in the continent’s south and […]