By Matt Peckham 29 June 2012 As an uncontrolled “super fire” near Colorado Springs rages, feeding off parched terrain and forcing tens of thousands from their homes and businesses, high-tech mapping tools are dishing up highly detailed, bird’s eye views of the fire’s scope. Such tools offer everything from perimeter reports and pictures of the […]
By Deborah Zabarenko and Laura Zuckerman; Editing by Stacey Joyce28 June 2012 (Reuters) – Scorching heat, high winds and bone-dry conditions are fueling catastrophic wildfires in the U.S. West that offer a preview of the kind of disasters that human-caused climate change could bring, a trio of scientists said on Thursday. “What we’re seeing is […]
By Miguel Llanos27 June 2012 Fire crews outside Colorado Springs, Colo., expected more weather trouble on Wednesday in what the local fire chief called a “monster event” that doubled in size overnight and has forced 32,000 people to flee. Heavy smoke made for unhealthy air in and around the city. After jumping fire lines Tuesday, […]
25 June 2012 (Insurance Journal) – Lloyd’s has published a roundup of the environmental issues inherent in as the world grows warmer. The recently concluded Rio +20 Conference was an attempt – 20 years after the first conference – “to try to reach agreement on sustainable growth, controlling world emissions and managing the growing impact […]
23 June 2012 (The Denver Post) – Denver’s record-breaking heat Friday sets the stage for a potentially hotter day today, warns the National Weather Service. The city beat the record of 98 degrees just after 1 p.m., then climbed to 102 degrees before 4 p.m. Friday, eclipsing the high mark for June 22 set in […]
1 June 2012, TULSA, Oklahoma (AP) – Oklahoma and Texas have argued for years about which has the best college football team, whose oil fields produce better crude, even where the state border should run. But in a hot, sticky dispute that no one wants to win, Oklahoma just reclaimed its crown. After recalculating data […]
By Dalina Castellanos30 May 2012 The Whitewater-Baldy Complex fire in New Mexico hasn’t just broken the record for the largest blaze in state history, it’s shattered it. An infrared reading about midnight Tuesday measured the fire at 170,272 acres, leaving last year’s 156,593-acre Las Conchas fire in the dust. That acreage roughly translates to 269 […]
By Andrew Freedman15 May 2012 Last year at this time, all eyes were on Texas, where drought conditions were intensifying into what became that state’s worst single year drought on record, causing nearly $8 billion in economic losses. Recently, though, Texas has gone from famine to feast in the precipitation department, and drought concerns for […]
NASA, the US National Climatic Data Centre, and the UK Hadley Centre have each produced global temperature datasets. The graph shows the annual means calculated from the three datasets. Years beginning with an El Niño (orange) and La Niña (blue) are shown after suitable data became available in 1950 (note: 2010 began with an El […]
By Alyson Kenward11 May 2012 In California, May typically marks the beginning of a warm and dry summer season. This year, however, things are different. Not only has it been warm and dry for the past couple weeks; it’s been warm and dry for months. So dry, in fact, that officials are warning the risk […]
