Articles include: Marine photographer captures haunting images of California’s beautiful, but vanishing, kelp forests; Ambitious action on climate change could be Biden’s ‘moon shot’; It’s been a record-long time since the last EF5 tornado. What does that mean?; 12 reports on what the U.S. may make possible on climate; To help address the climate problem, universities must rethink the tenure and promotion system; Dominican Catholic sisters help create climate-friendly investment funds; Ninety-five percent of bull kelp forests have vanished from 200-mile stretch of California coast; Denmark plans to build a massive wind-energy hub on artificial island in the North Sea; Installing solar panels over California’s canals could save 65 billion gallons of water a year; Outer Banks communities see beach renourishment projects as a lifeline.
Tag: hurricanes tornadoes earthquakes natural disasters
Yale Climate Connection, May 21, 2021
Articles include: Greens: Divided on ‘clean’ energy? Or closer than they appear?; Check these pieces on the diseases of summer; Tropical Cyclone Tauktae is fifth-strongest cyclone on record in the Arabian Sea; What is a ‘just transition,’ and why do we need one?; California’s volunteer ‘Climate Action Corps’ helps fight climate change; Increases in extreme precipitation cost the U.S. $73 billion over three decades; Bladeless wind turbine generates electricity by vibrating with air movements; The moral imperative behind the ‘Big Bold Jewish Climate Fest’;
Renovations put Seattle hockey arena closer to its goal of zero carbon emissions.
Yale Climate Connection, May 14, 2021
Articles include: Silent calamity: The health impacts of wildfire smoke; White House adviser and environmental justice advocate Catherine Coleman Flowers; Climate change increases renters’ risks; Why are there so many Atlantic named storms? Five possible explanations; Heavier downpours strain septic systems in some rural areas; Devastating disease in dolphins linked to extreme downpours, researcher says; Santa Fe women built homemade air purifiers to help protect people from wildfire smoke; Hundreds of coastal airports at risk from flooding, sea-level rise, study finds; Historic Portsmouth Village under threat from hurricanes and rising seas.
The Daily Climate, April 28, 2021
Articles include: lumber shortage; disabilities and natural disasters; California wildfire season; Study: cut methane emissions quickly; flooding in Michigan; climate vote in Senate; Study: poor communities affected by climate change; low carbon fuel standard; money to modernize grid; Fukushima; Ford making electric vehicles; Study: sea level rise and budgets.
The Daily Climate, April 6, 2021
Articles include: Orphan oil wells & climate change; lightning, wildfires, and the Arctic; farmland restoration; wage gap; alternatives for coal country; carbon flooding; O&G jobs disappearing; Texas winter energy disaster; diseases in Alaska; drought in Michigan and Arizona; fossil fuel subsidies.
Yale Climate Connections, April 9, 2021
Articles include: Wind and solar energy are job creators. Which states are taking advantage? Forecasters predict an above-average Atlantic hurricane season in 2021; How the nonprofit Green 2.0 is tackling the environmental movement’s diversity problem; Experts lay out their case against carbon pricing; Some insightful background pieces on Bangladesh; Extreme weather threatens internet infrastructure, broadband pioneer warns; How libraries are improving climate literacy in their communities; Georgia-based innovation lab works to speed the transition to clean transportation; Scholar-advocate Beverly Wright pushes for equity and justice in climate policy; Climate change is making it harder to grow the potatoes traditionally used for French fries
The Daily Climate, March 31,2021
Articles include: Michigan flooding & sea walls; forest destruction accelerated in 2020; rivers as a climate change solution; Kerry to India and UAE; Climate change, Canada, and hurricanes (report in the ScienceBrief Review website); thaw-driven landslides; wind energy; Scottish wind farm success; UAE, automakers and EV’s; keeping the planet habitable; DOJ holding oil companies accountable.
The Great Blind Spot in Hurricane Preparedness
New Republic: The Great Blind Spot in Hurricane Preparedness. Hurricane season is getting longer. Building higher sea walls won’t save us.
Hurricane season is creeping its way deeper into spring. Last month, The Washington Post reported that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is considering officially moving up the start of the storm season from June 1 to May 15. The move, being reviewed by the NOAA’s National Hurricane Office in Miami, is the result of experts coming to the conclusion that, as global temperatures have consistently risen, so too have the frequency of pre-June storms.
According to the Post, the past six years have featured tropical storms forming before the official season start date, with last year’s Tropical Storm Arthur announced by the NOAA on May 16. By season’s end in December, 2020 ranked as the most active hurricane season in 15 years with 30 storms topping the 28-storm mark set by 2005.
Study: Scientists blow up decades of thinking on why hurricanes are becoming more deadly
The Hill: Scientists blow up decades of thinking on why hurricanes are becoming more deadly. Researchers have used the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation to explain hurricane activity. Now, it may not exist.
Story at a glance
- Using preindustrial climate and pollution data, scientists are walking back the idea that the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation is a real meteorological entity.
- Instead, human activity is responsible for fluctuations in hurricane seasons, they argue.
When analyzing and tracking hurricanes and storms that develop in the North Atlantic Ocean, meteorologists and scientists have long looked toward the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) for justification.
Understood as a naturally occurring phenomenon, the AMO is supposed to cycle through warm and cool phases every 20-40 years, which accounts for seasonal hurricane activity.
New research posits that there is no AMO at all, however, and that changes in hurricane activity within the Atlantic are directly related to human-caused climate change.
Published in the journal Science, a team of researchers argue that the AMO is not an entity in and of itself; rather, it is a manifestation of the effects of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, or fossil fuels emitted into the atmosphere from human activity.
Study: 2 articles – Ocean currents are slowing down – could have a devastating effect on our climate
CNN: The slowing down of ocean currents could have a devastating effect on our climate. Well, new research reveals Earth’s major ocean currents are slowing down, and though the consequences will not be as immediate or dramatic as in the Hollywood fiction, there are real-world impacts for global weather patterns and sea levels. The slowdown of ocean circulation is directly caused by warming global temperatures and has been predicted by climate scientists. “This has been predicted, basically, for decades that this circulation would weaken in response to global warming. And now we have the strongest evidence that this is already happening,” said Stefan Rahmstorf of Potsdam University who contributed to this research.
CNN: Gulf Stream system at its weakest in 1,600 years, study shows. Research recently published in science journal Nature by the University College London (UCL) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that the circulation of water in the Atlantic has been declining since the 1800s.