Sunday, Jun 30th
Last update07:49:10 AM GMT
Environmental Glance
The weather service in Oklahoma compared the day to “a gasoline-soaked brush pile.” Forecasters aren’t certain storms will form, but any that do could explode with large hail, dangerous winds and tornadoes.
A study released this week added new fears to the fate of an important glacier in Antarctica and its impact on sea-level rise.
The Thwaites Glacier on the vast West Antarctica Ice Sheet is commonly called the "Doomsday Glacier" because of its potential to significantly raise sea levels by as much as 10 feet globally, inundating low-lying coastal communities and displacing millions.
The instability of Thwaites has been known and studied for a long time as a key indicator of climate change, but a new study released this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences points to new evidence that warm seawater is pumping under the base of Thwaites and eroding it much more quickly than previously believed.
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Dozens of rivers and streams in Alaska are turning rusty orange, a likely consequence of thawing permafrost, a new study finds.
The Arctic is the fastest-warming region in the globe, and as the frozen ground below the surface melts, minerals once locked away in that soil are now seeping into waterways.
“It’s an unforeseen impact of climate change that we’re seeing in some of the most pristine rivers in our country,” said Brett Poulin, study author and assistant professor of environmental toxicology at University of California Davis.
The permafrost thaw is exposing minerals to oxygen in a process known as weathering, which increases the acidity of the water and dissolves metals like zinc, copper, cadmium and iron – the most apparent metal that gives the rivers a rusty color visible even from satellite images. The study highlights the potential degradation of drinking water and risk to fisheries in the Arctic.
A TV meteorologist condemned the Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s so-called “don’t say climate change” law on air and urged viewers to vote.
Steve MacLaughlin of WTVJ in Miami addressed viewers on Saturday amid rising heat records across the state, saying: “On Thursday, we reported … that the government of Florida was beginning to roll back really important climate-change legislation and really important climate-change language.”
Multiple tornadoes struck Iowa on Tuesday, with one causing multiple deaths and at least a dozen injuries in a small town, after severe weather brought numerous rounds of rain and thunderstorms in the Plains and Midwest.
The tornado touched down in Greenfield, a town about 60 miles southwest of Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday afternoon. Iowa State Police confirmed that there were multiple deaths after the tornado almost completely flattened the town of more than 2,000, the Des Moines Register, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported.
Sgt. Alex Dinkla, spokesperson with the Iowa State Patrol, said at a news conference Tuesday night that authorities were working to confirm the exact number of those killed or injured, but estimated at least a dozen people were hospitalized.
The economic damage wrought by climate change is six times worse than previously thought, with global heating set to shrink wealth at a rate consistent with the level of financial losses of a continuing permanent war, research has found.
A 1C increase in global temperature leads to a 12% decline in world gross domestic product (GDP), the researchers found, a far higher estimate than that of previous analyses. The world has already warmed by more than 1C (1.8F) since pre-industrial times and many climate scientists predict a 3C (5.4F) rise will occur by the end of this century due to the ongoing burning of fossil fuels, a scenario that the new working paper, yet to be peer-reviewed, states will come with an enormous economic cost.
A 3C temperature increase will cause “precipitous declines in output, capital and consumption that exceed 50% by 2100” the paper states. This economic loss is so severe that it is “comparable to the economic damage caused by fighting a war domestically and permanently”, it adds.
Based on an analysis of ancient tree rings that date back to the year 1, last summer was the hottest in the past 2,000 years, a new study released Tuesday suggests. Study authors described the warmth during the summer of 2023 across much of the Northern Hemisphere as "unparalleled."
“It’s true that the climate is always changing, but when you look at the long sweep of history, you can see just how dramatic recent global warming is,” said Jan Esper, the lead author of the study from the Johannes Gutenberg University in Germany. “2023 warming, caused by greenhouse gases, is additionally amplified by El Niño conditions, so we end up with longer and more severe heat waves and extended periods of drought."
The new study was published Tuesday in the peer-reviewed British journal Nature.
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