Environmental Glance
The Alaskan village of Shishmaref narrowly voted to abandon their island and relocate to the mainland due to the effects of climate change, a town official said.
The 89-to-78 vote Wednesday makes Shishmaref, north of the Bering Strait, one of the first towns in the United States to move due to climate change. Melting sea ice is raising ocean levels and will submerge the island in a few decades.
Alaskan town votes to relocate as climate change submerges island
July 2016 Was The Hottest Month Ever Recorded
If July felt horrendously hot, that’s because it was.
NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ― two leading global authorities on climate ― both say July 2016 was not only the hottest July on record, but the most sizzling month in the history of record-keeping.
NOAA on Wednesday said July’s global average temperature was 62.01 degrees, 1.57 degrees above the 20th-century average. NASA, which uses a slightly different methodology, said Monday the average global temperature in July was 1.51 degrees above average. Both agencies pegged July as the hottest month since monitoring began in 1880.
Taliban overruns district in Afghanistan's Baghlan
Taliban fighters have captured a key district in Afghanistan's northern province of Baghlan after days of fighting, Afghan officials say.
The fighters launched a coordinated attack on Dahana-e-Ghori on Friday that led to heavy fighting in the area until the Taliban took control of the district on Monday.
Amir Gul Hussainkhil, deputy police chief of Baghlan, said Dahana-e-Ghori district was under siege for days and the Taliban managed to seize it because dozens of Afghan forces made "a tactical retreat".
How state regulations can prevent man-made earthquakes
Oklahomans aren't just imagining it. The state has experienced 100 fewer earthquakes thus far this year than it had by August, 2015.
Geologists tentatively attribute this decrease in tremors to increased regulations on the fracking and oil extraction industries, whose wastewater disposal practices have wreaked seismic havoc in Oklahoma and other states. Still, experts caution, it's too early to tell if the quake swarms have been permanently quelled.
Climate Change Is Turning The Water Around Us Into A Threat
We grasp the connection now between our changing climate and the quantity of water around us. Scientists say that climate change means both more frequent and severe droughts and a heightened risk of flooding.
What about the quality of our water? Crises as disparate as Florida’s “guacamole-thick” algal blooms and the record number of cases of Legionnaires’ disease are linked to the effects of climate change on water safety ― or so a paper published last month in the journal Nature argues.
Climate Change Could Release Cold War-Era Radioactive Waste In Greenland
Climate change could release radioactive waste stored in an abandoned Cold War-era U.S. military camp deep under Greenland’s ice caps if a thaw continues to spread in coming decades, scientists said on Friday.
Camp Century was built in northwest Greenland in 1959 as part of U.S. research into the feasibility of nuclear missile launch sites in the Arctic, the University of Zurich said in a statement.
Flooding, mudslide warnings after Tropical Storm Earl passes Belize, Guatemala, Mexico
Tropical Storm Earl, which has already caused damage in Belize, is prompting hundreds of people to seek shelter as emergency officials warn of possible flooding and mudslides Friday.
Earl became a hurricane Wednesday afternoon but weakened back into a tropical storm early Thursday, dropping to 40 mph winds. The storm system made landfall in Belize at about 2 a.m. on Thursday.
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