Tell Me Why: The Climate Extremes Index Matters
The Climate Extremes Index, or CEI, tracks the highest and lowest 10 percent of extremes in a number of categories. As climate scientist Deke Arndt explains in this edition of Tell Me Why, a NOAA-funded series that explains key climate concepts, the CEI contains critical information on how are climate is changing and what climate trends we may see.
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Extreme Weather 101: Climate Change and Precipitation
When it rains, it pours. That’s how we may want to think about the effects of climate change on precipitation. Scientist Tom Petersen and meteorologist Dan Satterfield explain the link between rainstorms and global warming in Extreme Weather 101.
Extreme Weather 101: Rising Temps & Snowstorms
Can a warming planet really play a role in big snowstorms? In Extreme Weather 101, scientist Jay Lawrimore and meteorologist Dan Satterfield detail how increased temperatures can affect the formation of snowstorms that can blanket and paralyze a city.
Extreme Weather 101: Drought & Our Changing Climate
Drought has left huge swaths of the United States parched this year. Are these dry conditions simply a fluke, or something we many need to get used to in a warming world? Scientist Mike Brewer and meteorologist Dan Satterfield explain the connection between drought and a changing climate in our series Extreme Weather 101.
World Bank Ties Ending Poverty with Climate Change
The World Bank called for urgent action on climate change on Sunday after it released a report that examined the economic, ecological and human impacts that a 7.2°F rise in global temperature would have on the world’s population.
The report, entitled, “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must be Avoided,” underscored how developing nations are likely to be hit the hardest by the impacts of global warming. Food shortages, water scarcity, and coastal flooding associated with droughts, heat waves, and rising sea levels are likely to be the most severe in areas that are the least prepared to adapt to them.
The Gabura region of Bangladesh has been hit by increasing flooding in recent years – causing salt water to enter fresh water supplies and making many forms of farming unviable. Catching shrimp fry is one of few ways left for people to earn a living.
Credit: Oxfam GB / International
The report is novel in two key ways. First, it signals a change in policy for the World Bank, a policy that places more emphasis on the relationship between poverty and climate change. Under the leadership of its new President, Jim Yong Kim, the World Bank has indicated that mitigating and adapting to climate change is essential in the fight against global poverty.
“We will never end poverty if we don’t tackle climate change,” said Kim on a press conference call on Friday, “It is one of the single biggest challenges to social justice today.”
(Kim also wrote an op-ed for the Guardian about the release of the World Bank report. In it, he said he hopes that the level of catastrophe described in the report “shocks” people to action, and he argued that there can be a vibrant economy in a low-carbon world. )
Second, the report examined the poten...
