Sea Level Rise May Eclipse 3 Feet By 2100, Study Finds
The study adds to a growing body of evidence showing that the globe’s ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, which were once thought to have a slow and delayed response to climate change, are melting more rapidly, and becoming more vulnerable to crossing tipping points beyond which they may not quickly recover.… Read More
Global Warming-El Nino Link Stronger but Still Not Proven
The natural climate cycle known as the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) would wreak havoc even if humans weren’t warming the planet. During its El Niño phase, the Americas get floods and torrential rains while Asia suffers drought. When it swings over to the La Niña phase, it’s the opposite. But humans are warming the planet, and a report … Read More
Sandy Tops List of 2012 Extreme Weather & Climate Events
From unprecedented heat waves that shattered "Dust Bowl" era records from the 1930s, to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated coastal New Jersey and New York, 2012 was the year Mother Nature had it out for the U.S. No country on Earth rivaled the U.S. in 2012 in terms of extreme weather and climate events, as one rare episode after another rocked the c… Read More
Few A-list Novelists Tackling Climate Change in Their Plots
from a Harlequin Romance: Dellarobia Turnbow, a restless young housewife in rural Feathertown, Tenn., is walking into the woods to meet a man who is not her husband. Things take a turn, as they always do in fiction. But this turn is not the usual one. … Read More
Great Arctic Cyclone in Summer ‘Unprecedented’: Study
A study published in Geophysical Research Letters looks at no fewer than 19,625 Arctic storms and concludes that in terms of size, duration and several other of what the authors call “key cyclone properties,” the Great Cyclone was the most extreme summer storm, and the 13th most powerful storm -- summer or winter -- since modern satellite observati… Read More
Soaring Temps in West Antarctica May Fuel Sea Level Rise
It’s a cause for serious concern, say the study’s authors: West Antarctica holds enough fresh water to raise sea level by 11 feet if all the ice melted, and even a fraction of that amount could prove catastrophic to coastal areas where hundreds of millions of people live.… Read More
Arctic Storms: A Climate Danger Nobody’s Talking About
Summer and fall are hurricane season, but for the storms known as polar lows, prime time falls in the dead of winter, when frigid air blows off sea ice to collide with warmer, moister air in the North Atlantic. Polar lows are a lot smaller and weaker than hurricanes, they’re generally shorter-lived, and the only danger they generally pose is to… Read More
Sans Polar Satellites, Sandy Forecasts Would’ve Suffered
In an analysis NOAA released on Tuesday, meteorologists at the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) in Reading, England, re-ran their computer model after depriving it of the data that comes from the current fleet of polar-orbiting sat… Read More
