Tornadoes, Heat-Related Deaths, and Hurricanes
An extreme weather-packed slideshow of the week's top climate news.… Read More
Optimism for Crops in Midwest; Dire Straits in the West
When it comes to this year’s drought, it seems like good news never arrives without bad news to match it. Even as drought receded from the Upper Midwest this week, conditions deepened and intensified all across the Southwest. Any optimism that may emerge for crops in the Midwest from this week’s rains is balanced by the dire conditions of pastures … Read More
Limiting Methane Leaks Critical to Gas, Climate Benefits
Knowing how much methane is leaking from the natural gas system is essential to determining the potential climate benefits of natural gas use. Climate Central’s extensive review of the publicly available studies finds that a pervasive lack of measurements makes it nearly impossible to know with confidence what the average methane leak rate is for … Read More
Widespread Greenland Melting A Sign of Things to Come
When 97 percent of Greenland’s ice experienced at least some melting in July 2012, scientists wondered if it was a one-time phenomenon. Now a new study in Geophysical Research Letters indicates it is a sign of things to come and by 2025, there is a 50-50 chance of it happening annually. It’s not clear what the effects of such melting will be: the … Read More
Warming Causing Rockies, Everest to Lose Ice and Snow
Around 20 percent of the snow cover in North America’s greatest mountain range has been lost – because of warmer springs in the last three decades. Scientists from the American Geophysical Union and the U.S. Geological Survey report that they had established a pattern of snowfall in the northern and southern Rockies: when the snowpack was large in… Read More
Study: 97 percent Agreement on Manmade Global Warming
The research, which is the most comprehensive analysis of climate research to date, finds that 97.1 percent of the studies published between 1991 to 2011 that expressed a position on manmade climate change agreed that it was happening, and that it was due to human activity. The study looked at peer reviewed research that mentioned climate change … Read More
Smaller Glaciers Boost Sea Level as Much as the Giants
As the planet warms under the influence of rising greenhouse gases, and melting ice drives sea level higher, scientists have focused mostly on changes in the vast ice sheets that cover Greenland and Antarctica. If either one melts substantially or slides into the ocean, the results would be catastrophic. But there’s another ice reserve to worry … Read More
Good News, Bad News from New EIA Emissions Analysis
There was good news and bad to be mined from a state-by-state analysis of carbon emissions over a decade, which was released this week by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Overall, the EIA reported that between 2000 and 2010, 38 states saw an overall drop in their annual energy-related carbon emissions, but between 2009 and 2010, … Read More
