Balmy November Virtually Assures 2012 to Be Hottest Year
With just more than three weeks left in the year, it’s virtually certain that 2012 will displace 1998 as the warmest year on record for the contiguous U.S. according to NOAA. The agency’s monthly State of the Climate Report, released on Thursday, shows that temperatures across the lower 48 states averaged 44.1°F for November -- 2.1°F higher than th… Read More
‘Atmospheric River’ Piles Up Massive Rain, Snow & Winds
The National Weather Service’s Hydrometeorological Prediction Center in Maryland has compiled the most impressive statistics from the storms that struck between Nov. 27 and Dec. 3, which rolled in from the Pacific Ocean and tapped a feed of moisture that stretched from the tropics to San Francisco.… Read More
Global Carbon Emissions Hit Record High, Report Finds
The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached a record 390.9 parts per million (ppm) in 2011, according to a report released Nov. 20 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). That’s a 40 percent increase over levels in 1750, before humans began burning fossil fuels in earnest. According to the Global Carbon Project, the… Read More
How Safe Are America’s 2.5 Million Miles of Pipelines?
At 6:11 p.m. on September 6, 2010, San Bruno, California 911 received an urgent call. A gas station had just exploded and a fire with flames reaching 300 feet was raging through the neighborhood. The explosion was so large that residents suspected an airplane crash. But the real culprit was found underground: a ruptured pipeline spewing natural gas… Read More
Blackouts Illuminate the Bright Side of Rooftop Solar
As more than 8 million people huddled around candles or sadly dumped their spoiled food during the power outages spawned by Superstorm Sandy, several friends who know my interest in renewable energy asked me very seriously about whether they should run out and put solar panels on their rooftops. During a disaster like Sandy, they wondered, could a … Read More
Working Wonders Without Water Out West
In the long rain shadow of the Cascade Mountains, where dryland wheat farmers have eked out livings for more than a century, climate change is very much an issue of the present. The rain gauge is always in the back of the mind for Mike Nichols, a wheat farmer cultivating 20,0000 acres across two counties in south-central Washington state. It has to… Read More
Hurricane Season Ends; Sandy Will Long be Remembered
The 2012 Atlantic Hurricane season officially came to a close on Friday, after four landfalling storms left coastal communities in tatters from Louisiana to New York. For the third straight season there were 19 named storms in the Atlantic, which is the third-highest level of storm activity observed since 1851.… Read More
Picturing the West Coast ‘Atmospheric River’ Event
Fortunately, the West has largely been dry -- too dry, in fact -- so the flooding danger is somewhat lower now than it might otherwise have been. Still, with 10-20 inches of rain possible through the weekend in northern and central California, as well as parts of Washington and Oregon, the National Weather Service has issued flood watches and warni… Read More
