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The drought is the worst to strike the U.S. since the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s and lengthy droughts of the 1950s. It came on suddenly and largely without warning, and although the main trigger was most likely a La Niña event in the tropical Pacific Ocean, the drought was exacerbated by extremely hot temperatures.… Read More
The searing heat waves that blanketed the nation earlier this summer sent temperatures soaring well above 110°F in parts of the U.S., but that’s nowhere close to the hottest temperature on record — an almost unimaginable 136.4° F, taken on September 13, 1922, in the Sahara Desert at El Azizia, Libya. That’s what the Guinness Book of World Records s… Read More
The “astounding loss of sea ice this year is adding a huge amount of heat to the Arctic Ocean and the atmosphere, said Jennifer Francis, an atmospheric scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “It’s like having a new energy source for the atmosphere.… Read More
The official end of the Arctic Ocean melt season could come any time now, but the sea ice that covers the North Polar region has already smashed the previous record low for end-of-summer ice area set in 2007. Since March, according to one calculation, the amount of ice that has disappeared is equal to the areas of Alaska and Canada, combined.… Read More
The summer of 2012 has been one for the record books in the lower 48 states. On the heels of the country’s warmest-ever spring, several record-breaking June and July heat waves kept the Southwest, Midwest and Atlantic Coast sweltering. July went on to become the all-time warmest month on record for the country. [add statistic from August once we’ve… Read More
A team of European scientists, parched soil is more likely than damp soil to trigger some kinds of rainstorms — and the fact that climate models assume the opposite may lead them to make unrealistic projections. “In terms of future climate, it could mean that you simulate longer droughts than would happen in reality, said co-author Phil Harris, of… Read More
In May, a team of British scientists abruptly canceled an experiment they had been planning for nearly two years. The Stratospheric Particle Experiment for Climate Engineering, or SPICE, was intended to test ways of injecting tiny particles of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, with the eventual goal of filtering out sunlight to cool the… Read More
The extreme heat helped spread and intensify a massive drought that has shown no signs of abating in many areas, particularly across the West and High Plains. Nebraska and Wyoming saw their driest summers on record, and several other states in those regions saw one of their top ten driest summers.… Read More
By mid-century in Philadelphia, the sweltering heat of July 2010 may be thought of as cooler-than-average conditions
