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Archive for May 4th, 2013
Warning as carbon levels hit new high
Posted by Brisbane Times: Bridie Jabour on May 4th, 2013
Brisbane Times: Carbon dioxide levels are about to rise to the highest they have been in five million years, triggering warnings a move towards low carbon economies is not happening quick enough.
The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is expected to rise to 400 parts per million in the next few days, according to readings at the American government's Earth Systems Research Laboratory in Hawaii.
University of Queensland Global Change Institute Director, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, said there have been few,...
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Rare May snowstorm annihilates records in Midwest
Posted by Climate Central: Andrew Freedman on May 4th, 2013
Climate Central: A late spring snowstorm in the Midwest has shattered longstanding state snowfall records, with all-time state records for the month of May falling in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The snowstorm, which walloped the region with snowfall rates of more than an inch per hour at times on May 1-2, delivered 18 inches of snow in Blooming Prairie, Minn., 17.5 inches in Goodhue, and 15.5 inches in Owatonna.
According to the Minnesota Climate Working Group, the state daily May snowfall record had stood...
Climate change or just a late spring: what to make of plant messages?
Posted by Irish Times: None Given on May 4th, 2013
Irish Times: Towards the end of the drought that struck the west for much of early spring, a university geography professor shared with me a photograph he had taken in Connemara. It showed a remarkable vista of bog and mountain dried and bleached to an eerie ash blond. On our side of the bay, too, even lowland tracts of moor grass offered this unreal platinum sheen.
All was caused by evapotranspiration, to use the professor’s term. With some 40 rainless days from mid February to mid April, the relentless and...
Painted turtles set to become all-female
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
New Scientist: Males don't stand a chance in a warmer world, if they happen to be painted turtles. A temperature rise of around 1 °C is all it would take for the species to become 100 per cent female and earmarked for extinction.
Painted turtles (Chrysemys picta), found in lakes and streams across North America, are one of many reptile species whose sex is determined by temperature. Eggs in warm nests are likely to hatch as females, while males hatch in cooler nests, although no one is sure why.
In recent...
Fracking ourselves to death in Pennsylvania
Posted by Grist: Ellen Cantarow on May 4th, 2013
Grist: More than 70 years ago, a chemical attack was launched against Washington state and Nevada. It poisoned people, animals, everything that grew, breathed air, and drank water. The Marshall Islands were also struck. This formerly pristine Pacific atoll was branded “the most contaminated place in the world.” As their cancers developed, the victims of atomic testing and nuclear weapons development got a name: downwinders. What marked their tragedy was the darkness in which they were kept about what was...
Protests in Chinese city over planned chemical plant
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
Reuters: Hundreds of people took to the streets of the Chinese city of Kunming on Saturday to protest against the planned production of a chemical at a refinery, in the latest show of concern over the effects of rapid growth on the environment. China's increasingly affluent urban population has begun to object to the model of growth at all costs that has fuelled the economy for three decades, with the environment emerging as a focus of protests. Photographs on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, showed a...
U.S. commits to protecting loggerhead sea turtle habitat by 2014
Posted by Reuters: David Adams on May 4th, 2013
Reuters: The Obama administration has agreed by July 1 to map out areas to protect nesting beaches for endangered loggerhead sea turtles as part of a legal settlement with conservation groups. The U.S. Department of Commerce agreed to the deadline for a preliminary proposal on the critical habitat of loggerheads in the U.S. Atlantic and Pacific oceans and in the Gulf of Mexico, under an agreement filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in California. Three environmental groups sued the government in January,...
How much water in that snowpack? Scientists seek a better gauge
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on May 4th, 2013
Christian Science Monitor: Scientists are testing a new approach for gauging the amount of water stored in mountain snows – reservoirs that supply more than 75 percent of the fresh water in the western US and that slake the thirst of some 1.5 billion people around the globe.
The aim is to measure the snow's water content more accurately and more frequently, so that water managers can mete out water stored in reservoirs more effectively. The data also are expected to improve snowmelt forecasts as a melt season progresses....
Climate change may bring drought to temperate areas, study says
Posted by LA Times: Neela Banerjee on May 4th, 2013
LA Times: Climate change may increase the risk of extreme rainfall in the tropics and drought in the world's temperate zones, according to a new study led by NASA.
"These results in many ways are the worst of all possible worlds," said Peter Gleick, a climatologist and water expert who is president of the Pacific Institute, an Oakland research organization. "Wet areas will get wetter and dry areas will get drier."
The regions that could get the heaviest rainfall are along the equator, mainly over the...
California Wildfire Drives Thousands From Homes
Posted by New York Times: Adam Nagourney on May 4th, 2013
New York Times: Walls of wind-driven fire swept across Ventura County on Friday, forcing thousands of home evacuations, shutting down schools and offices and ravaging acres of woodland as firefighters struggled for a second day to bring an ominously early California wildfire under control.
There were no reports of injuries or homes destroyed as the heat abated and fierce winds began tapering off Friday evening. But the intensity and early arrival of the year's first major wildfire -- months before such fires...