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Archive for February 14th, 2014
UK weather: The effects of the floods by numbers
Posted by Telegraph: Kat Hayes on February 14th, 2014
Telegraph: The numbers below tell a story of extreme weather since the turn of the year, the wind and rain bringing much of England's south and South West to its knees:
23 -- the number of days it rained in January.
45 -- the number of years since the UK saw a December this windy, according the Met Office.
60 -- the number of years since the River Thames was this high.
78.8 -- the millimetres of rainfall recorded by MeteoGroup in the south east of England during the first 12 days of February, 380%...
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“She Was Screaming in the Tub”
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2014
Guardian: On the morning of January 9, Twylla Bays pumped a syringe of water into the gastric feeding tube in her 29-year-old daughter Cassy’s abdomen. The reaction was instantaneous and violent: in the space of 30 minutes, Cassy, who has muscular dystrophy and is on a ventilator, had seven bouts of diarrhoea.
At about that time, 15 miles away in Charleston, West Virginia, executives of West Virginia American Water and state officials were deciding when and how to tell 300,000 people their water was not...
What the West’s Ancient Droughts Say About Its Future
Posted by National Geographic: Lisa M. Krieger on February 14th, 2014
National Geographic: A millennium ago—just yesterday, in geologic time—Native Americans waited all winter for rains that never came. They waited the next winter and the next. Then the marshes of their sacred San Francisco Bay turned from cattails to salt grass. Fishing declined and the Native Americans could no longer rely on the bounty of the bay. Finally, they left, hungry and thirsty, in search of water. Now, as modern Californians hope for fierce storms to break a dangerous dry spell, the questions arise: Is the...
Obama to Announce Aid for Drought-Racked California
Posted by New York Times: Coral Davenport on February 14th, 2014
New York Times: President Obama will continue to push his climate change agenda on Friday when he speaks in Fresno, Calif., in the heart of the Central Valley, where farmers are experiencing the worst drought in the state’s modern history. Mr. Obama is to announce that he will ask Congress for $1 billion to create a “climate resilience” program as part of the administration’s annual budget request next month. He is also to announce that the administration is moving several million dollars from existing programs...
Will record floods finally shift UK climate debate?
Posted by New Scientist: Adam Corner on February 14th, 2014
New Scientist: There is a possible silver lining to the disastrous floods swamping the UK - an end to public apathy on climate change
The wettest January in the UK in 250 years followed by a stormy February have brought misery to many thousands. Floods have submerged large chunks of the south-west of the country, a key stretch of railway collapsed into the sea, and the river Thames spectacularly burst its banks, deluging towns and villages.
As a statement from the UK's weather service, the Met Office, made...
United Kingdom: David Cameron halts Environment Agency job cuts amid floods clean-up
Posted by Blue and Green: Charlotte Malone on February 14th, 2014
Blue and Green: The prime minister has said the Environment Agency will not lose 500 members of staff amid its efforts to deal with Britain’s flooding. However, he has not said whether the job cuts will go ahead once the situation has been dealt with.
David Cameron told BBC Breakfast, “Those have never been announced plans. These aren’t plans that are going to put in place.
“Of course every organisation has to make sure it is efficient but nothing will be done at the Environment Agency that will hamper our...
Why South’s winter storm was so destructive
Posted by LiveScience: Denise Chow on February 14th, 2014
LiveScience: A treacherous winter storm that is sweeping across the southeastern United States has dumped snow, sleet and freezing rain over a region stretching from the Texas Gulf Coast to the Carolinas. As the storm moves into the Northeast, the icy blast is leaving a trail of destruction, with downed trees and power lines leaving hundreds of thousands of people without power in parts of Georgia and South Carolina. As of Feb. 13, the National Weather Service (NWS) reported about an inch of ice accumulation...
United Kingdom: Floods make climate sceptics sweat
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2014
Guardian: The UK floods are not just causing misery for thousands of people around the country whose lives and livelihoods have been disrupted. They are also making a few climate change sceptics hot beneath the collar.
No doubt they are finding it an uncomfortable experience to realise that their misleading attempts to inform the public into believing that climate change poses no threat to the UK are now being undermined by the irrefutable evidence provided by the record rainfall and storm surges.
First,...
Ice storm paradox: Colder because Earth is warmer
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2014
LA Times: With the American South locked in a deep freeze, you can be sure that plenty of the folks suffering through the snow and ice storms are interpreting the big chill as more proof that global warming is a hoax. "Warming?' they scoff. "How can the planet be warming when it's so darn cold?'
People in other parts of the world seem to have no great difficulty understanding the science but, in the good old USA where quite a few people consider science just another political opinion, it is going to take...
United Kingdom: Experts warn global warming is making for volatile weather picture
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 14th, 2014
Telegraph: The tumultuous winter weather of the past few weeks could well become the "new normal" for us, a climate change expert has warned.
Queen's University academic Dr John Barry said that the "abnormal, more extreme" weather events experienced this winter would become more frequent in the future.
The cluster of storms that has battered Northern Ireland for weeks, along with the rest of the British Isles, has taken everyone by surprise.
"We cannot conclusively say there is a 100% connection between...