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Showing posts with the label Global heating

More than five million deaths a year can be attributed to abnormal hot and cold temperatures

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Monash University - Science Daily The Sparks fire during an historic heatwave in BC, Canada. A BC Wildfire Service photo June 20-21. The world's largest study of global climate related mortality found deaths related to hot temperatures increased in all regions from 2000 to 2019, indicating that global warming due to climate change will make this mortality figure worse in the future. The international research team looked at mortality and temperature data across the world.    Story here.

Western North American extreme heat virtually impossible without human-caused climate change

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      During the last days of June 2021, Pacific northwest areas of the U.S. and Canada experienced temperatures never previously observed, with records broken in many places by several degrees Celsius. Multiple cities in the U.S. states of Oregon and Washington and the western provinces of Canada recorded temperatures far above 40ĀŗC (104 ĀŗF), including setting a new all-time Canadian temperature record of 49.6ĀŗC in the village of Lytton. Shortly after setting the record, Lytton was largely destroyed in a wildfire [ 1 , 2 ]. The exceptionally high temperatures led to spikes in sudden deaths, and sharp increases in hospital visits for heat-related illnesses and emergency calls [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Heatwaves are one of the deadliest natural hazards and this heatwave affected a population unaccustomed and unprepared for such extreme temperatures, for instance with most homes lacking air-conditioning [ 6 ]. Currently ava

Lake habitats are disappearing as the climate changes

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Leibniz  Forschungsverbund Berlin .V. A PinP p hoto. Global warming is increasing the temperatures of lakes worldwide – are species finding the temperatures they need to survive? Details here.

WARMING AUTUMNS - FEWER BUTTERFLIES

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Science Magazine  Butterflies such as the great purple hairstreak, Atlides halesus, are in decline in the warming American West according to community surveys. PHOTO: JEFFREY GLASSBERG/NORTH AMERICAN BUTTERFLY ASSOCIATION Details here.

Humanity is waging war on nature, says UN secretary general

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AntĆ³nio Guterres lists human-inflicted wounds on natural world in stark message World is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate crisis – UN report Pumpjacks dot the landscape in southwestern Manitoba. A PinP image.

Ending greenhouse gas emissions may not stop global warming

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Nature (With minor editing by PinP) One of several steel power pylons toppled in an historic wind, snow and ice storm which swept through eastern Manitoba about a year ago. It left thousands without power in what was described as the worst power outage in the history of Manitoba Hydro. Damages are expected to exceed 100 million dollars. A Manitoba Hydro photo.  Even if human-induced greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can be reduced to zero, global temperatures may continue to rise for centuries afterwards, according to a simulation of the global climate  published in Scientific Reports. Jorgen Randers and Ulrich Goluke modelled the effect of different greenhouse gas emission reductions on changes in the global climate from 1850 to 2500. They also created projections of global temperature and sea level rises. What do they show? Under conditions where manmade greenhouse gas emissions peak during the 2030s, then decline to zero by 2100, global temperatures will be 3°C warmer and sea levels 3

Global heating. How will it impact the world’s nature reserves?

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ScienceDaily The Athabasca glacier in Jasper National Park, Canada. Already a shadow of its former self, many fear it will be gone altogether within a generation. A 2020 photo by Ethan Sahagun. Nature reserves will be affected by future climate change in very different ways - especially in the tropics. A new study drawing attention to this fact, raises even more fears for wildlife species. It's based on forecasts for more than 130,000 nature reserves worldwide. Story here.

Arctic ocean moorings shed light on winter sea ice loss

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Science Daily A table iceberg in the Norwegian Arctic. Such icebergs are rare as they calve from shelf ice, which is also rare. They're normally a typical form of iceberg in the Antarctic. This one is about 12m high and about half the size of a soccer field. Photo by Andreas Weith. The eastern Arctic Ocean's winter ice grew less than half as much as normal during the past decade, due to the growing influence of heat from the ocean's interior, researchers have found. Story here.

New research finds - global heating is melting vast northern fields of permafrost so fast that - within decades - they'll likely stop cooling the planet as they have for millennia - and start doing just the opposite.

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by Larry Powell Permafrost Slide at Big Fox Lake, Ontario, Canada - 2015. A Creative Commons photo by MIKOFOX.  For thousands of years, so-called "permafrost peatlands" in Earth's Northern Hemisphere have been cooling the global climate. They’ve done it by trapping large amounts of carbon and nitrogen which would otherwise escape into the air as harmful greenhouse gases.  More recently however, scientists have observed, they've been melting due to manmade global heating. As they melt, they're releasing large amounts of substances like methane - a potent greenhouse gas - into the air.  But, without proper maps, it's been hard for scientists to get a handle on the degree to which this might be happening - until now. New ones drawn up using thousands of field observations, show; Permafrost peatlands cover a vast area of almost four million square kilometres. And, to quote from the study, "Under future global warming scenarios, half to nearly all

Global death rate from rising temperatures projected to surpass the current death rate of all infectious diseases combined

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The Climate Impact Lab A PinP photo. This summer, the world is experiencing record hot temperatures: A weather station in Death Valley, California, clocked one of the hottest temperatures ever observed on Earth. Simultaneously, the coronavirus pandemic’s devastating mortality impact and economic fallout are demanding society prioritize public health like never before. Details here.

The second-largest ice sheet in the Arctic - Canada's Milne sheet, has collapsed.

This animation shows the sheet rapidly receding, losing almost half its mass. https://twitter.com/ECCC_CIS/status/1290740808170307584?s=20 The Canadian Ice Service.

Meteorologists say 2020 on course to be hottest year since records began

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The Guardian A PinP photo. Global lockdowns have lowered emissions but longer-term changes needed, say scientists.  Story here.

Like Adding'Five to Six Hiroshima Bombs of Heat Each Second,' Study Shows Oceans Warming at Record Rate

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CommonDreams "If you want to understand global warming, you have to measure ocean warming." Story here.

Nearly all (North) America's endangered species will struggle to adapt to climate crisis

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The Guardian An emaciated moose in Riding Mtn. National Park, Canada. A PinP photo. All but one of 459 species have traits making them vulnerable to rising temperatures, study finds. Story here. To quote from the initial study in Nature, Climate Change:  "Climate change is a threat to ecosystems and biodiversity globally and has emerged as a driver of observed and potential species decline and extinction. Government laws and policies should play a vital role in supporting climate change adaptation for imperilled species, yet imperilled species protections have been critiqued as insufficient in Australia, Canada and Europe."   PinP -->

Modern Climate Change Is the Only Worldwide Warming Event of the Past 2,000 Years

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Smithsonian.com New research finds that previous periods of warming and cooling driven by natural causes were regional shifts in temperature rather than global events. Story here. A grey heron suffers during a heatwave - 2013. Photo by Gail Hampshire   from Cradley, Malvern, U.K

Downpours of torrential rain more frequent with global warming

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PHYS ORG Flooding in Saskatchewan. A PinP photo. The frequency of downpours of heavy rain—which can lead to flash floods, devastation, and outbreaks of waterborne disease—has increased across the globe in the past 50 years, research led by the University of Saskatchewan (USask) has found. Story here.

‘Extraordinary thinning’ of ice sheets revealed deep inside Antarctica

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The Guardian Antarctica. Wikimedia public domain.  New research shows affected areas are losing ice five times faster than in the 1990s, with more than 100m of thickness gone in some places. Story here.

Global warming will expose millions more to floods

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Phys.Org East Village in Calgary during epic flooding in Alberta in 2013.  Ryan L. C. Quan Global warning is expected to unleash more rain, exposing millions more people to river flooding particularly in the US and parts of Asia, Africa and Central Europe.   Read more  here.

Arctic’s strongest sea ice breaks up for first time on record

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  The Guardian Image Credit: NASA/Operation IceBridge Usually frozen waters open up twice this year in phenomenon scientists described as scary. More here.

A British vessel leads £20m mission to melting Antarctic glacier

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The  Guardian British and US scientists are to examine the risk of the Thwaites glacier collapsing, which is already responsible for a 4% sea-level rise. More here. Thwaites Glacier. European Space Agency