Posts

Showing posts with the label climate criis

Melting glaciers could create new habitats for Pacific salmon

Image
Nature Communications US Fish & Wildlife Service` Melting glaciers in western North America could create new habitats for Pacific salmon over the next century, a modelling study in Nature Communications suggests.  Migratory Pacific salmon are one group of species whose abundances have dramatically shifted in response to changing climate patterns, however, the warming of Arctic and subarctic streams, in combination with glacier retreat, could create potential new habitats for salmon. Previous work has observed the colonization of newly de-glaciated streams by salmon, but predicting future shifts in salmon habitat across regions has been difficult.  Kara Pitman and colleagues modelled glacier retreat under different climate change scenarios for a 623,000 km2 region of western North America. They quantified emerging streams created by glacier retreat, which they combined with stream gradient-based salmon habitat models.  By 2100, the authors project that approximately 6,000 km of new

Major toilet paper brands are flushing our forests down the drain

The National Observer What runs through your mind when you’re deciding which toilet paper to buy? Sale price, roll size, pitiful single-ply or luxurious triple? Climate change might not make your list of considerations, but it should. Story here. Please also watch this video. "Truth in Advertising - a TV commercial as it should be"

Nearly Half the World's Children at 'Extremely High Risk' for Facing Effects of Climate Crisis, Report Finds

Image
Common Dreams   OCHA/Giles Clarke.  Displaced children stand in the shredded remains of tents in Abs settlement, Yemen, for internally displaced persons. Located just 40 km from the frontlines, the settlement is regularly damaged by passing sandstorms. "Virtually no child's life will be unaffected" by the climate emergency, said the director of UNICEF. Story here.

‘Negligible’ long-term impacts on climate from COVID-19 restrictions

Image
Nature Climate Change Empty streets during the Covid shutdown in Zaragoza City, Spain, Mar. 2020. A Wikimedia photo. The decline in greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollutants, as a result of policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19, will have a negligible impact on long-term warming and may lead to cooling of just 0.005–0.01 °C by 2030, suggests a paper in Nature Climate Change. However, the findings also suggest that if a ‘green recovery’ is pursued, warming could possibly be kept within the 1.5 °C limit above pre-industrial levels by 2050. The enforcement of policies to limit the spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on travel and work. This lack of mobility has led to substantial declines in greenhouse-gas emissions and air pollutants. Previous research has examined the immediate impacts of COVID-19 policies on emissions; however, the long-term impacts of these policies are not well understood. Piers Forster and colleagues analysed mobility data fro