The largest solar storm since 2005 swept across the planet this week, forcing airlines to reroute flights and disrupting communications from global positioning satellites. This spontaneous blast of solar radiation may have affected power grids and high-frequency radio communications in the northern latitudes, said the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. A number of airlines, which route some U.S.-Asia flights over […]
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Crested and rockhopper penguins are threatened by climate change – but this time the penguins could be at risk because they cannot change their own ways. Evolution has left them with a rigid parenting strategy, probably well adapted for climate conditions so far. But as temperatures rise, conditions change and food supplies become precarious, the inflexible roles of male and female […]
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An influential panel of climate scientists has expressed higher confidence than ever that human activity is the main cause of the rise in global temperatures since the 1950s, Reuters.com reports. A leaked draft of an upcoming report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on a broad analysis of published scientific studies, concludes with 95 percent certainty […]
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A research paper published in Nature Climate Change predicts widespread death of needleleaf evergreen trees (NET) within the Southwest United States by the year 2100 under projected global warming scenarios. The research team that conducted the study, which includes University of Delaware’s Sara Rauscher, considered both field results and a range of validated regional predictions and global simulation models of […]
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What happened A United Nations panel of the world’s leading environmental scientists issued its most dire warnings on the dangers posed by climate change, saying global warming is already affecting every continent and threatens to devastate food supplies, cause mass extinctions of plants and animals, worsen droughts, and raise the risk of wars over resources. The longer society holds off […]
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Between fighting wildfires and rerouting the Iditarod, Alaska has had a tough time with climate change. But at least there’s one good outcome: local food. In Bethel, a town in southwestern Alaska, farmer Tim Meyers is taking advantage of rising temperatures to grow food in the previously inhospitable tundra. NPR reports: At the 15-acre organic farm, which has been operating for more […]
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Climatologists have started to drill into the oldest ice core in Antarctica to find some air that may have been there around 1 million to 900,000 years ago. The teams are from Australia, China, and Europe in a friendly type competition to find samples of air that is about 1.5 million years old. They would like to find out what […]
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What is hail or a hailstone? Hail is a form of precipitation that occurs when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere where they freeze into balls of ice. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can be deadly to livestock and people. How does hail form? Hailstones grow by colliding with supercooled […]
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Simple statement: 13 of the 15 warmest years ever recorded have occurred within the first 15 years of this century. Complicated question: what is the probability that this happened purely by chance? The latest calculated answer: it could be one in 5000, or it could be as unlikely as one in 170,000, or it could be somewhere in between. Conclusion: […]
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2013 – Colorado River Delta, Mexico: Water began flowing in the Mexican part of the Colorado River for the first time in decades. Dams, including the Hoover Dam and the Morelos Dam, usually keep most of the river’s water in the U.S. and divert some to Tijuana and surrounding farmland. The joint U.S.- Mexican International Boundary and Water Commission authorized […]
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