New South Wales and southern Queensland are going to be suffering from warmer weather and less rain than in the past. This temperature change is called “sudden stratospheric warming.” It happens when the air above the South Pole starts to warm up rapidly. Predictions are that the warming of Antarctic will likely be higher than a previous record high in […]
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The monster forest fires rampaging across the Western states may soon be the norm, thanks to climate change. New research indicates that as rainfall diminishes and vegetation dries out on a warmer planet, the West is headed into a more fire-prone future,” wildfire specialist Max Moritz tells the Los Angeles Times. After studying satellite imaging of fires and data from […]
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Even in a world where extreme weather is becoming more common, said Sarah Lyall in The New York Times, the past week has been truly bizarre. In China, now suffering through its coldest, harshest winter in memory, the roofs of houses in Xinjiang collapsed under the weight of deep snow. It was so hot in Australia, meanwhile, that forecasters added […]
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Historic drought: Broiling heat baked much of the U.S. heartland this week, as the nation’s worst drought in more than 50 years devastated corn, soy, and other vital crops. More than 1,000 counties in 26 states have been declared natural disaster areas and 38 percent of the nation’s corn crop is in danger of withering in the field, the U.S. […]
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The amount of CO2 is increasing all the time – we just passed a landmark 400 parts per million concentration of atmospheric CO2, up from around 280ppm before the industrial revolution. That’s a 42.8% increase. A tiny amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, like methane and water vapor, keep the Earth’s surface 30°Celsius (54°F) warmer than it would be […]
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Global climate envoys agreed a landmark accord on Saturday, setting the course for a “historic” transformation of the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming. At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperiled island […]
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While sunning themselves on the Birling Gap Beach, some tourists noticed that there was a haze coming across the beach. As it reached them, they started coughing and choking. They told the authorities that it smelled like chlorine. The people were then taken to the hospital, vomiting and in respiratory distress. The authorities said that it was unlikely to be […]
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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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