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Environment

Drought Starvation

Nearly 130,000 people face starvation in the Horn of Africa as the region’s long-term drought is on track to become the worst on record, according to the World Meteorological Organisation. The drought has decimated crops and killed millions of livestock animals over the past year, bringing food insecurity and malnutrition to 6 million people.

Climate scientists say the weather shift creating the drought has been driven by a rare triple La Niña in the Pacific and three years of below-average temperatures in the Indian Ocean as well. It is hoped the predicted El Niño this year will end it.

Dark Winter

Residents across the eastern Great Lakes and the Canadian province of Ontario just suffered through their darkest winter in 73 years. Alaskan climatologist Brian Brettschneider made the calculation by looking at solar energy records from last December to February.

Prolonged lack of sunshine in the depth of winter has been proven to affect human health and can contribute to depression. Gloomy winters can also lead to vitamin D deficiency and a slower metabolism. Toronto went several weeks in December and January without much sunshine.

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Environment

Global Temperature Extremes

The week’s hottest temperature was 45.0 degrees Celsius (113 degrees F) at Matam, Senegal.

The week’s coldest temperature was minus 65.0 degrees Celsius (-85 degrees F) at Vostok, Antarctica.

Temperatures were tabulated from the more than 10,000 worldwide synoptic weather stations. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization sets the standards for weather observations, and provides a global telecommunications circuit for data distribution.

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Global Warming

UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report

The UN’s final IPCC report warns that drastic action must be taken immediately, but staving off disaster is within humanity’s grasp. The world needs immediate action now to defuse a “climate time bomb” that will unleash catastrophic environmental effects and climate breakdown, United Nation (UN) scientists have said in the last of its four major assessment reports to governments on Monday (March 20).

Governments must make “rapid, deep and immediate” cuts to global carbon dioxide emissions, a greenhouse gas that is the largest contributor to human-caused climate change, in order to start to decrease annual emissions by 2025 and halve them by 2030, according to the final summary report by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). These carbon dioxide cuts must be made globally and across all industries if temperature changes are to remain at or below the dangerous threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial temperatures, the IPCC said.

Scientists have warned that crossing this 1.5 C threshold greatly increases the risks of encountering tipping points that could unleash irreversible climate breakdown — such as the total collapse of most of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets; extreme heat waves; severe droughts; water stress; and extreme weather across large parts of the globe.

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Environment

Amazon Deforestation Rises

Deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest rose in February to the highest level on record for the month, preliminary official data showed on Friday, highlighting challenges the new government faces to stop the destruction.

Space research agency Inpe’s data showed 322 square km (124 square miles) were cleared in the region last month, up 62% from February 2022 and well above the average of 166 square km for the period.

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Global Warming

Marine Heatwaves

Heatwaves unfolding on the bottom of the ocean can be more intense and last longer than those on the sea surface, new research suggests, but such extremes in the deep ocean are often overlooked.

Bottom heatwaves ranged from 0.5 degrees Celisus to 3C warmer than normal temperatures and could last more than six months — much longer than heatwaves at the surface. Surface heatwaves can be picked up by satellites and can result in huge algal blooms. But, Amaya said, often no one knows a bottom marine heatwave is happening until the impacts show up in commercial bottom-dwelling species like lobsters and crabs.

The ocean has absorbed about 90% of the excess heat from global warming, with the ocean’s average temperature increasing by about 0.9C over the last century. Marine heatwaves have become about 50% more frequent over the past decade. Past bottom marine heatwaves have decimated Pacific cod and snow crab populations which declined by 75% following the big marine heatwave in 2015. Warmer water, he said, can increase the energy needs of species at the same time that there’s less prey available for them to eat, leading to more deaths and fewer births.

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Global Warming

A Devastating Toxin Is Bubbling Up From the Permafrost

Trapped in all the permafrost encircling the northern reaches of the globe is an estimated 30 billion tons of carbon. It’s an unfathomable amount. But there’s something else lurking in the permafrost that has the potential to be more immediately dangerous to the people and wildlife living in the area: mercury.

Wildfires and volcanoes belch mercury, and, since the Industrial Revolution, so do coal-burning power plants and factories. Warm-air currents carry mercury in its inorganic heavy-metal form to the Arctic, where it settles into the soil and vegetation before being safely locked away in the deeply frozen permafrost.

In its inorganic form, mercury is less threatening to people. But as the permafrost thaws, mercury is finding its way into the soil and the region’s many ponds, rivers, and lakes. Once there, certain microbes can convert inorganic mercury into the form to be concerned about: neurotoxic methylmercury.

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Environment

Early Cherry Blossoms

The famed cherry trees of Tokyo began to blossom on March 14, matching the earliest date on record since observations began in 1953. The Japan Meteorological Agency said the “Somei Yoshino” variety buds appeared at the Yasukuni Shrine on the same day in 2020 and 2021 as well, which is 10 days earlier than the longterm average.

The agency says the trees should be in full bloom across the capital in the next week and should soon burst forth earlier than normal in other parts of the country, due to rising temperatures. Residents will be able to gather in public spaces to enjoy the blooms for the first time since the pandemic.

Oceans of Plastic

The amount of microplastic debris littering the world’s oceans has undergone a dramatic surge since 2005, with researchers saying there are now 2.5 million tonnes of it in the sea. Marcus Eriksen and Lisa Erdle at the 5 Gyres Institute in Santa Monica, California, and their colleagues say scarce data on plastic pollution between 1979 and 1990 make it impossible to see how fast it was increasing during that period.

Observations between 1990 and 2004 show it was fluctuating with no clear trend. But concentrations have risen in recent years to more than 10 times their levels in 2005. A legally binding treaty among 175 countries to control plastic pollution is expected to be drafted and debated by 2024.

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Environment

Global Temperature Extremes

The week’s hottest temperature was 46.0 degrees Celsius (115 degrees F) at Matam, Senegal.

The week’s coldest temperature was minus 59.0 degrees Celsius (-74 degrees F) at Vostok, Antarctica.

Temperatures were tabulated from the more than 10,000 worldwide synoptic weather stations. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization sets the standards for weather observations, and provides a global telecommunications circuit for data distribution.

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Environment

Plastiglomerates

The geology of Brazil’s volcanic Trindade Island has fascinated scientists for years, but the discovery of rocks made from plastic debris in this remote turtle refuge is sparking alarm.

The pollution mainly comes from fishing nets, which is very common debris on Trinidade Island’s beaches. The nets are dragged by the marine currents and accumulate on the beach. When the temperature rises, this plastic melts and becomes embedded with the beach’s natural material. The garbage in the sea and the plastic dumped incorrectly in the oceans is becoming geological material preserved in the earth’s geological records.

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Environment

Air Pollution – Thailand

More than 1.3 million people have fallen sick in the kingdom since the start of the year as a result of air pollution, with nearly 200,000 admitted to hospital this week alone, according to the public health ministry. The country’s capital, Bangkok – home to an estimated 11 million people and one of the world’s most popular tourist destinations – is currently shrouded in a thick haze.

The toxic air is an unpleasant yellow-grey mix of vehicle fumes, industrial emissions and smoke from agricultural burning. Anyone going outside should wear a high-quality N95 anti-pollution mask.

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Environment

Global Temperature Extremes

The week’s hottest temperature was 45.0 degrees Celsius (110 degrees F) at Linguère, Senegal.

The week’s coldest temperature was minus 91.0 degrees Celsius (-74 degrees F) at Vostok, Antarctica.

Temperatures were tabulated from the more than 10,000 worldwide synoptic weather stations. The United Nations World Meteorological Organization sets the standards for weather observations, and provides a global telecommunications circuit for data distribution.

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Global Warming

Antarctica’s sea ice reaches its lowest level since records began

The amount of sea ice surrounding Antarctica has reached its lowest level since modern records began, for the second year in a row.

Sea ice is frozen seawater that floats on the ocean’s surface around the planet’s polar regions. It forms at much lower sustained temperatures than freshwater ice does, at around 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 1.8 degrees Celsius). Sea ice builds up during the winter until it reaches its maximum extent, and then melts away in the spring and summer until it reaches its minimum extent.

In Antarctica, where summer and winter are flipped relative to the Northern Hemisphere, sea ice normally reaches its maximum extent in September, when sea ice covers around 7 million square miles (18.5 million square kilometers). At its minimum extent, at the end of February, historically only around 1 million square miles (2.5 million square km) remains.

Last year, the minimum sea ice extent was less than 772,000 square miles (2 million square km), the lowest total since scientists began recording sea ice extent with satellites in 1979. On Feb. 21 this year, that number had shrunk to just 691,000 square miles (1.8 million square km), which is roughly 40% less than the average between 1981 and 2010

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Global Warming

US got a record-breaking 40% of its energy from carbon-free sources in 2022

Carbon-free sources supplied over 40 per cent of the US’s total energy output in 2022, a new report reveals. This is an all-time high. The figure combines renewable generation – such as solar, wind and hydro – and nuclear power. Nuclear and hydropower remained at similar levels to previous years, so the majority of this increase comes from wind and solar.

Nuclear power is a contentious topic among sustainable energy advocates. It is considered ‘carbon-free’ as nuclear reactors don’t produce direct CO2 emissions, however, whether or not it ought to be regarded as being sustainable remains in dispute.

The report also shows that electric vehicle (EV) sales surged by 50 per cent in 2022 with nearly 982,000 new cars sold.

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Environment

Mass River Pollution – Poland

Greenpeace have blamed wastewater discharge from coal mines for the mass die-off of thousands of fish in the Oder River last year. The August 2022 environmental disaster saw 300 tonnes of dead fish recovered from the waterway, which runs along the Polish-German border.

Polish authorities blamed the incident on a bloom of toxic golden algae, which thrives in highly salty water and in hot temperatures. However, environmental campaign group Greenpeace blamed the river’s elevated salinity levels on wastewater discharges from Poland’s coal mines after experts’ test results of the waters were released.

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Environment

Tree Loss – Less Rainfall

Analysis of satellite images suggests that rainfall is decreasing in tropical regions of the world where forests are being felled.

A study led by Callum Smith at Britain’s University of Leeds says the loss of the trees results in vast amounts of water not evaporating from the leaves of trees in tropical forests and falling as rain nearby. This disruption of the historic water cycle in tropical regions also increases the risk of wildfires and reduces the chances that remaining tropical forests will survive, Smith says.