Government advisers and leading infrastructure experts have said ministers must do much more to protect the UK’s infrastructure from extreme weather, as the fiercest heatwave in decades gave way to thunderstorms and deluges over large parts of the country. Storm warnings are in place over the weekend for most of England, Wales and large parts of Scotland. The Met Office said the current weather was likely to stay in place at least until next Tuesday, bringing heat, lightning and downpours to many regions of the UK, though some of the far north was likely to avoid the worst of it.

Guardian 15th Aug 2020 read more »

Bill McKibben: This, it now seems clear, is the year when karma stops playing nice and gets down to brass tacks. Either we acknowledge science and put on a mask, or we are going to kill people and cripple our economy. Either white Americans acknowledge our racist history and get to work on repairing its effects, or the country will be further divided into fearful and angry camps. These aren’t situations where we get a second chance. And, as this week demonstrated, either we seize the suddenly vivid possibilities for a rapid energy transformation, or we watch the world disintegrate. On Ellesmere Island, in the Arctic, Canada’s largest remaining ice shelf (an area significantly larger than Manhattan) collapsed over the course of two days. “Above normal air temperatures, offshore winds and open water in front of the ice shelf are all part of the recipe for ice shelf break up,” the Canadian Ice Service tweeted. Meanwhile, in Mumbai, where the coronavirus may have already infected half of the people living in the city’s vast slums, record rainfall produced misery almost impossible to imagine. An “astonishing” eighty-two inches of rain fell on the city between July 10th and August 7th; the monsoon often produces flooding, but not like this. One of the city’s English language newspapers ran a front page that simply said “spirit of mumbai: tired and beaten.”

New Yorker 12th Aug 2020 read more »

Scottish minister warns of climate challenge after Stonehaven crash. Concerns over rise in extreme weather as tributes paid to three victims of train derailment. The climate crisis is presenting increasing challenges for rail safety, senior transport figures have warned, as family and friends paid tribute to three people who died in a derailment in Aberdeenshire following thunderstorms and torrential rain.

Guardian 13th Aug 2020 read more »

The UK has had its longest stretch of temperatures exceeding 34C since the 1960s, as warnings of thunderstorms and heavy rain remain in place across the country. The Met Office said the scorching temperatures were recorded in parts of southern England for the sixth day in a row – the first time Britain has experienced such a spell since 1961. A thunderstorm warning for much of Wales, the West Midlands and parts of the north-west was upgraded to amber on Wednesday evening after severe storms caused disruption in some areas.

Guardian 12th Aug 2020 read more »

Times 13th Aug 2020 read more »

‘Overheating audit’: How the Mayor of London is crafting extreme heat adaptation plans.

Business Green 12th Aug 2020 read more »

Why is this heatwave lasting so long? Blame climate change. The climate crisis has made heatwaves more likely – and when they do happen they tend to be longer and hotter than ever before.

Wired 12th Aug 2020 read more »

Last year was officially one of the hottest years on record, rounding off the hottest decade on record, scientists have confirmed in a major report which underscores the rapid change underway in the earth’s climate. As the UK swelters under a blistering heatwave, the annual assessment from the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) has verified 2019 as being among the warmest years ever recorded, with temperatures around half a degree above the 1981–2010 average. It caps off the warmest decade on record, an accolade snatched from the 2000s by a margin of 0.2C. In fact, each decade since 1980 has been successively warmer than the preceding decade.

iNews 12th Aug 2020 read more »

Climate change warning after fatal rail landslide.

Times 13th Aug 2020 read more »

The temperature of the Arctic matters to the entire world: it helps to keep the global climate fairly cool. Scientists now say that by 2035 there could be an end to Arctic sea ice. The northern polar ocean’s sea ice is a crucial element in the Earth system: because it is highly reflective, it sends solar radiation back out into space. Once it’s melted, there’s no longer any protection for the darker water and rock beneath, and nothing to prevent them absorbing the incoming heat.

Climate News Network 11th Aug 2020 read more »

The Planet Earth-observation company has just released new imagery of the broken Milne Ice Shelf in the Arctic. Located on the northern margin of Canada’s Ellesmere Island, the ice platform split on 30/31 July to form a free-floating bloc some 80 sq km (30 sq miles) in area. By 3 August, this berg, or “ice island”, had itself ruptured in two, with both segments then seen to drift out into the Arctic Ocean. Ice shelves are the floating fronts of glaciers that have flowed off the land into the sea. Ellesmere Island was once bounded by extensive shelves that had melded into a single structure.

BBC 11th Aug 2020 read more »

UK heatwave: Climate change will bring more ‘tropical nights’ with after-dark temperatures of 20C or above, forecasters warn.

Independent 11th Aug 2020 read more »

A trio of US researchers has grim news for people worried about climate science’s worst case outcome. Forget about the other options. The worst case is already happening. Christopher Schwalm and colleagues at the Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they took a closer look at the evidence for climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions and climate models. This is the kind of research that assesses the future under a number of possible scenarios. These scenarios are based on mathematical models and global assumptions about economic growth, carbon budgets and land use changes, and they are couched in language arcane enough to make even committed followers of climate science reach for the aspirin. The most optimistic of these is one in which the world makes a determined, drastic and concerted effort to contain global heating to well below 2°C above the average for most of human history. At the other end of the scale is one notoriously called “business as usual”, in which the nations of the world carry on burning ever more fossil fuels, while sea levels rise ever higher, and the thermometer readings get ever higher. It has been intended from the start as an awful warning rather than as a guide to what is most likely to happen.

Climate News Network 10th Aug 2020 read more »

The world’s peatlands will become a large source of greenhouse gases as temperatures rise this century, say scientists. Right now, huge amounts of carbon are stored in boggy, often frozen regions stretching across northern parts of the world. But much of the permanently frozen land will thaw this century, say experts. This will release warming gases at a rate that could be 30-50% greater than previous estimates.

BBC 10th Aug 2020 read more »

The volume of water loss from Antarctica’s floating ice shelves over the past 25 years would fill the Grand Canyon, according to a new study published on Monday. The continent’s ice shelves were found to have lost nearly 4,000 gigatons since 1994 due to melting from increased heat in the ocean as a result of the climate crisis. Although there was much variation in the rate at which the ocean is melting the ice shelves, overall the ice is melting faster than it is being replaced in Antarctica.

Independent 10th Aug 2020 read more »

All the tough talk and hand wringing over the arrival of a few hundred migrants demonstrates how under-prepared the UK is to deal with the looming threat of climate change. Experts agree that rising sea levels, drought, crop failures and natural disasters will likely force hundreds of millions to flee their homes in the coming decades. “Climate change is redrawing maps of the world – where the coastline is, where rain falls, where people can grow food and where hurricanes hit,” Oli Brown from the think-tank Chatham House explained to a House of Lords committee earlier this year. “That has a tremendous impact on where people can live in the short or long term.” Most people will move internally to towns and cities in their own countries before crossing continents. But according to one 2017 study, unless climate change can be slowed the number of people claiming asylum in the EU could triple to one million people a year by 2100. More than a handful of those people will set their sights on the UK as their ultimate destination.

iNews 10th Aug 2020 read more »

The melting of the world’s ‘third pole’ is a looming climate disaster – so why aren’t we taking about it? The vast Hindu Kush-Himalaya ice sheet contains the world’s largest amount of snow and ice, after the Arctic and Antarctic. Amy Coles explains that without a major reduction in global emissions, it could be a fraction of the size within decades – changing the lives of the hundreds of millions who rely on it.

Independent 9th Aug 2020 read more »

Crime, suicide and sunburn: the problems with heatwaves. HEATWAVES undoubtedly bring a certain joy at the opportunity to be out in the sunshine. But as the planet heats and weather records tumble, increasingly normal bouts of baking heat aren’t all sun and games. Aside from the grief and guilt we may feel about the human causes behind increasingly frequent spells of hot weather, heatwaves can also harm our mental health in hidden but surprisingly severe ways. Chief among them is their tendency to make our blood boil.

The National 9th Aug 2020 read more »

The heaviest monsoon downpour in nearly 50 years has brought Mumbai to a standstill, with stranded passengers at railway stations having to be rescued by dinghies from waist-high water. People who live in areas normally unaffected by the annual monsoon flooding looked out from their high-rise flats at new swirling rivers outside caused by the heaviest single day’s rain recorded in August in 47 years. Wednesday saw extraordinary downpours and winds of more than 100km/h tossing cars aside, uprooting trees, tearing down hoardings and smashing cranes at the port.

Guardian 6th Aug 2020 read more »

It is no longer credible to deny that the average temperature around the world is rising and that other phenomena, such as extreme weather events, are also shifting. People can now see with their own eyes that the climate is changing around them. Nor is it tenable to deny that the Earth’s warming is driven by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, resulting from human activities, such as the production and burning of fossil fuels and deforestation. Such denial is only now promoted by cranks and conspiracy theorists who also think, for instance, that the Covid-19 pandemic is linked to the development of the 5G network. So instead, a different form of climate change denial is emerging from the polemical columns of rightwing newspapers. They paint a Panglossian picture of manmade climate crisis that will never be catastrophic as long as the world grows rich by using fossil fuels. The “lukewarmers” are on the march and coming to a bookshop near you.

Observer 9th Aug 2020 read more »

The dramatic drop in greenhouse gases and air pollutants seen during the global lockdown will have little impact on our warming planet say scientists. Their new analysis suggests that by 2030, global temperatures will only be 0.01C lower than expected. But the authors stress that the nature of the recovery could significantly alter the longer term outlook. A strong green stimulus could keep the world from exceeding 1.5C of warming by the middle of this century.

BBC 7th Aug 2020 read more »

When Harriet Forster’s A-level exams were cancelled because of the pandemic, unlike some teenagers she did not enjoy an extended summer holiday. The 18-year-old student is passionate about tackling climate change and decided to spend several months analysing data on reductions in emissions during the global lockdown. Her efforts may have far greater impact than her previous campaigning, which included putting up posters encouraging pupils to eat less meat. Her work, alongside eminent climate scientists, has culminated in a study published yesterday in one of the world’s top scientific journals. The study she co-authored in Nature Climate Change found that although the sharp fall in emissions during the lockdown will have a “negligible” impact on rising temperatures, ensuring that there is a “green recovery” could avert dangerous climate change.

Times 8th Aug 2020 read more »

The draconian coronavirus lockdowns across the world have led to sharp drops in carbon emissions, but this will have “negligible” impact on the climate crisis, with global heating cut by just 0.01C by 2030, a study has found. But the analysis also shows that putting the huge sums of post-Covid-19 government funding into a green recovery and shunning fossil fuels will give the world a good chance of keeping the rise in global temperatures below 1.5C. The scientists said we are now at a “make or break” moment in keeping under the limit – as compared with pre-industrial levels – agreed by the world’s governments to avoid the worst effects of global heating.

Guardian 7th Aug 2020 read more »

Climate crisis: Bold green policies from world governments ‘could halve temperature rises expected by 2050’. The global lockdown will have a “negligible” impact on rising temperatures but a green recovery could avert the climate crisis, a study has said. Lockdowns to stop the spread of coronavirus caused huge falls in transport use, as well as reductions in industry and commercial operations, cutting the greenhouse gases and pollutants caused by vehicles and other activities. The impact is only short-lived, however, and analysis shows that even if some lockdown measures last until the end of 2021, global temperatures will only be 0.01C lower than expected by 2030. But if countries choose a “strong” green stimulus route out of the pandemic it could halve the temperature rises expected by 2050, the study published in Nature Climate Change said. That gives the world a good chance of keeping temperature rises to the 1.5C goal that countries signed up to under the international Paris climate agreement to prevent the most dangerous impacts of global warming.

Independent 7th Aug 2020 read more »

In the next 80 years flooding around the planet’s land masses is likely to rise by almost 50%, endangering many millions of coastal dwellers. If humans go on burning ever greater volumes of fossil fuels, while destroying ever more natural forest, then another 77 million people could be at risk of flooding, a rise of 52%. And these floods – increasingly frequent and extending over greater areas – will put at risk cities, homes, resorts and industries valued at more than $14 trillion (£10.7tn). This sum alone is worth 20% of global gross domestic product, the economist’s preferred indicator of economic health and wealth, according to a new study in the journal Scientific Reports. The researchers built their argument on historic data from 681 tide-gauge stations around the world to model the growing hazard at 10,000 coastal locations.

Climate News Network 6th Aug 2020 read more »

Why we need to declare a global climate emergency now. It is cheap insurance for future generations to match the risk with action to preserve the ecosystems we all need. Our planet is no longer stable. Old certainties about the climate are evaporating as rising greenhouse gas emissions accelerate global warming. In June, a city in the Siberian Arctic recorded a temperature of 38C — 10C higher than the seasonal average. Data show that the Arctic is heating up twice as fast as the rest of the planet. Meanwhile, the South Pole is warming at three times the global rate. There is evidence that parts of Antarctica have crossed tipping points and that ice will melt irrecoverably on a vast scale. Deforestation of the Amazon rainforest is diminishing its capacity to store carbon. As early as 2035 it may flip from being a repository of carbon to an emitter, making it more difficult to restabilise the climate. We can say with a high degree of certainty that the conditions on the planet over the past 10,000 years, since leaving the Ice Age, have been astoundingly clement relative to the preceding million years — not too hot, not too cold, and, critically, predictable, allowing us to develop societies as we know them today.

FT 28th July 2020 read more »

The environmental crisis is one of the most serious and pressing issues facing the world today. We are already living with impacts of human-caused global heating, and the world is not doing nearly enough yet to put us on a pathway to avoiding potentially dire impacts later in the century to both humans and the natural world. But a discourse sharply divided between doom and dismissal risks obstructing climate action, rather than motivating it.

Guardian 6th Aug 2020 read more »

Out-of-control wildfires north of the Arctic Circle have released more dangerous greenhouse gases in two months than all of the fires last year combined, scientists have said. The latest data from the European Union’s Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service reveals the appalling extent of the fires in the Siberian Arctic, which are releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Around 600 individual fire hotspots are being detected every day, compared with 200 to 300 on average in July 2019, and images taken by the satellites show enormous plumes of thick smoke, many stretching tens of kilometres across the tundra. In total, smoke from the wildfires was covering an area of about 3.6 million sq km (1.4 million sq miles) on Wednesday – more than a third of the area of Canada.

Independent 6th Aug 2020 read more »

If the world wants to avoid pandemics like Covid-19 in future, it has a lot to learn. This coronavirus outbreak is likely to cost the world somewhere between $8 trillion and $15 trillion. It might have been 500 times cheaper, say US scientists, simply to have done what conservationists have sought for years: control trade in wildlife and stop destroying tropical forests.

Climate News Network 5th Aug 2020 read more »