Tag Archives: global warming

Bloomberg reports: US President Donald Trump said he would look to counter China’s economic advantage from coal-based electricity by authorizing his administration to ramp up production of power from the fossil fuel. It’s not clear what Trump was referring to or how his social media decree would affect US policy. Trump already signed an executive order declaring a national energy …

NOAA reports: Last year was a record-warm year for the U.S., as the nation was hit by numerous tornadoes and devastating hurricanes, according to scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information. The average annual temperature across the contiguous U.S. was 55.5 degrees F — 3.5 degrees above the 20th-century average — ranking as the nation’s warmest year in NOAA’s …

CNN reports: Last month, two major storms, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, caused a total of between $51.5 billion and $81.5 billion of property damage, mostly to Southeastern US states, according to estimates from CoreLogic. That’s a lot of damage – but it’s only a small fraction of what climate change has cost people around the world. A new report …

USA Today reports: Climate change is taking a dramatic toll on glaciers in Alaska: Glacier melt in a major Alaskan icefield has accelerated and could reach an irreversible tipping point earlier than previously thought, a new scientific study released this week suggests. Alaska has some of our planet’s largest icefields, and their melting is a major contributor to sea-level rise. …

Axios reports: Flooding — which has gotten increasingly severe in an era of extreme weather — costs the U.S. economy an estimated $179.8 to $496 billion per year in 2023 dollars, according to new data from Democrats on the Senate Joint Economic Committee. The estimates are the equivalent of over 1% of 2023’s gross domestic product, the report notes. It …

CNN reports: The planet just marked a “shocking” new milestone, enduring 12 consecutive months of unprecedented heat, according to new data from Copernicus, the European Union’s climate monitoring service. Every single month from June 2023 to May 2024 was the world’s hottest such month on record, Copernicus data showed. The 12-month heat streak was “shocking but not surprising” given human-caused …

Nexstar reports: You may want to clean out the kiddie pool and dust off the patio furniture early this year. We’re in for a hot start to summer, according to a national weather outlook released Thursday by the National Weather Service. All but two states on the new national forecast map are show in shades of orange and red. The …

Axios reports: Hurricanes are getting so strong in a warming world that a Category 6 intensity should be added to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind scale, a new study finds. The paper, published Monday in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, does not represent an official move by the National Hurricane Center to add another hurricane category. Instead, …

The Associated Press reports: Earth last year shattered global annual heat records, flirted with the world’s agreed-upon warming threshold and showed more signs of a feverish planet, the European climate agency said Tuesday. In one of the first of several teams of science agencies to calculate how off-the-charts warm 2023 was, the European climate agency Copernicus said the year was …

NPR reports: As 2023 draws to a close, it’s going out on top. “It’s looking virtually certain at this point that 2023 will be the hottest year on record,” says Zeke Hausfather, climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, a non-profit that analyzes climate trends. Though temperature records from December have yet to be finalized, climate scientists at the National Oceanic and …

The Washington Post reports: For the past several years, a small group of scientists has warned that sometime early this century, the rate of global warming — which has remained largely steady for decades — might accelerate. Temperatures could rise higher, faster. The drumbeat of weather disasters may become more insistent. And now, after what is poised to be the …

Axios reports: Forget the chance of a white Christmas in the Midwest and much of the East this year. Instead, record warmth is on tap. Temperatures from Dallas to Minneapolis, and north into Canada, are likely to range from 20°F to 35°F above average during Christmas week. Temperature records, particularly overnight lows, could be smashed by 5°F to 10°F or …

Axios reports: Much of the U.S. is likely to see temperatures of 10 to 20°F above average for the time of year during the last two weeks of December — including Christmas. “Temperatures will be above average across the West and the northern tier of the nation through at least this weekend,” per a National Weather Service forecast discussion Thursday …

Reuters reports: Representatives from nearly 200 countries agreed at the COP28 climate summit on Wednesday to begin reducing global consumption of fossil fuels to avert the worst of climate change, a first of its kind deal signaling the eventual end of the oil age. The deal struck in Dubai after two weeks of hard-fought negotiations was meant to send a …

Reuters reports: The world’s largest iceberg is on the move for the first time in more than three decades, scientists said on Friday. At almost 4,000 square km (1,500 square miles), the Antarctic iceberg called A23a is roughly three times the size of New York City. Since calving off West Antarctica’s Filchner-Ronne Ice Shelf in 1986, the iceberg — which …

The Washington Post reports: Sea ice levels around Antarctica just registered a record low — and by a wide margin — as winter comes to a close, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC). This significant milestone adds worry that Antarctic sea ice may be entering a state of decline brought on by climate change. “There is …

Reuters reports: Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced on Wednesday he will pump $500 million into the next phase of his energy transition campaign, aiming to shut down “every last” coal plant in the United States and slash gas-fired capacity in half by 2030. The $500 million infusion into his decade-long Beyond Carbon initiative aims to “finish the …

CNBC reports: The U.S. has suffered the highest number of billion-dollar weather disasters on record this year with wildfires and severe storms wreaking havoc from Hawaii to Florida, according to a report released by the federal government Monday. The nation has been hit by 23 such disasters so far in 2023, the highest number since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric …

Bloomberg News reports: This summer was the warmest on record globally by a large margin as extreme heat waves impacted North America, Europe and Asia, according to Europe’s Earth observation agency Copernicus. Temperatures in June, July and August were 0.66 degrees Celsius above the average between 1991 and 2020, Copernicus said. Last month was the warmest August on record globally …

The Associated Press reports: A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate. The ruling in the first-of-its- kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around …