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Climate Change Acceleration Breaking the Scales - Part II
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Clare
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Jan 30, 2025 02:39AM
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"Heatwave records are being broken at, well, a record pace. In the past two-dozen years, for example, new records have been set "almost everywhere on the globe," he said. Those records, of course, can be defined using different time scales, but "since 2010, 57 percent of the Earth's surface has seen all-time daily temperature records," he added, "and if you look at monthly time scales, it's way more."
In 2021, Fischer and his colleagues published a paper in Nature Climate Change, which opened with an abstract that predicted "week-long heat extremes that break records by three or more standard deviations are two to seven times more probable in 2021-2050 and three to 21 times more probable in 2051-2080, compared to the last three decades." In retrospect, however, those spooky predictions were too conservative. At AGU24, Fischer said, "They came a lot faster than we thought when at the time we were writing that abstract.""
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4155...
https://www.extremeweatherwatch.com/c...
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4324...
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Extreme weather events are the number one risk given for long term and number two risk given for short term. Data from the World Economics Forum's survey of 900 experts.
Fake news and disinformation are the number one short term risk. My answer is, don't get your news from unaccountable social media then. Get it from accredited journalism where fact checking takes top priority.
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"Storm Éowyn broke provisional wind speed records at a number of weather stations last month, bringing hurricane-force mean wind speeds at two stations.
The storm brought the provisional highest wind speeds since digital records began at Ceann Mhása, Co Galway. The highest gust recorded was 184km/h, while the highest 10-minute wind speed was 142km/h.
Mean wind speeds reached hurricane force 12 on the Beaufort wind scale at Ceann Mhása and Malin Head in Co Donegal.
...
"Four stations also broke their highest 10-minute wind speed record - Ceann Mhása, Finner (115km/h), Athenry (139km/h) and Gurteen (124km/h).
According to Met Éireann's meteorological report for January, Storm Éowyn "went through explosive cyclogenesis as it approached Ireland from the southwest" and "reached peak intensity as it brushed" Ireland's northwest coast."
Relevant dystopian book:
All the Water in the World by Eiren Caffall
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"Temperatures in the North Pole on Sunday reached 20 degrees Celsius above the average set between 1991 and 2020, after reaching 18 degrees higher than the average on Saturday.
With the rise, the temperature in the North Pole surpassed the point of freezing, or 0 degrees Celsius. One reading measured the temperature at 0.5 degrees Celsius, and the EU Copernicus Climate Change Service measured temperatures above -1 degree Celsius as far up as the 87th parallel in the Arctic.
“This was a very extreme winter warming event,” Mika Rantanen, a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, told The Guardian. “Probably not the most extreme ever observed, but still at the upper edge of what can happen in the Arctic.”
According to Rantanen, the temperature could be between 20 to 30 degrees Celsius warmer than average, but the exact difference is difficult to judge in such a remote location."
https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4324...
https://nsidc.org/learn/parts-cryosph...
Before the 1960s, the fourth largest lake on Earth, the Aral Sea, extended across the borders of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, spanning 26,000 square miles. By 2015, due to extensive irrigation projects, most of that lake had been reduced to 3,300 square miles, with the dried out lake bed forming the world's newest desert. The area is also suffering from continuing reduced rainfall due to climate change. The situation is severely impacting the health and welfare of the 3 million people that live in the surrounding region.
The inland lake disappeared and the dried out lake bed is blowing toxic dust throughout the region. The toxic dust is also going around the world and coming down in the rain.
That's the funny thing about all this rain that the world is experiencing. The ocean is getting more water in it and the land is keeping less water on it from the increased rainfall. There is definitely more rain falling today than there was 20 years ago but the land has been getting drier and drier.
The increased rain comes down so fast that it rushes out to the ocean and never gets absorbed by the land. The harder it falls, the deeper it is and the faster it runs off the land and out to the oceans. Besides prioritizing water usage we also should be figuring out how to capture all this water before it escapes to the oceans.
I don't know if building large simple dams on natural waterways would work. Some places are knocking down old dams, one of the reasons is because they need to be rebuilt or knocked down. Other places are putting up big dams on existing waterways. It might turn out that we need the rivers running naturally without obstructions and the extra water has to be stored somewhere else.
A long time ago they used to store water underground in large cisterns. Maybe that idea never lost its advantage, it was just abandoned.
https://www.sciencealert.com/report-r...
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"Overall, there have been 10 instances on record since 1941 where the number of consecutive days without sunshine exceeded 11 days, at various stations. The longest recorded stretch of consecutive days without sunshine since 1941 at a station in Ireland is 16 days. This has occurred twice, once at Belmullet, Co. Mayo between September 1st 1956 to September 16th 1956 and, more recently, at Cork Airport between December 23rd 2018 and January 7th 2019.
Dublin Airport's record for consecutive days without sunshine stands at 11 days which happened in March 1969. But this record has now been tied with Dublin Airport recording zero sunshine this month between Saturday February 8th and Tuesday February 18th. We finally saw some sunshine today, Wednesday February 19th, so the record will remain at 11 consecutive days."
That's a long time. A week is long enough.
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https://gizmodo.com/this-ethiopian-vo...
"Canadian greenhouse gas monitoring company GHGSat said in early February that the amount of methane being emitted from Mount Fentale is “substantial.” When GHGSat began measuring the emissions on January 31, they found that the volcano was spewing out 58 metric tonnes of methane every hour. GHGSat began monitoring the situation after receiving a tip from the European Space Agency’s Copernicus program, which operates a number of observation satellites orbiting Earth.
John Stix, a geology professor at McGill University, told New Scientist that the amount of methane is “unusual” for volcanoes, which typically spew out other gases, such as carbon dioxide and sulfur dioxide.
While carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, methane is in second place, accounting for around 11% of global emissions. According to the EPA, methane is actually the more powerful of the two gases, with a single molecule being capable of trapping 28 times more heat than a molecule of carbon dioxide.
That the methane is so abundant compared to other gases suggests whatever is happening isn’t due to magma coming to the surface, said Stix. Rather, magma movement deep underground may have opened a gas deposit."
https://www.newscientist.com/article/...
https://www.epa.gov/gmi/importance-me...
There a some very large deposits of natural gas in Ethiopia as well as coal, shale and oil. Like the article suggests, somehow the geological activity of the region around the volcano has opened a route for the gas to vent. Hopefully the volcano stays dormant. While the size of the natural methane leak is decreasing, this is another example of how natural activity effects our plans to cut back emissions and are probably way below what needs to be done.
There is a lot of volcanic activity and earthquake activity in Ethiopia due to the many volcanos in the East African rift. Another volcano near the dormant volcano Fentale which released the methane, the Dofen volcano, had volcanic activity in January 2025. What is happening at Fentale, no lava but the surface of the land around it has been uplifted and deformed, might have triggered volcanic activity at Dofen. It was the usual release of rocks, ash, steam, mud, and various gasses.
Ethiopia has no major fossil fuel mining activity yet they have a sizable release of greenhouses gasses from volcanic activity such as H₂O, CO, CH₄, NO₂, and SO₂. While most of the volcanos appear to be inactive, the ground around them is constantly being deformed which is caused by underground activity in the rift. This was only recently determined by satellite imagery. They do have noticeable volcanic activity from time to time.
Ethiopia is just starting to build a sizable electric grid. Only half the country is electrified. They have one of the lowest rates of electrification in Africa. They use coal to run the cement plants and not to generate electricity. There are no railroads or shipping, everything is transported by trucks, or cars, or animals.
The 50 percent of the population not using electricity uses wood and fuel oil to power their activities. The wood comes from forests and biomass from agricultural activities and the different liquid fuels come from a variety of sources.
Even though they have large fossil fuel reserves, those are mostly untapped. They have hydroelectric dams and are building a very big dam for more hydroelectric power. They would like to use the geothermal power from all the geological activity in the rift to generate electricity. There are also plans to generate electricity using solar and wind power.
They have a lot of trouble keeping the electricity flowing because the transmission systems and distribution equipment is very old and needs to be updated or rebuilt.
https://www.volcanocafe.org/domino-ef...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_...
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Originally it was thought that as the ocean temperature rose the ocean currents would noticeably slow down. It turns out the ocean currents are slowing down but not as fast as originally thought. This creates another problem. The ocean currents are doing too good of a job transferring warmer water up north that melts the ice faster.The currents can still be disrupted in the future, that threat hasn't been removed.
https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-...
Another Ocean MysteryIt was believed that the warming oceans would put more moisture into the air because of higher evaporation raters. But the evaporation rates haven't increased, in fact they have dropped a bit. This is most likely caused by the slowing down of the regular winds blowing across the oceans which lowers the evaporation rate.
Extreme weather creates bigger storms and faster wind events but over a limited area and time span so the overall effect is less rain, dryer land, slower winds for some areas.
So far, the changes are not uniform and vary greatly from region to region. The impacts spread out over time so all regions are experiencing some kind of change whether its weather, commercial activities, or social changes.
Some areas are seeing higher wind speeds and greater precipitation, while other areas have experienced lower speed winds and less precipitation. Some areas are still somewhat near normal. Perhaps the widest experienced change could be additional heat.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.c...
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""This is a very rare event for southeast Queensland ... it has been many decades since this part of the state experienced (a cyclone)," Queensland Premier David Crisafulli told reporters.
He called on residents to heed evacuation orders.
"If you are in a storm tide zone or you're in an area where you know there is riverine flooding, you really need to consider and think about your evacuation plan now," Mr Crisafulli said.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said heavy-lift helicopters have been deployed and offered to "provide whatever resources are required" for the state governments.
Many residents have left their homes as authorities rush to open evacuation centres.
Sandbags are in short supply and supermarket shelves have been stripped bare as people stock up on essentials.
Southeast Queensland and northern New South Wales were last hit by a cyclone more than half a century ago in 1974.
The last time a cyclone threatened Brisbane was in 1990 but the system tracked south just before reaching the city."
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"Violent winds toppled power lines as a tropical cyclone inched towards Australia's eastern coast, sparking evacuation orders and leaving more than 50,000 homes without electricity.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred was 165km east of Brisbane city this morning, crawling towards the densely populated coastline at "walking speed", government forecasts said.
Some four million people were in the firing line along a 400km stretch of coastline straddling the border of Queensland state and New South Wales.
It is a region rarely troubled by typhoons - it has been more than 50 years since a tropical cyclone made landfall in that part of Queensland."
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"Ex-Cyclone Alfred stalled off the rain- and wind-lashed coast of eastern Australia today, threatening to unleash floods after blacking out more than 330,000 homes and businesses.
The former tropical cyclone - now downgraded to a tropical depression - has battered the coastline with gale-force winds that toppled trees, brought down power lines, and damaged buildings.
It was still creating heavy rainfall, swelling rivers in parts of a 400-km (250-mile) stretch of the coast straddling southeast Queensland and northeast New South Wales this morning, government forecasters said.
Utility companies said 295,000 properties in southeast Queensland and another 42,600 in New South Wales were without power, warning that floods could hamper repairs.
"That's the largest ever loss of power from a natural disaster in Queensland's history," said the state's premier, David Crisafulli, estimating that about 750,000 people had been impacted since the blackouts began."
A couple of years ago when storms increasing sizes became very noticeable it was thought that hurricanes and similar types of storms could also get a lot larger with higher speed winds. Some thought that higher numbers would have to be added to the category 5 rating for bigger storms.Higher speed winds did not happen. The storm size ratings did not need to be increased because they are based on the amount of destruction done to the land. Even if the wind is blowing faster than a Category 5 storm rating, the damage done to the land is no different than the category 5 rating.
What did change was the amount of time it took a storm to go from category 1 to category 5, in some cases it was less than 2 days. This makes it very difficult for civil authorities to post warnings and take proper precautionary measures.
Some of the physically larger storms have low speed winds, even as low as category 1, but the destruction of land and infrastructure at great distances from the storm's center suffered a great deal of damage. It turned out the storms could damage things locally as well as a thousand miles away by influencing the weather far from the storms center and well outside of the core winds where the most damage normally happened.
Another factor that emerged with the new storm structures was that they could travel exceptionally slow and even stall out. When heavy rains and winds turning off and on can last for 3 days in the same area, the destruction can be worse than heavy rains and winds that pass by in 24 hours and then clear out.
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"You may have seen on the news that there was a cyclone heading for south east Queensland. What an ordeal that was. That cyclone sure was playing games. It went one way and then did a u turn. It drifted south ever so slowly, taunting people for days. It did a couple of loopy de loops out in the ocean. Gained strength. Lost strength. Finally crossed and brought with it a load of wind and rain.
Lucky it didn't affect us but a nearby town had a huge amount of water and flash flooding. I've never seen anything like it there. Here's hoping it doesn't rain in the catchment. That could cause a problem for us if it's excessive.
If you are in Queensland or NSW I hope you are safe and dry. "
Mod
"Cyclone update?!?
You read that right, Brisbane is experiencing its first cyclone in 50 years. By the time it made landfall it had become ex-cyclone Alfred (or Alfie as the Aussies like to call it) - a tropical low, but that doesn't mean it lost its punch.
Over 330,000 households are without power, thousands are experiencing Riverina or flash flooding, and some people are being told to boil their water.
It's not pleasant, but it could have been much much worse. Thanks to those in the emergency services who warned us, kept us updated, gave us time to prepare, and are doing everything they can (even as the rain continues) to make things right."
The atmosphere is changing due to global warming. The increased temperature of the lower atmosphere is causing the upper atmosphere to cool off. When the warmer rising greenhouse gasses come into with the upper atmosphere, they pull atoms out of the upper atmosphere which thins it out. Normally when a gas cools off its density increases but in this case the cooling of the upper atmosphere makes it less dense.The density at 250 miles (400 kilometers) above Earth is decreasing by about 2% a decade and the rate will increase if society continues to pump more greenhouse gas into the atmosphere.
The density of the upper atmosphere is what burns up the satellites and space junk that gradually falls out of orbit. If the density of the upper atmosphere continues to decrease this will cause the space junk and old satellites to stay intact longer.
Currently the only way to remove old satellites from the orbits of functioning satellites is to move them up higher above the Earth, This requires a certain amount of fuel and also puts space junk above the functioning orbits. The other way to remove old satellites and space junk from functioning orbits is to let them gradually fall to Earth, where they burn up, automatic disposal.
The friction of a denser upper atmosphere also causes low orbiting space junk to fall out of orbit faster.
The longer the space junk stays in degenerating orbit, it's possible that the number of collisions will increase which will increase the amount of space debris in the atmosphere.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/study-says...
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That's extraordinary.
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"Earth's atmosphere is shrinking due to climate change and one of the possible negative impacts is that space junk will stay in orbit for longer, bonk into other bits of space junk, and make so much mess that low Earth orbits become less useful.
That miserable set of predictions appeared on Monday in a Nature Sustainability paper titled "Greenhouse gases reduce the satellite carrying capacity of low Earth orbit."
Penned by two boffins from MIT, and another from the University of Birmingham, the paper opens with the observation: "Anthropogenic contributions of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere have been observed to cause cooling and contraction in the thermosphere."
The thermosphere extends from about 90 km to 500 km above Earth's surface. While conditions in the thermosphere are hellish, it's not a hard vacuum. NASA describes it as home to "very low density of molecules" compared to the exosphere's "extremely low density."
Among the molecules found in the thermosphere is carbon dioxide (CO2), which conducts heat from lower down in the atmosphere then radiates it outward.
"Thus, increasing concentrations of CO2 inevitably leads to cooling in the upper atmosphere. A consequence of cooling is a contraction of the global thermosphere, leading to reductions in mass density at constant altitude over time.""
https://www.nature.com/articles/s4189...
https://science.nasa.gov/earth/earth-...
The physical properties of the upper atmosphere are affected by conditions from above it, and below it and it is changing. The cooling of the upper air also causes it to contract. The sky is falling — literally.The same gases that are warming the bottom few miles of air are cooling the much greater expanses above that stretch to the edge of space. Carbon dioxide is increasing in all levels of the atmosphere.
Scientists are worried about the effect this cooling could have on orbiting satellites, the ozone layer, and Earth’s weather.
At the surface, when air cools off it becomes denser. In the ionosphere and the thermosphere, the opposite is happening. As it cools down, its physical properties are changing. The lower levels of the upper atmosphere where satellites and space junk are located is becoming less dense.
Only in the last couple of years have weather related interactions between the upper atmosphere and the lower atmosphere been discovered.
87 kilometres above Australia’s Antarctic Davis research station is the hydroxyl airglow layer, it contains molecules formed by the reaction of hydrogen and ozone and emits a continuous ‘airglow’ in the night sky. Australia has been taking measurements for 24 years now.
The Davis research station measurements showed that cooling rate was 1.2 degrees Celsius per decade over the last 24 years, approximately 10 times the rate of average global warming (approximately 1°C over the last century).
”The upper atmosphere has already cooled 3°C in the 25 years since measurements began in 1995,” Dr. French said.
Another revelation from the study is that the polar atmosphere above Davis has been undergoing a roughly four-yearly temperature fluctuation cycle of three to four degrees Celsius.
“The Davis record clearly shows long-term temperature variation in the upper atmosphere is caused by the sun’s activity cycle,” Dr Mulligan said.
“This variation, which we call a Quasi-Quadrennial Oscillation or QQO, appears to be linked to interactions between the ocean and atmosphere in the Southern Hemisphere, and its effects are apparent in the upper atmosphere of both the Antarctic and Arctic,” he said.
Most of the large events affecting the TI come from the Sun, the solar wind, and Earth’s magnetic field, but even in “quiet time” periods lacking those sources of variability, conditions in the thermosphere and the ionosphere, continue to fluctuate. These continuing fluctuations point to meteorological forcing caused by processes in the lower atmosphere, which may produce up to 35% of the ionosphere’s variability.
Ozone limits solar radiation which impacts just about everything on the Earth. Carbon dioxide doesn't chemically react with ozone the way the CFs did. Removing the CFs from use was not that difficult and has been very successful. But carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses have been cooling the areas where the ozone is. Ozone breaks down faster in cooler temperatures. Greenhouse gasses are coming from millions of different sources which means it will be much more difficult to protect the ozone level this time around.
https://e360.yale.edu/features/climat...
https://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/20...
https://eos.org/research-spotlights/w...
https://news.rpi.edu/content/2019/06/...
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"Last year’s increase was due to an unusual amount of ocean warming, combined with meltwater from land-based ice such as glaciers.
Global sea level rose faster than expected in 2024, mostly because of ocean water expanding as it warms, or thermal expansion. According to a NASA-led analysis, last year’s rate of rise was 0.23 inches (0.59 centimeters) per year, compared to the expected rate of 0.17 inches (0.43 centimeters) per year.
“The rise we saw in 2024 was higher than we expected,” said Josh Willis, a sea level researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Every year is a little bit different, but what’s clear is that the ocean continues to rise, and the rate of rise is getting faster and faster.”
In recent years, about two-thirds of sea level rise was from the addition of water from land into the ocean by melting ice sheets and glaciers. About a third came from thermal expansion of seawater. But in 2024, those contributions flipped, with two-thirds of sea level rise coming from thermal expansion.
“With 2024 as the warmest year on record, Earth’s expanding oceans are following suit, reaching their highest levels in three decades,” said Nadya Vinogradova Shiffer, head of physical oceanography programs and the Integrated Earth System Observatory at NASA Headquarters in Washington."
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https://www.rte.ie/news/us/2025/0316/...
"At least 200,000 homes and businesses across the central United States were without power by yesterday evening, according to tracking site poweroutage.us.
More tornadoes were forecast in the central Gulf Coast states including Mississippi and Tennessee.
"Numerous significant tornadoes, some of which may be long-track and potentially violent, should continue into this evening," the National Weather Service said.
Tornadoes are spinning columns of air that touch the ground from massive cumulonimbus thunderstorm clouds.
The central and southern American states of Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas get the most violent ones due to unique geographical and meteorological conditions."
The storms are going to continue to get worse for a long time to come. There is an effect called lake effect snow where it's not needed to have a storm to have a lot of snow.High speed winds blowing over a big body of cold water, such as the Great Lakes, which hasn't frozen over yet, will produce a lot of snow.
The southern US is sitting right next to an incredibly large body of warm water which is getting warmer every year, High speed winds aren't required to generate torrential rains and storms inland, the extreme rain is created automatically. It can be called lake effect rain. The warm water is constant, the high levels of airborne moisture is constant, all that is needed to rain inland is for the wind to blow. When the wind is powered by a strong storm, the resulting storm will be that much worse.
Mod
Glaciers are melting at an unprecedented rate and farmland dependent on them will suffer.
https://www.unesco.org/reports/wwdr/e...
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Mentioned is that lower sodium emissions from cleaner shipping, means less aerosol emissions, so few clouds form around the aerosols.
https://rte.social.ebu.io/CG23X1WU2CGG
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"A recent “extraordinary” heatwave throughout Central Asia was strengthened by climate change, which bolstered the warming by nearly half and made the event roughly three times as likely, according to a new study from the World Weather Attribution (WWA).
The heatwave from March 18-22 saw temperatures soar to upward of 15 degrees Celsius (59 degrees Fahrenheit) above normal averages throughout Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan.
The researchers found that human-caused climate change worsened the heatwave by at least 4 degrees Celsius, which they say is likely an underestimate as the models “fail to capture the region’s unusually rapid March temperature increases.”
“Climate change is death by a thousand cuts. People often focus on major tipping points, but with every fraction of a degree of warming, life slowly becomes more expensive and more dangerous,” said Fredi Otto, co-lead of the WWA and senior lecturer in climate science at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, in a press release."
Mod
"Spring news! My orange tree is coming back with a vengeance. I have trimmed it way back. I bought a satsuma too, so I will plant that once I have the fence working properly. So much to do and only one old farm girl to do it.
The pecan trees are all leafed out. The grass is growing like a weed (because it is mostly weeds—growing centipede grass just freaking defies my skill set!). Spring is here and summer is breathing down her throat. I am not a fan of summer. I hate the heat and humidity and the hurricanes that blow up. So many areas are suffering extreme weather now—I feel for people because folks around me face possible destruction every year. It just wasn’t this way when I was a kid. No one would ever have dreamed of hurricane damage in the Carolinas! Please contribute to environmental groups fighting climate change."
Mod
"NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of the airborne dust from low-Earth orbit on April 27. The swaths of airborne particles are part of an ongoing set of storms pummeling the Borderplex, the transnational area that includes southern New Mexico, West Texas, and the Mexican state of Chihuahua. The imaged storm is just the latest in a string that is yeeting dried-up lake beds and parched soil into the southern skies.
This year’s drought-exacerbated dusty season is “truly exceptional—one for the record books,” said Thomas Gill, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso, in a NASA Earth Observatory release. Gill has tracked dust activity across the planet (and the Borderplex specifically) for decades.
The event imaged above is the tenth “full-fledged” storm of the year—a full-fledged event being a storm that reduces visibility to less than half a mile, Gill said. That’s more than five times the average of 1.8 storms per year—and makes 2025 the worst dust season since 1936, when the Dust Bowl swept America, laying into El Paso with 11 storms.
Why are there so many storms this year? You can blame it on a climatic cocktail of drought and record-breaking wind. March was the windiest month the region has seen in over 50 years, Gill said, and the area is in “the worst drought we’ve seen in at least a decade.” My allergy clogged sinus is thanking its lucky stars it isn’t in the Southwest right now.
But dust storms aren’t just an eyesore. The events contribute to traffic accidents and raise the risk of cardiorespiratory problems, and may worsen the spread of Valley Fever, a fungal infection. Gill and his colleagues estimated that dust storms rack up over $150 billion in damage nationally each year, hitting farmers, the energy and healthcare industries, and households especially hard."
https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/ima...
We could be a lot dustier. Because of the usual springtime weather patterns in southern New England we should be much drier than we are. Because of low rainfall amounts, a drought condition exists but everything is growing quite well because the cooler temperatures and clouds keeps the ground very moist by creating very low evaporation rates. That could change overnight. The pollen production is enormous.
Severe weather outbreak from midwest to southeast US started on Friday, May 16, and is still happening on Tuesday May 20. The severe weather is expected to go through mid week. Millions of people have been impacted and at least 28 people have died. Severe weather accompanied by an EF3 tornado, with wind speeds estimated to be between 136 mph and 165 mph struck metro St Louis on May 17. It severely damaged approximately 5,000 buildings, many were knocked down or otherwise destroyed. It was only a matter of time before a powerful tornado went through a highly populated metro area. Fire Chief Dennis Jenkerson said severe weather hit about 20 square blocks of the city.
https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/torna...
https://www.stlpr.org/health-science-...
Mod
There have been dust events on 34 days this year in the border city, El Paso, the highest total since 1970-71.El Paso has had 10 full-blown dust storms in 2025, in which visibility is less than a half-mile. It hasn't been this bad since the Dust Bowl years of 1935 and 1936.
Much of the dust blowing into El Paso comes from Southern New Mexico and Chihuahua, including from dried lakes known as playas.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/21...
Mod
I'm wondering how we would define a dustbowl nowadays, perhaps a localised one.
I like the active work to prevent the dust, at the end of your article from ICN.
"Overgrazing has stripped the land, managed by the New Mexico State Land Office and the Bureau of Land Management, of vegetation. This leaves ample dust and sand to blow.
“Cattle grazing in the arid West is a big ecological disaster,” Gaglio said.
He and other partners have developed a process of plowing and then creating indentations in the soil to prevent run-off before seeding native drought-resistant plants like blue and black grama grass. Blowing dust has been successfully reduced in the initial restoration area. Cattle grazing is now restricted on 3,000 acres, half of which has been restored.
Gaglio said grazing, monocrop agriculture and urban development are all “destroying” desert soils and unleashing more dust. To restore desert ecosystems and mitigate dust, communities and land managers need to change how water moves through the landscape, he said.
“Because we get so little rain, we must take care of every drop of rain we get and hold it on the landscape.”"
Shown in their PDF.
https://www.highdesertnativeplants.co...
This is a more high-tech version of the 'green smile' in which semi-circular pits are dug to retain water and planted with grasses. Those are dug by hand.
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"Residents were struggling to absorb the scale of devastation caused by a huge chunk of glacier that buried most of their picturesque Swiss village, in what scientists suspect is a dramatic example of the impact of climate change on the Alps.
A deluge of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain yesterday, engulfing some 90% of the village of Blatten. Its 300 residents had already been evacuated earlier in May after part of the mountain behind the Birch Glacier began to crumble.
As the Swiss army closely monitored the situation, some experts warned of the risks of flooding as vast mounds of debris almost two kilometres across are clogging the path of the River Lonza, causing a huge lake to swell amid the wreckage."
Mod
"One of the key strengths of our study is that we were able, for the first time, to project global glacier evolution over multi-centennial timescales, and did so using eight models instead of one or two," explains Zekollari.
"Most glacier studies stop at 2100, which is problematic when simulating the long-term impact of today's climate policies, given the long-term response of glaciers over time."
"For example, while studies limited to the year 2100 estimate that around 20% of today's glacier mass will be lost regardless of future warming, the new study reveals that nearly twice as much would vanish under present-day conditions when multi-centennial timescales are considered.
"We find that around 40% of glacier mass is effectively 'doomed,'" says Zekollari.
"These effects underscore the critical importance of present-day climate policies," says Zekollari.
"Our study makes it painfully clear that every fraction of a degree matters. If we manage to limit global warming to +1.5°C instead of +2.7°C, we could still save twice as much glacier ice.""
More information: Harry Zekollari et al, Glacier preservation doubled by limiting warming to 1.5°C versus 2.7°C, Science (2025).
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/s...
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.a...
Journal information: Science
Provided by ETH Zurich
Hurricane Erick makes landfall in Mexico's Oaxaca state as a category 3 storm. The winds were around 130 mph, down from the day before when it was a category 4 storm with 145 mph winds.Heading for Puerto Escondido in Oaxaca state, a city of 1 million, was devastated in October 2023 by Hurricane Otis, a Category 5 hurricane that rapidly intensified and caught many unprepared. At least 52 people died in Otis and the storm severely damaged almost all of the resort’s hotels.
It went from a tropical depression to a category 4 storm in 36 hours. That used to a record event but is now becoming typical of storms forming in the much warmer waters.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg...
https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/19/weathe...
On wed, June 18, a very strong Derecho starting in the midwest swept across a 580-mile stretch from Illinois to western Pennsylvania. It produced winds up to 85 mph (137 km/h) with hail up to half dollar size and a few tornadoes.It caused wind damage, flash flooding, and power outages for 500,000 people.
The day before severe weather produced a record-breaking 102-mph wind gust in Wichita, Kansas.
The states of Indiana, Illinois and Ohio appeared to be the hardest hit. The remnants of the derecho is continuing towards the southeast producing more severe thunder storms. It is joining other pockets of severe weather which have been on going for several days now from the Midwest to the south.
https://www.foxweather.com/weather-ne...
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"It seems like this is a season of storms. All kinds of storms. We were just in North Dakota and experienced a “derecho” - which is a term used to describe a type of intense, widespread, and long-lasting windstorm associated with thunderstorms. I've never heard of it, but don't want to experience it again.
That evening we had straight line winds over 100 mph and there were 16 confirmed tornadoes from this storm. Three people lost their lives and so much damage. They said it was the equivalent of a Cat. 3 hurricane on the radar. I know other areas of the United States have had major summer storms too. Please be safe."
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"The EU's climate monitor Copernicus said it was the hottest June on record in western Europe, where some schools and tourist sites were shuttered as the mercury soared.
To assess what role climate change played, scientists compared how intense a heatwave would have been in a world that had not warmed due to burning masses of fossil fuels.
Using historical weather data, they concluded the heatwave "would have been 2-4C cooler" without human-induced climate change in all but one of the 12 cities studied.
The added degrees greatly elevated the risk in these cities, which have a combined population of more than 30 million and include major capitals Paris, London and Madrid."
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1. Climate change inaction.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/rank...
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"On a headland above the beach at Annestown, a ditch and bank which protected the Woodstown promontory fort for centuries, shows signs of collapse.
Dr Pollard said that from the examination of 19th century maps, there has been at least 25 metres of erosion since about 1840 along the bank.
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"Professor Mary Bourke, Professor of Geomorphology at the Department of Geography in Trinity College Dublin, said sea level rise is occurring now and is going "to happen around every single part of the coastline of Ireland".
She said everyone understands the concept that sea level rise brings a rise in water levels, but said "that's the water you see. It's also going to change the water that you don't see".
She explained that there is "like a wedge of salt water that exists under my feet ... and that's going to expand and move further inland ... (that) will affect the processes that are operating, because it'll wet and weather a lot of the rocks from underneath upwards."
Climate change is also expected to bring more extreme weather events, with floods and storms becoming more frequent and intense.
"The height of the waves and the energy of the waves may be stronger and they may occur more frequently and together with sea level rise, it means that the area inland that will be affected by these coastal storms will actually increase," Prof Bourke added.
She said that while storms and sea level rise undermine coasts, heavy rain is the threat from above.
"Rain has a lot of energy, with it. So, it will wet our soft coasts and cause more landslides. And we can see that from the research that we've already done.""
We have certainly seen this in North Carolina.
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"Among the many cuts to NOAA research proposed in the draft was one that would represent a death blow to the Mauna Loa Observatory, the source of the data fueling the most iconic chart in all of climate research, the time-honored and justly venerated Keeling Curve.
This chart, begun by young researcher Charles David Keeling way back in 1958, chronicles the seasonal rise and fall – and unrelenting upward spiral – of the most abundant and consequential greenhouse gas heating our planet: carbon dioxide (CO2)."
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"People who travel to see the "Gateway to Hell" gas crater in the middle of the Turkmenistan desert expecting an angry cauldron, are now coming away unimpressed.
Once a giant uncontrollable pit of red flames and glowing red embers, the 70m wide hole is now just a charred cauldron with only a few pockets of small fires.
After letting it burn for 50 years, authorities in the reclusive Central Asian state have finally moved to put out the fire, which spews huge quantities of methane into the atmosphere.
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"The world's biggest methane emitter through gas leaks, according to the International Energy Agency, it has committed to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
But putting out the fire means killing off the Darvaza gas crater as the country's top tourist attraction.
Several nearby wells have been drilled to reduce the flow of gas."
Green Group
Books mentioned in this topic
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (other topics)The Caves of Steel (other topics)
Soylent Green (other topics)
One Sweet Christmas (other topics)
A Groom For Ruby (other topics)
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Authors mentioned in this topic
Laura Ashwood (other topics)Carolyn Haines (other topics)
Stella Perrott (other topics)
Cynthia Terelst (other topics)
Eiren Caffall (other topics)
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