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Texas National Guard soldiers respond to the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Ssg. Tim Pruitt

Intensity of Harvey's Devastation Linked to Warming

By Alex Kirby

Tropical storm Harvey is by any standard off the scale. Some parts of Texas have received in just over a week the rainfall they would normally expect in an entire year, and the storm is described as generating as much rain as would normally be seen only once in more than 1,000 years.

Exceptional as it is, Harvey is not a direct consequence of climate change, in the judgment of one leading climate scientist, professor Stefan Rahmstorf, co-chair of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.

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Andreas Kambanis / Flickr

Scientists Discover 91 Volcanoes Hidden Under Antarctic Ice Sheet

Antarctica, the coldest place on Earth, may now be home to the densest concentration of volcanoes, according to a first-of-its-kind study.

The discovery isn't something to get too excited about. The researchers warned that if these volcanoes were to erupt, it could cause more ice sheets to melt and contribute to sea level rise.

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Cirrus clouds over Golden Gate Bridge. Brocken Inaglory / Wikimedia Commons

Is Geoengineering the Answer to Limit Global Warming?

By Tim Radford

Geoengineering, the deliberate alteration of the planet to undo its inadvertent alteration by humans over the past 200 years, is back on the scientific agenda, with a climate compromise suggested as a possible solution.

One group wants to turn down the global thermostat and reverse the global warming trend set in train by greenhouse gases released by fossil fuel combustion, by thinning the almost invisible cirrus clouds that trap radiation and keep the planet warm.

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We Still Have Time to Restore Our Climate. But the Climate Time Bomb Is Ticking

By Alex Carlin

A recent New York Magazine article about the climate ruin we are facing, by David Wallace Wells, has caused a furor for describing the catastrophes that could happen to our planet by the end of the century if we do not mitigate the harms to our climate and reverse course. This op-ed by guest contributor Alex Carlin contends that those crises could happen much sooner, and he details steps he believes could help forestall disaster.

Yes, Virginia, we still have time to restore our climate. But the Climate Time Bomb is undeniably ticking–and Trump has pulled out of the Paris agreement.

What should we do?

Trump climate policy is blind and deaf to the fact that the Climate Bomb can cause millions—or even potentially billions—of deaths by mid-century. I believe Trump's rogue refusal to defuse the Bomb is an unfathomably heinous crime against humanity.

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National Centers for Environmental Information

NOAA: Earth Had its Third Warmest June on Record

By Dr. Jeff Masters

June 2017 was the planet's third warmest June since record keeping began in 1880, said the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Centers for Environmental Information on Monday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) rated June 2017 as the fourth warmest June on record. The only warmer Junes came in El Niño years: 1998, 2015 and 2016. Minor differences can occur between the NASA and NOAA rankings because of their different techniques for analyzing data-sparse regions such as the Arctic.

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Scientists Alarmed as Delaware-Sized Iceberg Breaks Off Antarctic Ice Shelf

By Ilissa Ocko and Mason Fried

Scientists watched with alarm this week as the fourth-largest ice shelf in Antarctica rapidly broke apart, causing an enormous, Delaware-size iceberg to float into the Southern Ocean.

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Massive Iceberg Finally Breaks Off: Antarctic Landscape 'Changed Forever'

One of the biggest icebergs ever recorded has "finally" broken away from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica, researchers studying the event announced.

The iceberg, which will likely be dubbed A68, weighs more than a trillion tonnes, has a volume twice that of Lake Erie, and is about 5,800 square kilometers in size—roughly the size of Delaware.

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Raif Broskvar / iStock

If We Stopped Emitting Greenhouse Gases Right Now, Would We Stop Climate Change?

By Richard B. Rood

Earth's climate is changing rapidly. We know this from billions of observations, documented in thousands of journal papers and texts and summarized every few years by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The primary cause of that change is the release of carbon dioxide from burning coal, oil and natural gas.

One of the goals of the international Paris agreement is to limit the increase of the global surface average air temperature to two degrees Celsius, compared to preindustrial times. There is a further commitment to strive to limit the increase to 1.5℃.

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Scientists Rescue History From Melting Glaciers

Scientists climbed a mountain to preserve 18,000 years of climate history before it melts.

Check out this video from Vocativ and watch the Ice Memory expedition collect ice cores from glaciers in the Andes of Bolivia. Storing them will allow current and future scientists to study the important climate and environmental data they hold.

Ice Memory was established by French glaciologists and their Italian partners from IGE Grenoble, Institut des géosciences de l'environnement.

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