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At Least 150 Dead, 1.5 Million Impacted as Cyclone Idai Slams Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe
At least 150 people have died in a cyclone that devastated parts of Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Malawi over the weekend, The Associated Press reported Sunday. Cyclone Idai has affected more than 1.5 million people since it hit Mozambique's port city of Beira late Thursday, then traveled west to Zimbabwe and Malawi. Hundreds are still missing and tens of thousands are without access to roads or telephones.
"I think this is the biggest natural disaster Mozambique has ever faced. Everything is destroyed. Our priority now is to save human lives," Mozambique's Environment Minister Celso Correia said, as AFP reported.
By Robynne Boyd
Liberty City, Florida, feels a world apart from the glitzy beaches, posh boutiques and multimillion-dollar residences of Miami Beach, though it's only four miles away as the pelican flies. You may recognize this community from the Oscar-winning film Moonlight. Here, the streets thrum to the beat of Miami bass, the aroma of Haitian griot and banan peze (fried pork and plantains) wafts out from the area's restaurants, and homes are painted in bright hues that speak of their owners' Caribbean roots. According to longtime residents, though, the character of the neighborhood is changing as wealthier Miamians move in.
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Greenland is getting rainier, even in winter, a new study has found, and that has major implications for sea level rise.
The Greenland ice sheet loses about 270 billion tons of ice each year to climate change, raising global sea levels by 7.5 millimeters (approximately 0.3 inches) between 1992 and 2011, Science Magazine explained. About half of that was due to the calving of icebergs, but recent satellite observations have revealed that 70 percent of Greenland's contribution to global sea level rise in recent years has come from meltwater running off into the ocean. Scientists wanted to understand what was driving the meltwater.
By Madison Dapcevich
An extensive analysis of more than 2 billion U.S. Twitter posts found that people have short memories when it comes to what they consider "normal" weather, according to a study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Generally, people base their judgment of "normal" weather on what has happened in the last two to eight years rather than linking it to the climate record. This creates a disconnect with the historical weather events, potentially obscuring how people perceive climate change.
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Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Crisis Has Now Reached 'Gold Standard'-Level Certainty, Scientists Say
By Julia Conley
Most Americans now recognize the scientific community's consensus that human activity is fueling the climate crisis, according to polls—but for those who are still unconvinced of the conclusion reached by 97 percent of climate scientists, a new study makes an even more definite assertion.
By Ilissa Ocko
The world's oceans are heating up. Scientists have found that 2018 was the hottest year ever recorded for our oceans, and that they are warming even faster than previously thought.
When documenting global warming trends, we often focus on air temperature. But the oceans actually absorb more than 90 percent of the excess heat trapped by human emissions of greenhouse gases. So if we really want to know how much our planet is warming up, we look to the oceans.
'Kicking Ass for Her Generation': Applause for 16-Year-Old Greta Thunberg as EU Chief Pledges Billions to Curb Climate Threat
By Julia Conley
Sixteen-year-old climate action leader Greta Thunberg stood alongside European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker Thursday in Brussels as he indicated—after weeks of climate strikes around the world inspired by the Swedish teenager—that the European Union has heard the demands of young people and pledged a quarter of $1 trillion budget over the next seven years to address the crisis of a rapidly heating planet.
In the financial period beginning in 2021, Juncker said, the EU will devote a quarter of its budget to solving the crisis.
First Mammal Driven to Extinction by Human-Caused Climate Change Is Australian Rodent
A small Australian rat that lived on a 12 acre island in the Great Barrier Reef has become the first mammal to go extinct primarily because of human-caused climate change, the Australian Government confirmed Monday.
The Bramble Cay melomys was first declared extinct after a 2014 search on Bramble Cay, its native island in the Torres Strait, between Queensland, Australia and Papua New Guinea, according to a 2016 report by the University of Queensland and the Queensland government.
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10 Things the Department of Defense Needs to Include in Their New Climate Change Report
By Shana Udvardy
After a dearth of action on climate change and a record year of extreme events in 2017, the inclusion of climate change policies within the annual legislation Congress considers to outline its defense spending priorities (the National Defense Authorization Act) for fiscal year 2018 was welcome progress. House and Senate leaders pushed to include language that mandated that the Department of Defense (DoD) incorporate climate change in their facility planning (see more on what this section of the bill does here and here) as well as issue a report on the impacts of climate change on military installations. Unfortunately, what DoD produced fell far short of what was mandated.
Americans Are Calling for Climate Action, and the New House Leadership Is Listening
By Rhea Suh
Wednesday marked a watershed moment in the national fight against the growing dangers of climate change, with two governors—a southern Democrat and a northeastern Republican—kicking off the first of a raft of hearings on the central environmental challenge of our time.
Appearing before the House Natural Resources Committee, Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts laid out the stakes, for the people of their states and for the country, in standing up to this global scourge, in a hearing aptly titled "Climate Change: Impacts and the Need to Act."
Lower Sea Level Rise but More ‘Climate Chaos’? Two New Studies Predict Polar Ice Melt Consequences
There's good news and there's bad news. Two new studies focusing on ice melt in Antarctica and Greenland have revised down the worst-case scenario for the amount of sea level rise the world could see by 2100, but say the overall climate impacts of melt water entering the oceans could be devastating.
"The sea-level estimates maybe aren't as bad as we thought, but the climate predictions are worse," lead author of one of the studies and Antarctic Research Center of the University of Victoria, Wellington climate scientist Nick Golledge told National Geographic.