Washington (CNN) — Most Americans can put away winter coats and umbrellas and break out the short sleeves and sunglasses even though spring doesn’t officially begin until next week, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
In a 90-day weather outlook released Thursday, forecasters predict the unseasonably warm temperatures that have blanketed parts of the United States will continue into the summer, and much of the country will remain dry.
In fact, for the first time in four years, no area of the country will face a high risk of major flooding from April through June, due in large measure to a winter without much snow, forecasters said.
“We expect above-normal temperatures in the South and Eastern United States,” said Ed O’Lenic, chief of operations at the Climate Prediction Center for NOAA’s National Weather Service. He predicts temperatures could be half a degree to a degree and a half above normal in many parts of the country.
Above-normal temperatures are also predicted for the Southwest across Texas and the Gulf Coast, as well as the Atlantic Coast, the Ohio Valley and the Great Lakes region, according to NOAA. Temperatures in the Pacific Northwest and southern Alaska will be below normal.
Showing posts tagged climate change
Forecasters: Warm weather here to stay -
Climate change denial's new offensive - Global Warming - Salon.com
READ THIS ESSAY! It’s important.
[In] 2011, which showed the greatest weather extremes in our history — 56 percentof the country was either in drought or flood, which was no surprise since “climate change science predicts wet areas will tend to get wetter and dry areas will tend to get drier.” Indeed, the nation suffered 14 weather disasters each causing $1 billion or more in damage last year. (The old record was nine.) Masters again: “Watching the weather over the past two years has been like watching a famous baseball hitter on steroids.”
In the face of such data — statistics that you can duplicate for almost every region of the planet — you’d think we’d already be in an all-out effort to do something about climate change. Instead, we’re witnessing an all-out effort to… deny there’s a problem.
A total of 129 common dolphins have been found since the animals began stranding themselves in early January, said Katie Moore, marine mammal rescue and research manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare.
Arctic ice levels hit historic low
The amount of Arctic sea ice has melted to a historic low, with the area of land covered by ice at the smallest level since scientists began observing it with satellites in 1972, researchers from the University of Bremen in Germany report.
The North Pole skull cap shrank to about half a percent under the previous record low set in September 2007, according to the school’s Institute of Environmental Physics.
Researchers, including those from the National Snow and Ice Data Center, had predicted earlier this summer that Arctic sea ice levels could reach extreme lows. But the University of Bremen physicists said there was uncertainty in July about whether the ice melt would surpass the previous record.
The Climate Law Institute noted the record followed news that this summer was the second-hottest since 1895.
In 2009, studies began suggesting the Arctic Ocean could be “largely ice free” during summer within a decade.
'Ice Wars' heating up the Arctic
(CNN) — On a small, floating piece of ice in the Beaufort Sea, several hundred miles north of Alaska, a group of scientists are documenting what some dub an “Arctic meltdown.”
According to climate scientists, the warming of the region is shrinking the polar ice cap at an alarming rate, reducing the permafrost layer and wreaking havoc on polar bears, arctic foxes and other indigenous wildlife in the region.
What is bad for the animals, though, has been good for commerce.
The recession of the sea ice and the reduction in permafrost — combined with advances in technology — have allowed access to oil, mineral and natural gas deposits that were previously trapped in the ice.
The abundance of these valuable resources and the opportunity to exploit them has created a gold rush-like scramble in the high north, with fierce competition to determine which countries have the right to access the riches of the Arctic.
With murky international agreements and an absence of clear legal authority, countries are preaching cooperation but preparing for conflict.
There has been a flurry of new military activity reminiscent of days past.
Two U.S. nuclear-powered attack submarines, the SSN Connecticut and the SSN New Hampshire, recently finished conducting ice exercises in the Arctic. Secretary of the Navy Richard Mabus said the purpose of the recent naval exercises was “to do operational and war-fighting capabilities. Places are becoming open that have been ice-bound for literally millennia. You’re going to see more and more of the world’s attention pointed towards the Arctic.”
Other Arctic nations are ramping up their military capabilities as well. Just this month, Russia announced that it is deploying two brigades to the Arctic, including a special forces unit. The Russian air force has recently resumed strategic bomber flights over the Pole. Canada, Denmark and Norway are also rapidly rebuilding their military presence.
But despite the buildup, almost all of the activity in the Arctic has been within the scope of normal military operations or research.
Climate change compounds global security threat, British admiral says
Stresses from global climate change are increasing the threat of wars around the world, a British admiral said Wednesday. Royal Navy Rear Adm. Neil Morisetti told students and faculty at Georgia Institute of Technology that global climate change threats to food, water, land and energy will present substantive security challenges in regions of the world where there are already stresses. “Those climate stress multipliers are increasing the threat of armed conflict around the world,” Morisetti said. Morisetti pointed out that existing stress points form a band around the globe, running from Central and South America, across Africa, the Middle East and south Asia. That band, he said, intersects with the regions of the globe most susceptible to climate change. With climate change, Morisetti said, “we’re going to add more to that cocktail.” Morisetti, who holds the title of the British government’s climate and energy security envoy, is on a tour of the United States, speaking to academics and military officials.
Scientists: March 11 tsunami produced Antarctic icebergs
The tsunami spawned from the March 11 earthquake off eastern Japan broke up parts of an Antarctic ice shelf that hadn’t moved in 46 years, scientists say.
Though the tsunami waves were only about a foot high when they reached Antarctica, their consistency was enough to crack the 260-foot-thick ice and split off icebergs with combined surface areas more than twice the size of Manhattan from the Sulzberger Ice Shelf, the scientists report in a NASA statement.
It was the first time scientists have been able to tie icebergs directly to a tsunami, according to NASA.
The tsunami waves traveled 8,000 miles and took 18 hours to reach the ice shelf, the scientists said, giving them time to validate theories on how an earthquake can affect geography a hemisphere away.
“In the past we’ve had calving events where we’ve looked for the source. It’s a reverse scenario – we see a calving and we go looking for a source,” Kelly Brunt, a cryosphere specialist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the NASA statement. “We knew right away this was one of the biggest events in recent history – we knew there would be enough swell. And this time we had a source.”
Quakes hit off Cuba, Japan, Fiji, and New Zealand
Looks like the quakes are picking up again. I haven’t looked at the Zeta nutjobs blog, but I’m sure they will point to this as more signs that Planet X is coming closer.
[Updated at 10:39 a.m. ET] The U.S. Geological Survey has revised downward the magnitude of Thursday morning’s earthquake off Cuba to magnitude 5.1 from magnitude 6.0.
[Updated at 5:20 a.m. ET] A magnitude 6.0 earthquake hit off the southeastern coast of Cuba early Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported.
The quake was centered 77 miles north of Montego Bay, Jamaica, and 370 miles southeast of Havana, Cuba. It hit at 4:43 a.m.
Forty-three minutes earlier, a magnitude 6.2 earthquake rumbled off the east coast of Japan, the USGS reported. No tsunami warning was issued.
Both quakes were shallow, striking at a depth of six miles.
And seven minutes before the Japan quake, a magnitude 6.0 quake was recorded off the coast of New Zealand, according to the USGS. Source
A 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck early Friday in the Fiji islands region of the Pacific Ocean, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. Source
King Crabs invade Antarctica – Climate changes strikes again
King crabs — three-feet-wide red monsters that devour everything in their path — have invaded Antarctica. While it sounds a little like a horror movie, it’s actual a large scale global warming problem. According to the New Scientist, three years ago, scientists had predicted that this would happen, but they believed the earth would have warmed to this degree in the next 100 years.
The earth has warmed a little earlier than they predicted. According to Craig Smith, a professor of oceanography at the University of Hawaii, who’s team discovered the relocation, millions of these crabs have begun to crawl around by Antarctica. The crabs were known to inhabit the Ross Sea, south of New Zealand, but now they can be found south of South America. Worse, they’re wiping out local wildlife, and causing large scale destruction where they go, reports the New Scientist.
The crabs live on starfish and sea urchins, and most of these animals are now gone, reports the Huffington Post. A video taken by a remotely operated submersible shows that the crabs have already colonized a basin in the Antarctic Peninsula’s continental shelf. The video footage also shows that the crabs “prod, gash and puncture” the sediment, altering natural processes such as how organic matter is buried.
The implications are terrifying, as Jen Doll from the Village Voice points out: “After millions of years of the crabs not being able to cross the cold water of the continental shelf…now they can.” Source
2011: Year of billion-dollar weather disasters - CNN.com
The United States has already seen nine weather disasters this year that have caused $1 billion or more in damage, tying the record set in 2008. The total for all the disasters is about $35 billion.
“The year 2011 has already established itself in the record books as a historic year for weather-related disasters, and it is not over — in fact, hurricane season is just getting under way,” NOAA Deputy Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan told the Senate Appropriations Committee in late July.
Thousands protest against Chinese chemical plant | Reuters - 08/14/2011
(Reuters) - Thousands of people demonstrated in northeastern China on Sunday, demanding the relocation of a petrochemical plant at the center of a toxic spill scare, state media said. Demonstrators in the port city of Dalian, in Liaoning province, faced down a wall of police in riot gear in front of the municipal government office and minor scuffles broke out, although there was no report of injuries, state news agency Xinhua said. State media said last Monday that residents in Dalian were forced to flee when a storm battering the northeast Chinese coast whipped up waves that burst through a dyke protecting the plant, which makes paraxylene (PX), a toxic petrochemical used in polyester. Although authorities repaired the dyke and insisted that no spills were detected, the incident sparked panic that PX could have been released, fuelling resentment against the project. Calls on popular microblogging site Weibo and QQ, an instant messaging system, urged residents to protest on Sunday. The outpouring of public anger is emblematic of the rising discontent facing Chinese leaders, which are obsessed with maintaining stability and are struggling to balance growth with growing public anger over pollution and environmental threats.
Record heat spell continues
Not only are temperatures high in Texas, but the state climatologist said Thursday that Texas in the midst of the most severe one-year drought on record. Records started being kept in 1895.
July was also the hottest month ever on record in Texas and the third driest July, climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said.
“Never before has so little rain been recorded prior to and during the primary growing season for crops, plants and warm-season grasses,” he said.
Record percentage of United States experiences 'exceptional drought' - CNN.com
Exceptional drought conditions spread across nearly 12% of the United States last month, a record number that shows the widespread impact of the dry weather conditions, according to a report released Monday.
Officials at the National Drought Mitigation Center said the July percentage is the highest recorded level of drought since the monitor began documenting conditions 12 years ago.
More than 40% of states faced abnormal dryness or drought, a report released by the center said.
Pattern Recognition - Food Crisis News - June 22, 2011
It’s been a month or so since I did an environmental scan on food prices, shortages, and commodities. Let’s see if anything has changed.
Ummm, nope.
Food Prices will remain high
Agencies See Decade of High Food Prices- June 17, 2011
LONDON—Food prices will be up to 30% higher on average over the next decade as slowing grains production fails to keep pace with rising demand, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Friday.
High Food Prices Here To Stay - June 17, 2011
The report predicts that prices will be 20 percent higher for cereals and up to 30 percent higher for meat in the coming decade compared to the past ten years.
It will specifically hit poor people who now already spend up to 80 percent of their income on food. “People are going be forced, either to literally eat less, or find other sources of income,” Gurria said.
Record prices linked to bio-fuels…yet again - June 17, 2011
The biofuels industry is being blamed for record food prices and high price volatility. Earlier this month a report from the World Trade Organization and other international agencies recommended that governments cut support for biofuels to ease that volatility. On the heels of that report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture issued its corn forecast; it suggested that corn supplies will be very tight this year because bad weather has limited planting and because the share of corn going to ethanol is increasing. After the report, corn prices shot to record highs, reaching $8 a bushel. Then on Friday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development released a report predicting that food prices will remain high for the next decade.
Many experts say the unprecedented prices are at least partially driven by government subsidies and mandates that have led to fourfold increases in production of ethanol biofuel and tenfold increases in production of biodiesel between 2000 and 2009 worldwide.
Governments scramble for solutions
Volatile Food Prices Grab G-20’s Full Attention - June 22, 2011
David Nabarro, a food security expert with the United Nations, says that for decades governments thought they didn’t have to worry about agriculture, because prices stayed even or dropped. But 2008 changed all that.
“Food became an issue that was of central political importance to presidents [and] heads of governments,” Nabarro says. “In addition, we found that food production systems were getting intertwined with environmental issues and climate change. So food and agriculture has now become a big political issue.”
Food Reserves Could Come Back Into Vogue- June 16, 2011
Facing increasing hunger, market unpredictability, and food price volatility, world leaders have shown interest to resuming the practice of food stores.
At the G-20 meeting last month in Rome, leaders discussed developing an emergency reserve system, aimed at servicing the most vulnerable countries.
Uganda struggles with plans to reduce inflation and food shortage - June 16, 2011
IMPLEMENTATION of the National Development Plan (NDP) and the Agriculture Sector Investment Plan will not solve food shortage, low income and inflation. To deal with inflation, you need to stabilise agricultural supply and control food prices.
Studies on Uganda’s food supply predict a food deficit by 2030. Countries that experience food insecurity experience high levels of poverty.
U.S. Agency for International Development hosts 300 researchers for “Feed the Future” forum - June 22, 2011
Is this a food crisis? Are we in a crisis?
SHAH (Administrator of USAID): It’s absolutely a precarious situation. We know that food security is critical to our national security, and I will build on David’s point and suggest that the food riots and famines and failed states that are the consequences of a lack of access to food are far more costly and problematic to deal with over time than making smart targeted investments and helping countries develop their agricultural systems, become real trading partners and move big huge proportions of their population out of a condition of poverty and hunger.
Climate Change continues to wreak havoc with crop production
China food prices spike as floods ruin farmland - June 20, 2011
(Reuters) - Torrential rain across southern and eastern China which has killed more than 100 people and triggered the evacuation of half a million has left large areas of farmland devastated as food prices surge, state media said on Sunday.
KENYA: Severe drought, high food prices hit pastoralists - June 16, 2011
NAIROBI, (IRIN) - Successive poor rains coupled with rising food and fuel prices are leading to a worsening food security situation with alarming levels of acute malnutrition being recorded in drought affected parts of Kenya, mainly in the north of the country, say experts.
Extreme weather moves on to agenda at the 21st World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM)- June 17, 2011
the 21st World Conference on Disaster Management (WCDM), to be held in Toronto Sunday, June 19, through Wednesday.
Nearly 1,500 government officials, scientists and businesspeople from 40 different countries will participate.
Top of mind will be the expected world food crisis that all this extreme weather is already causing, driving harvests down and prices up to record levels.
“When the major networks become weather networks, and when other news becomes sort of secondary, we are facing disaster,” says Lester Brown, founder and president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, who will be the WCDM’s opening speaker. “When you have a lot of local disasters, droughts and floods and heat waves as we’re now having, reducing the food supply, then you have a global disaster.”
Extreme Circumstances require Extreme Measures?
Long held rumors of North Korean cannibalism sparked by food shortages appear to have been confirmed:
Leaked North Korean files reveal citizens selling human flesh for food - June 19, 2011
Notably, five cases related to cannibalism were also included in the manual. Stories about starving North Koreans eating human flesh have been considered rumors, but recent discoveries in the manual may prove otherwise, triggering more speculations about the food shortage crisis in North Korea.
One case involved a guard named Lee Man-sung, who killed his roommate with an axe when he was sleeping, ate part of the corpse and then sold the rest on the market describing it as lamb meat.
But WAIT, there’s good news. Corporate funded Japanese scientists may have found a solution.
Let’s feed them “shit burgers”. There’s never any shortage of feces right?
Japan scientist synthesizes meat from human feces - June 15, 2011
Japanese scientists have actually discovered a way to create edible steaks from human feces.
Mitsuyuki Ikeda, a researcher from the Okayama Laboratory, has developed steaks based on proteins from human excrement. Tokyo Sewage approached the scientist because of an overabundance of sewage mud. They asked him to explore the possible uses of the sewage and Ikeda found that the mud contained a great deal of protein because of all the bacteria.
The researchers then extracted those proteins, combined them with a reaction enhancer and put it in an exploder which created the artificial steak. The “meat” is 63% proteins, 25% carbohydrates, 3% lipids and 9% minerals. The researchers color the poop meat red with food coloring and enhance the flavor with soy protein. Initial tests have people saying it even tastes like beef.
That’s it folks. North Koreans are resorting to eating each other and “Big Sewage” seriously wants to feed us our own shit. Mission accomplished.
