There is a serious drought currently affecting a number of countries in southern Africa. Some reports say this is the worst drought in over 100 years. The problem is that these droughts are becoming too frequent and increasing in severity, it appears. I read an article this week from a … [continued]
Disease itself may be invisible to the human eye, but conditions ripe for disease outbreaks can be seen from satellites. ORNL’s Assaf Anyamba has spent his career using satellite images to determine where extreme weather may lead to vector-borne disease outbreaks. His work has helped the U.S. government better prepare … [continued]
Global temperature records were set in 2023 and are expected to be broken again in 2024 as emissions continue to rise.
Side-by-side maps showing flood days due to seal level rise compared to days due to El Niño
(Left) Graphs of number of high-tide flooding days per year (gray line and dots) from 1960 through 2022 from NOAA tide gauges in Norfolk, Virginia (top), and Los Angeles, California, (bottom). The gray dashed line shows the long-term increasing trend (note the accelerating trend in Norfolk). The gray shading at the end of the time series indicates the likely range of values that would be predicted for 2023-24 based solely on extrapolating the long-term trend. The red shading indicates the official 2023-2024 Hide-Tide Flooding Outlook, which provides the ‘likely range’ of high-tide flooding days over the course of the year. The higher number of predicted flood days in the official outlook relative to the extrapolated trend reflects the expected effects of the predicted moderate-to-strong El Niño through the upcoming winter. (Right panel) Locations where El Niño influences annual high-tide flooding frequencies. Black dots represent locations with no statistically significant influence. Note that the El Niño influence varies slightly both spatially and through time, but not much--see previous NOAA High Tide Flood Outlook reports (listed in footnote 3). NOAA Climate.gov image, adapted form original by Billy Sweet.
This is a guest post by Dr. William Sweet and colleagues Dr. Greg Dusek, Dr. John Callahan, Analise Keeney, and Karen Kavanaugh with NOAA’s National Ocean Service who are advancing the science and services to track and predict coastal flood risk in the face of sea level rise.
Study finds that global downturn after Pacific climate pattern persists
El Niño conditions have developed, as the atmospheric response to the warmer-than-average tropical Pacific sea surface kicked in over the past month. We expect El Niño to continue into the winter, and the odds of it becoming a strong event at its peak are pretty good, at 56%. Chances of … [continued]
Australians watching the news about Canada’s current spate of wildfires will remember our own horrifying bushfires a couple of years ago. The fear is compounded by news stories of the coming El Niño, the current dry winter (in the Southern Hemisphere), and predictions that the grid is not ready. How … [continued]
Two researchers at Dartmouth College have published a report in the journal Science which predicts that the economic impact of the next El Niño weather event (expected to occur this year) will be $3 trillion through 2029, compared to the same period without such an event. In a press release, … [continued]
A new report from NASA highlights the relationship between global warming and an increase in forest fires based on 20 years of research.
It seems to confound logic – despite CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels and industry remaining at a constant level, the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere has experienced a record-breaking increase.
