Our planet – cool, but warm …

Calendar year 2008 was the coolest year since 2000, according to the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) analysis of worldwide temperature measurements, but it was still in the top ten warmest years since the start of record-keeping in 1880. Given the range of uncertainty in the measurements, the GISS team concluded that 2008 …
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Hot and cold in the wrong places – Earth’s got pneumonia!

Maybe it’s about time for a reminder about climate volatility. Recently I browsed a set of satellite photos which illustrate the extraordinary pressure we are putting on our planet, evidenced by climate volatility. The first two show the wasting if the Humbolt glacier, the third shows snow covering the southern USA. (Click the images to …
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The Day After Tomorrow is today …

The thickness of Arctic sea ice “plummeted” last winter, thinning by as much as one-fifth in some regions, satellite data has revealed. The team from University College London say that the results provided the first definitive proof that the overall volume of Arctic ice is decreasing. The findings have been published in the journal Geophysical …
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Climate change destroying nature.

Amphibian populations at Yellowstone, the world’s oldest national park, are in steep decline according to a major study reported in the journal PNAS.  The authors link this to the drying out of wetlands where the animals live and breed, which is in turn being driven by long-term climate change. Visitors flock to Yellowstone to see …
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The Day After Tomorrow, today

These pictures show the disintegration of an Antarctic ice shelf in the middle of (southern hemisphere) winter.  This is exactly the kind of sensational news that the melodramatic movie “The Day After Tomorrow” portrayed.  Another signal from nature to change our behaviour.  Come on – eat less, travel less, slow down – help the world …
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