Climate Change

It is with good reason that the fires in the Amazon are capturing headlines, but wildfires have burned all around the globe this year. What makes these events unique is their frequency, size and duration. Wildfire seasons are starting earlier and ending later. European heat waves ignited large wildfires in the winter and spring of 2019. In February hot temperatures sparked wildfires across western Europe and in April there were wildfires in Scotland, Norway and Sweden According to the Emergency Management Service of the EU agency Copernicus in the first three months of 2019, there were unprecedented number of wildfires...

When the coldest place on Earth is regularly breaking heat records it may be time to concede that the end may indeed be nigh. The world is heating up but nowhere is this warming trend more pronounced than in the Arctic. The Arctic is getting hotter three times as fast as the rest of the world. This year (2019) was the second or third warmest Arctic spring on record. At the end of March temperatures in parts of the Arctic were 22° C above seasonal norms smashing the all time temperature record for the month. In May it hit  29°...

Heatwaves are increasingly common and increasingly intense and long lasting in the U.S.  June was hot in the U.S. and so was July. The month of July started with a heatwave that enveloped almost half the country and just past the middle of the same month another heatwave saw even hotter temperatures. While the June heatwave saw temperatures exceed 90 Fahrenheit (32° Celsius) in one third of the country, the second July heatwave saw more than half of the country enduring temperatures surpassing 100° F (38° C) when the humidity was factored. On Saturday, July 20th new one-day temperature records...

Asia is one of the world's hottest continents and it is also the most populated continent in the world with 60 percent of the total population of the Earth. Like many other places around the world many of the 50 countries in Asia are suffering from heatwaves in 2019. In the period between April and June of this year India was hit with protracted heatwaves as was neighboring Pakistan and a number of other Asian countries including Vietnam, Kuwait, Bangladesh, and the Philippines. Vietnam was hit with a heatwave in April that included setting a record for the hottest day...

One of India's longest and most intense heatwaves has killed at least one hundred people and on July 17th at least 100 more died due to monsoon flooding and mudslides. The pre-monsoon heatwave lasted for more than a month and it was compounded by severe drought that has caused major water shortages. At its worst temperatures exceeded 50°C. In April, central and northwestern India were suffering from a heatwave that was 6°C above the average. At the beginning of June Delhi hit temperatures of 48°C, the highest temperature ever recorded in that city for that month. The temperatures in Churu,...

The climate crisis is here and it's hot. If you think things are bad today they will get a lot worse if we continue with business as usual. Heatwaves are being amplified by a rise in global temperatures. They are already becoming more frequent and severe and they will only get worse if we fail to act. We have amassed a vast store of data that proves conclusively that the world is getting warmer. Heatwaves are 4 degrees Celsius hotter than they were a century ago and the heatwaves hitting Europe are more frequent and more severe. On average the...

The recent heatwave in Europe included the hottest day ever in France. The new hottest single day temperature in France is now 45.9C (114.6F). Germany, Poland and Czech Republic also set records at the end of June. Spain, Germany, Switzerland and Italy also experienced heat waves. Europe's intense heat waves and record setting temperatures are noteworthy because we can now say with a degree of confidence that this warming is at least five times more likely due to global warming. Europe's five hottest summers since 1500 have all been in this Century. Using data from Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S),...

Image credit: The Weather Channel We have seen heat records broken across Canada in the first half of 2019. Extreme heat has been present from the west coast to the east coast and the far north. The start of spring 2019 smashed 79 Canadian heat records including an all time record for Yoho Lake in the Northwest Territories. Environment Canada pointed to anomalies in the jet stream and said this kind of widespread heat in March hasn’t been seen in a quarter century. In June Victoria shattered a 121-year-old heat record and Kelowna broke a 145-year-old temperature record in BC....

We are often reminded that the fate of humanity is tied to the fate of other species. A new report is once again emphasizing the interdependence of life on Earth. It tells us that we are destroying biodiversity at a perilous rate. The sixth great extinction threatens life on the planet. While previous extinction events were caused by things like volcanoes and asteroids, the defining feature of this one is that it is being driven by human activity. This suicidal rampage has been dubbed the age of the Anthropocene. A summary of a comprehensive new report warns that unless we...

Earth Hour is an annual global event. It is a call to act on climate change and a broad range of environmental issues. This worldwide grassroots movement unites people to protect the planet. Organized by WWF, this event is celebrated by hundreds of millions of people around the world making it the largest environmental action in history.  People in more than 180 countries and thousands of cities and towns around the world will take part. Earth Hour is held every year around the Spring and Autumn equinoxes in the northern and southern hemispheres respectively. This allows for near coincidental sunset...