Video: The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing » Yale Climate Connections

'We are 50 to 100 years ahead of schedule with the slowdown of this ocean circulation pattern,' says climate scientist Michael Mann.
A stubborn blue spot of cool ocean temperatures stands out like the proverbial sore thumb in a recent NASA image of the warming world – a circle of cool blue on a planet increasingly shaded in hot red.

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A region of the North Atlantic south of Greenland has experienced some of its coldest temperatures on record in recent years, a cooling unprecedented in the past thousand years. What explains that anomaly?
Climatologist Michael Mann of Penn State University, in this month’s “This is Not Cool” video, explains that this phenomenon may be an indication that the North Atlantic current, part of a larger global ocean circulation, is slowing down.
This current played a role in the 2004 science fiction movie The Day After Tomorrow, a film that was “based on science, but greatly overblown” and that therefore “frustrated a lot of climatologists,” Jason Box of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland points out.
Stefan Rahmstorf of the University of Potsdam, Germany, says this circulation – called the thermohaline circulation, but popularly known to many in the U.S. as “the Gulf Stream” – keeps northern Europe several degrees warmer than it would otherwise be at that latitude.
Continue reading at: Video: The North Atlantic ocean current, which warms northern Europe, may be slowing » Yale Climate Connections

Could traditional architecture offer relief from soaring temperatures in the Gulf?

Temperatures in the Arabian Peninsula, Iraq and Iran could soar to uninhabitable levels during the course of this century, according to a new study.
Already, places such as Al Ain and Kuwait can experience temperatures of up to 52℃. But the study predicts that the effects of global warming and the increase in greenhouse gases could push the average temperature up to the mid 50℃s or lower 60℃s.

Erwin Bolwidt/Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

Currently, many residents of the gulf can find refuge in air-conditioned homes, shopping centres and cars. But as temperatures increase, so does the need for cheaper, more sustainable, less energy-intensive ways of staying cool. Fortunately, the region’s past offers a rich source of architectural inspiration.
Continue reading at: Could traditional architecture offer relief from soaring temperatures in the Gulf?

Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in Arctic - BBC News

Even in the Arctic, microscopic particles of plastic are falling out of the sky with snow, a study has found.
The scientists said they were shocked by the sheer number of particles they found: more than 10,000 of them per litre in the Arctic.
It means that even there, people are likely to be breathing in microplastics from the air - though the health implications remain unclear.

The researchers collected samples of snow in flasks. ALFRED-WEGENER-INSTITUT / MINE TEKMAN
The region is often seen as one of the world's last pristine environments.
A German-Swiss team of researchers has published the work in the journal Science Advances.
The scientists also found rubber particles and fibres in the snow.

Continue reading at: Plastic particles falling out of sky with snow in Arctic - BBC News

Even with Trump in Office, the Climate Denial Movement Is Quietly Falling Apart - VICE

Behind the scenes, climate deniers are losing funding and succumbing to infighting.
t might seem like the climate denial movement is getting everything it wants.

A TIE ILLUSTRATED BY OIL WELLS WORN BY SENATOR JIM INHOFE. IMAGE BY LIA KANTROWITZ FROM A PHOTO BY AL DRAGO/BLOOMBERG VIA GETTY

The loose network of far-right think tanks and the reclusive billionaires who fund them helped convince Donald Trump to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate treaty. The administration is passing a wish list of policies boosting the fossil fuel industry and escalating its rollback of climate research. Trump's Environmental Protection Agency this June killed one of America's most far-reaching and effective climate laws, the Clean Power Plan, and replaced it with something much weaker.
But those who track and investigate climate deniers told VICE the movement itself appears to be in flux. Veteran deniers are being pushed out, fossil fuel funding is harder to come by and longtime policy goals are for now out of reach. They're suing each other for hundreds of thousands of dollars and attacking companies like Exxon as "alarmist" sell-outs.
Continue reading at: Even with Trump in Office, the Climate Denial Movement Is Quietly Falling Apart - VICE

Amazon emergency: two-thirds of species are under threat from deforestation – dispatch

hen Marco Aurelio Zapata first built his farm named La Flor Del Amazonas (The Amazon Flower) deep in the Colombian rainforest nearly half a century ago, the only sound from his surrounding 288 hectares was that of the wild: howler and capuchin monkeys, macaws, and immeasurable birds, insects and amphibians striking up a cacophony of noise.

The modern era has violently interrupted this natural chorus. During the country’s long civil war which ended with a ceasefire in 2017 low flying crop-dusting planes would roar overhead dousing the forest canopy with herbicide in a bid to stem the guerilla’s cocaine production, much of it centred in Guaviare province where Zapata lives and tends to his smallholding.
Now it is the distant buzz of chainsaws, growing nearer all the time. Machete in hand hacking a path through the rainforest, the 62-year-old Zapata leads us to a clearing the size of several football pitches recently levelled by a neighbour to sell as cattle pasture.
“I feel sad and also angry to see it,” Zapata says. “This is a beautiful place and we want to protect the land but here anybody can do what they want.” 

Concerned landowner and former coca grower Marco Aurelio Zapata is under constant pressure to sell his land to commercial cattle ranchers CREDIT: DAVID ROSE /THE TELEGRAPH
This swathe of jungle on the edge of Colombia’s Chiribiquete national park, declared a world heritage site in 2018 and championed by the Prince of Wales as a vital lung of the earth, is part of a rapidly unfolding environmental crisis stretching right across the Amazon basin.
Continue reading at: Amazon emergency: two-thirds of species are under threat from deforestation – dispatch

What do Alaska Wildfires Mean for Global Climate Change? - Union of Concerned Scientists

What do Alaska Wildfires Mean for Global Climate Change? - Union of Concerned Scientists

Arctic wildfires spew soot and smoke cloud bigger than EU | World news | The Guardian

Plume from unprecedented blazes forecast to reach Alaska as fires rage for third month
A cloud of smoke and soot bigger than the European Union is billowing across Siberia as wildfires in the Arctic Circle rage into an unprecedented third month.

An aerial view of a wildfire in Boguchar, Russia. Photograph: Donat Sorokin/Tass
The normally frozen region, which is a crucial part of the planet’s cooling system, is spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and worsening the manmade climate disruption that created the tinderbox conditions.
A spate of huge fires in northern Russia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada discharged 50 megatonnes of CO2 in June and 79 megatonnes in July, far exceeding the previous record for the Arctic.
The intensity of the blazes continues with 25 megatonnes in the first 11 days of August – extending the duration beyond even the most persistent fires in the 17-year dataset of Europe’s satellite monitoring system.
Mark Parrington, a scientist in the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service, said the previous record was just a few weeks. “We haven’t seen this before,” he said. “The fire intensity is still well above average.”
Continue reading at: Arctic wildfires spew soot and smoke cloud bigger than EU | World news | The Guardian