A changing climate means less rain and lower water supplies in regions where many people live and much of the planet's food is produced, as clouds retreat toward the North and South poles. A new study shows this cloud shift is already taking place, with huge implications for agriculture, industry and municipal water provisioning.
Blog Posts: weather
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by - Many people are understandably perplexed at the U.S.’s recent extreme weather events like record heat waves, torrential downpours, droughts, and wildfires. A new report published by scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and other institutions may finally offer some insight into climate change’s connection to the damaging and costly extreme events that are on the rise.
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by - This post is part of WRI's "Extreme Weather Watch" series, which explores the link between climate change and extreme events. Read our other posts in this series.
This summer’s extreme weather events keep on coming—drought, heat waves, wildfires, and more. The major U.S. news networks have been on top of the story.
ABC World News, NBC Nightly News, and CBS Evening News all covered a new report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) linking extreme weather events to climate change. The New York Times, CNN, and many other media outlets reported on it, too.
Notably, Sam Champion, ABC News’s weatherman, took it a step further, saying to Diane Sawyer, “Now is the time we start limiting man-made greenhouse gases.”
For those of us who work on climate change every day, this call to action isn’t a big surprise. But seeing climate coverage on the network news – including mainstream morning shows like Good Morning America – well, that’s unusual.
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by and - July 2011 to June 2012 was the warmest 12-month period on record for the contiguous U.S. Globally, June 2011 was the 316th month in a row that posted a higher temperature than the 20th-century average. Spring 2012, not to be outdone, was the hottest on record in the U.S. And record drought in the Southwest has helped fuel the wildfires that have already consumed about two million acres this year.