Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 27: Africa is warming fast, but what about Congo Basin?

21st century climate change affects the entire globe: every ecosystem, every mountain range, all the glaciers, all the land, the oceans. But of all continents it’s often said that Africa will face the biggest impacts. African climate change is far … Continue reading

Climate Change & Anthropocene Extinction 21: Amazon rainforest die-off starts in the South, models show

People who follow climate science will likely be well aware that the Amazon rainforest is particularly vulnerable to anthropogenic climate change – as the basin becomes increasingly prone to droughts under rising global temperatures. Much of the Amazon ecosystem, the … Continue reading

To shear or not to shear – these 5 images show El Niño’s possible effect on Atlantic hurricanes, and other jet stream stuff

Ten years after Katrina* the world is on the brink of a whole new cluster of climatic disasters, including wide-spread coral bleaching, Pacific atol floods, possibly another devasting Brazil drought and another record-breaking hot year, following from the currently developing … Continue reading

When the ice goes, so does the rainforest – boreal warming linked to Amazon droughts

We knew there must have been a connection between climate warming and damaging droughts in the world’s largest rainforest, as the two globally hottest years on record (2005 and 2010) coincide with the two record droughts in the Amazon – … Continue reading

Geoengineering can save Greenland, model suggests

We recently witnessed a new Greenland melting record. And according to a new paleoclimate comparison by James Hansen we could be in for meters of sea level rise within this century, due to expected non-linearity of the melting process.

Climate trend: weaker Atlantic trade winds?

Over the past 60 years the easterly trade winds over the tropical Atlantic Ocean have decreased in strength, say Hiroki Tokinaga and Shang-Ping Xie of the University of Hawai. The pattern suggests a permanent ‘Atlantic El Niño’, changed precipitation over … Continue reading