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December 23, 2008
Russia: Over the past few weeks, several records have been broken in Russia for unseasonably mild weather, including the warmest ever December temperature on record. In Moscow, a temperature of 9.4 degrees Celsius (49F) was recorded on Saturday, the highest December temperature in the history of meteorological observations. Strangely, this record occurred at 3 o’clock in the morning, when usually the temperature would be plummeting towards its minimum.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/07122008news.shtml

December 22, 2008
Washington: More than 100 million people living in 46 metro areas are breathing air that has gotten too full of soot on some days, and now those cities have to clean up their air, the Environmental Protection Agency.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081222/ap_on_go_ot/epa_soot

December 19, 2008
CNN: The Northwest braced for blizzards while cities from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to Boston, Massachusetts, were cleaning up after an extreme storm delayed air travel and created havoc on the ground.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/12/19/us.storm/index.html?eref=ib_us

December 19, 2008
U.K.: A new study by the Met Office warns that the world could warm by more than 5C in the next 90 years, if emissions keep on rising. This would be catastrophic for the environment and for humanity.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article5371682.ece

December 19, 2008
PhysOrg: The frequency of extremely high clouds in Earth's tropics -- the type associated with severe storms and rainfall -- is increasing as a result of global warming, according to a study by scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
http://www.physorg.com/news148916785.html

December 18, 2008
Arctic: A team led by International Arctic Research Center scientist Igor Semiletov has found data to suggest that the carbon pool beneath the Arctic Ocean is leaking. The new data indicates the underwater permafrost is thawing and therefore releasing methane. When the permafrost thaws, the trapped methane can seep out through the thawed soil. Methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, is thought to be an important factor in global climate change.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081217203407.htm

December 18, 2008
PhysOrg: A new analysis led by MIT researchers has found that the changes in groundwater may actually be much greater than the precipitation changes themselves: For example, in places where annual rainfall may increase by 20 percent as a result of climate change, the groundwater might increase as much as 40 percent. Conversely, the analysis showed in some cases just a 20 percent decrease in rainfall could lead to a 70 percent decrease in the recharging of local aquifers -- a potentially devastating blow in semi-arid and arid regions.
http://www.physorg.com/news148836122.html

December 18, 2008
Las Vegas: It was the biggest December snowfall on record there, and the worst for any month since a 7 1/2-inch accumulation in January 1979, forecasters said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_re_us/western_weather

December 17, 2008
Oklahoma City: An extreme cold wave and storms that accompanied it was blamed for at least 20 deaths, including 11 in traffic accidents, in 12 states.
http://news.aol.com/article/bitter-cold-grips-much-of-nation/277794

December 17, 2008
U.K: Dr Stroeve and colleagues have now analysed Arctic autumn (September, October, November) air temperatures for the period 2004-2008 and compared them to the long term average (1979 to 2008). The results, they believe, are evidence of the predicted amplification effect: as ice is lost in the Arctic, more of the ocean's surface will be exposed to solar radiation and will warm up. If this process continues, it will extend the melting season for Arctic ice, delaying the onset of winter freezing and weakening further the whole system. These warming effects are not just restricted to the ocean, Dr Stroeve said. Circulation patterns could then move the warmth over land areas. "The Arctic is really the air conditioner of the Northern Hemisphere, and as you lose that sea ice you change that air conditioner; and the rest of the system has to respond. You start affecting the temperature gradient between the Arctic and equator which affects atmospheric patterns and precipitation patterns."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7786910.stm

December 17, 2008
NewScientist: Thirteen of the hottest years since records of global temperatures began in 1880 have clustered in the last 17 years.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16292-glut-of-hot-years-a-coincidence-fat-chance.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=climate-change

December 17, 2008
Chicago: Populations of insects that feed on corn and other crops in the United States may flourish and expand to new territory as global climate change brings warmer summers and milder winters in the decades ahead, according to a new study.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4BG45X20081217?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

December 16, 2008
Washington: More than 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, according to new NASA satellite data that show the latest signs of what scientists say is global warming. Melting of land ice, unlike sea ice, increases sea levels very slightly. In the 1990s, Greenland didn't add to world sea level rise; now that island is adding about half a millimeter of sea level rise a year, NASA ice scientist Jay Zwally said in a telephone interview from the conference. Between Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska, melting land ice has raised global sea levels about one-fifth of an inch in the past five years.
http://news.aol.com/article/arctic-loses-over-2-trillion-tons-of-ice/278566

December 15, 2008
California: A powerful storm plowed through California, producing heavy rain that collapsed a school roof and forced hundreds to flee homes in an area devastated by recent wildfires. Power failures caused by the weather blacked out about 20,000 homes and businesses around the state. Two traffic deaths were linked to the storm.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081215/ap_on_re_us/california_evacuations

December 15, 2008
Solomon Islands: The bad effect of climate change is not a fairy tale but an on-the-ground reality, the Solomon Islands told the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Poland. “On a daily basis, we are experiencing coastal erosions, we are fighting sea level rise and we are drinking brackish water,” said Rence Sore, the Permanent Secretary of Environment, Conservation and Meteorology.
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/38859

December 14, 2008
California: Idled farm workers are searching for food in the nation's most prolific agricultural region, where a double blow of drought and a court-ordered cutback of water supplies has caused hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.
http://deseretnews.com/article/0,5143,705270343,00.html

December 12, 2008
Canada: Findings and concerns about the rapidly warming Arctic region at the International Arctic Change conference in Quebec City - the Arctic is "ground zero" for climate change, with temperatures rising far faster than anywhere else on the planet. Some predict an ice-free summer Arctic in less than five to 10 years -- the first time the Arctic Ocean will be exposed to the sun in many hundreds of thousands of years. The speed of change has scientists scrambling to understand the impacts on indigenous people, wildlife and ecology. The loss of the ice, the thermal blanket that keeps the Arctic region cold, will have huge impacts on the weather in the northern hemisphere. The difference in temperatures between the polar regions and the tropical regions is what drives the planet's weather. A warmer Arctic means storm tracks and precipitation patterns will shift all across the middle of North America, Europe and Asia.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45091

December 14, 2008
Poland: Deforestation and "die-back" caused by climate change could devastate the Amazon rain forest, with the loss of more than two million sq km by 2050, according to British Met Office scientists. In a report released yesterday, the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research said the loss of forest cover could be five times what the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)projected in its fourth assessment report last year. Deforestation is already a major cause of carbon dioxide emissions - even larger than the transport sector - and climate change is putting further pressure on forests, with less rain and more drought leading to increased risk from fires.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2008/1212/1228864714812.html

December 11, 2008
PhysOrg: Researchers have discovered that the ocean's chemical makeup is less stable and more greatly affected by climate change than previously believed. The researchers report in the December 12, 2008 issue of Science that during a time of climate change 13 million years ago the chemical makeup of the oceans changed dramatically. The researchers warn that the chemical composition of the ocean today could be similarly affected by climate changes now underway – with potentially far-reaching consequences for marine ecosystems.
http://www.physorg.com/news148227653.html

December 11, 2008
New Orleans: Snow in New Orleans is a rarity. The last time it snowed was Christmas 2004; before that, the last snow recorded was in 1989, according to Jim Vasilj, a forecaster with the National Weather Service. Since 1850, snow had fallen in "measurable amounts" rather than traces in the city just 17 times, Vasilj said. Of the 17, today's snowfall was the earliest in the season recorded.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/12/the_new_orleans_area_is.html

December 11, 2008
Poland: Dr. Hermann Held of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research pointed out that land ice melt is being vastly underestimated, and that non-linear abrupt climate change is not being taken into account as it should be by the climate convention. The world is already committed to an astounding 2.4 degrees of warming, due in part to the warming effects of black carbon -- a substance that is now considered the second-greatest contributor to climate change after CO2 -- which are being "unmasked" by reductions of SO2, which produces a cooling effect. "As we continue to reduce sulfur emissions around the world for health reasons, we are unmasking additional warming that is bringing us closer and closer to tipping points like the meltdown of the Greenland Ice Sheet," said Dr. Held. "In order to avoid a large jump in temperature and in turn avoid the devastating effects of sea level rise, we need to act quickly to reduce black carbon emissions in coordination with sulfur."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usnw/20081211/pl_usnw/dangerous_sea_level_rise_imminent_without_large_reductions_of_black_carbon_and_implementation_of_other_fast_action_mitigation_s

December 11, 2008
Washington: Climate change caused by greenhouse gases is warming the United States, though unevenly, government researchers said. "The continent as a whole is warming, mostly as a result of the energy sources we are using," William J. Brennan, acting administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said at a briefing on the nation's climate since 1951. But there is a "warming hole" where no change occurred in the center of the country, roughly between the Rocky Mountains and the Appalachians, added Martin Hoerling of NOAA's Earth System Research Laboratory.
http://www.canadianbusiness.com/markets/headline_news/article.jsp?content=D950O00O0&utm_source=markets&utm_medium=rss

December 11, 2008
ScienceDaily: Much more methane gas is being emitted into the atmosphere from the tundra in northeast Greenland than previous studies have shown. New figures reveal that large amounts of greenhouse gases are being emitted into the atmosphere, not just during the warm summer months, but also during the colder autumn months.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/12/081210133814.htm

December 10, 2008
PhysOrg: Almost a fifth of the planet's coral reefs have died and carbon emissions are largely to blame, according to an NGO study released. The report, released by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, warned that on current trends, growing levels of greenhouse gases will destroy many of the remaining reefs over the next 20 to 40 years. "If nothing is done to substantially cut emissions, we could effectively lose coral reefs as we know them, with major coral extinctions," said Clive Wilkinson, the organisation's coordinator.
http://www.physorg.com/news148116950.html

December 10, 2008
U.K.: Two thousand people killed during a summer heatwave; mosquitoes at Heathrow carrying malaria parasites picked up from infected holidaymakers; road-builders switching to a melt-resistant tarmac. If anyone is in any doubt that climate change is already affecting the UK, this is your answer.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/10/poznan-climate-change-environment-drought

December 10, 2008
Brazil: The fast and unpredictable shifts in weather are not threats for the future, but happening right now. "The frequency of heatwaves and heavy precipitation is increasing; cyclones are becoming more frequent and intense; more areas are being affected by droughts; and flooding is now more serious," says Sheridan Bartlett, a researcher with the International Institute for Environment and Development in a new study looking at the effects of climate change on children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/dec/10/poznan-brazil-climate-change-environment

December 9, 2008
California: A link between drought and deforestation was found to be fueling global warming, a U.S. scientist and co-author of a study reported. The international study analyzed six years of climate and fire observations from satellites, finding that during the dry years, using fire to clear forests and remove organic soil increases substantially, releasing vast amounts of climate-warming carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, the University of California-Irvine said in a news release.
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2008/12/09/Drought_controlled_fire_warming_linked/UPI-22501228855641/

December 8, 2008
Poland: The impact of climate change could uproot around six million people each year, half of them because of weather disasters like floods and storms, a top U.N. official said. The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) was making plans based on conservative estimates that global warming would force between 200 million and 250 million people from their homes by mid-century, said L. Craig Johnstone, the U.N. Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B773G20081208?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

December 7, 2008
Chile: Chile's glaciers are on the retreat, a sign of global warming but also a threat to fresh water reserves at the southern end of South America, a report has found. In a November report, the Chilean water utility -- Direccion General de Aguas de Chile (DGA) -- said the Echaurren ice fields, which supply the capital with 70 percent of its water needs, are receding up to 12 meters (39.37 feet) per year.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/081207220535.1tew1335.html

December 5, 2008
Australia: Australia's driest state has been forced to purchase water for the first time to ensure adequate supplies in the midst of a drought, a government official said.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Drought-forces-Australian-apf-13755044.html

December 3, 2008
Florida: The last, largest stands of ancient elkhorn coral survive in shallow waters off North Key Largo, where rough seas sometimes expose thick golden branches reaching toward the sunlit surface. Forty years ago, elkhorn grew in dense forests that would cover parking lots. Now, the biggest clump would barely fill one space. In another 40 years, elkhorn could disappear altogether -- along with just about every other hard coral forming South Florida's once-vibrant barrier reefs.
http://www.cdnn.info/news/eco/e081130a.html

December 2, 2008
Poland: Soot is darkening ice in the Arctic and speeding a melt that could make the ocean around the North Pole ice-free in summer well before 2050, experts said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B16R420081202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

December 2, 2008
Italy: Ocean warming, frequent tropical cyclones, floods and droughts are likely to have a devastating impact on food security in Pacific island countries, the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4B14FC20081202?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

November 30, 2008
U.K.: Global warming is for ever, some of the world's top climate scientists have concluded. Their research shows that carbon dioxide emitted from today's homes, cars and factories will continue to heat up the planet for hundreds of thousands of years.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/greenhouse-gases-will-heat-up-planet-for-ever-1041642.html

November 30, 2008
Poland: Earth's climate appears to be changing more quickly and deeply than a benchmark UN report for policymakers predicted, top scientists said ahead of international climate talks.
http://www.physorg.com/news147232247.html

November 28, 2008
ScienceDaily: Scientists at the University of Toronto Scarborough have published research findings in the journal Nature Geoscience that show global warming actually changes the molecular structure of organic matter in soil.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081124130948.htm

November 28, 2008
PhysOrg: The record-breaking 2008 hurricane season, which officially ends on Sunday, has been one of the most active since comprehensive reports began 64 years ago, according to a US government agency.
http://www.physorg.com/news146933748.html

November 26, 2008
London: A team of international scientists led by Dr James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, say that carbon dioxide (CO2) levels are already in the danger zone. Concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere currently stand at 385 parts per million (ppm) and are rising at a rate of two ppm per year. This is enough, say the scientists, to encourage dangerous changes to the Earth's climate. As a result we risk expanding desertification, food shortages, increased storm intensities, loss of coral reefs and the disappearance of mountain glaciers that supply water to hundreds of millions of people.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/11/21/climate.danger.zone/index.html?section=cnn_latest

November 25, 2008
Geneva: The United Nations weather agency says the three main greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere have reached new record highs. Geir Braathen of the World Meteorological Organization says carbon dioxide was up the most in 2007, one-half per cent, with methane and nitrous oxide rising by lesser amounts.
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2008/11/25/7528081-ap.html

November 20, 2008
Missouri: People in a vast seismic zone in the southern and midwestern United States would face catastrophic damage if a major earthquake struck there and should ensure that builders keep that risk in mind, a government report said. The Federal Emergency Management Agency said if earthquakes strike in what geologists define as the New Madrid Seismic Zone, they would cause "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States."
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE4AJ9EV20081120?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true

November 18, 2008
Kansas: Groundwater seems to be taking on carbon dioxide 100 times faster than the atmosphere, according to a new study. As humans pump billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year, the planet is rapidly growing saturated. Water readily dissolves the gas to form an acid, and over the last century Earth's oceans have already been lowered from a pH of 8.1 to 8.0.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/11/18/water-carbon-dioxide.html

November 17, 2008
California: Fires destroyed more than 800 houses, mobile homes and apartments in Los Angeles County, Riverside and Orange counties to the east and Santa Barbara County to the north. In the Oakridge Mobile Home Park, 484 mostly mobile homes were burned in a space of 200 acres. In Orange and Riverside counties, the fires chewed through nearly 24,000 acres and were pushing toward Diamond Bar in Los Angeles county, home to 57,000 people.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wildfires/2008-11-16-southern-california-wildfires_N.htm

November 17, 2008
North Carolina: Twisters killed two people and damaged or destroyed 26 homes in Wilson and 40 in Johnston, along with one business. Preliminary estimates put the damage at $500,000.
http://www.wral.com/weather/story/3974564/

November 16, 2008
Paris: Scientists unveiled the first direct evidence that massive floods deep below Antarctica's ice cover are accelerating the flow of glaciers into the sea. How quickly these huge bodies of ice slide off the Antarctic and Greenland land masses into the ocean help determine the speed at which sea levels rise. The stakes are enormous: an increase measured in tens of centimetres (inches) could wreak havoc for hundreds of millions of people living in low-lying deltas and island nations around the world.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hT_Rgq5gv_BwoorjrHCV3JNlYAEg

November 14, 2008
California: California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered preparations for rising sea levels from global warming, a startling prospect for the most populous U.S. state with a Pacific Ocean coastline stretching more than 800 miles.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE4AD8KN20081114?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

November 14, 2008
Nature: Rising levels of carbon dioxide could increase the volume of oxygen-depleted 'dead zones' in tropical oceans by as much as 50% before the end of the century — with dire consequences for the health of ecosystems in some of the world's most productive fishing grounds. At depths between several tens and hundreds of metres, large parts of the tropical oceans are poorly supplied with dissolved oxygen, and are therefore hostile to most marine life.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081114/full/news.2008.1230.html?s=news_rss

November 13, 2008
Spain: Marine invasive species advance with a rate of 50 kilometers per decade caused by global warming.
http://www.innovations-report.de/html/berichte/biowissenschaften_chemie/marine_invasive_species_advance_a_rate_50_kilometers_122257.html

November 10, 2008
PhysOrg: Corals, lobsters, clams and many other ocean creatures - including some at the bottom of the food chain - may be unable to withstand the increasing acidity of the oceans brought on by growing global-warming pollution, according to a report from the advocacy group Oceana.
http://www.physorg.com/news145559293.html

November 8, 2008
Norway: 2008 Set To Be About 10th Warmest Year.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/51020/story.htm

November 7, 2008
California: California's worst drought in decades is forcing the state's cattle ranchers to downsize their herds because two years of poor rainfall have ravaged millions of acres of rangeland used to feed their cows and calves.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081107/ap_on_re_us/drought_stricken_ranchers_1

November 7, 2008
North Dakota: Major North Dakota roads closed by a blizzard that tore through the region began reopening, but freezing rain left thousands without power to the east, authorities said. In South Dakota, stranded vehicles continued to clog a major highway. No fatalities were reported in the early season blizzard that pounded the northern Plains.
http://news.aol.com/article/ferocious-blizzard-pounds-plains/240126

November 7, 2008
NewScientist: Our voracious appetite for energy is potentially putting the planet on the path for a 6°C rise in temperatures – which is far more than what climate specialists say the environment can cope with according to the International Energy Agency.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn15144-energy-agency-warns-of-6c-rise-in-temperatures.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

November 7, 2008
Washington: Research on Arctic and North Atlantic ecosystems shows the recent warming trend counts as the most dramatic climate change since the onset of human civilization 5,000 years ago, according to studies published by researchers from Cornell University (who studied the increased introduction of fresh water from glacial melt, oceanic circulation, and the change in geographic range migration of oceanic plant and animal species).
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081107/sc_afp/environmentclimatewarmingatlantic_081107171424

November 7, 2008
Carribean: Spinning out tropical storm-force winds, Hurricane Paloma (as a Category 1) was on a course to skirt the Cayman Islands en route to central Cuba, the National Hurricane Center said. A hurricane warning remained in effect for the Caymans, meaning hurricane conditions are expected in the warning area within 24 hours.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/11/07/hurricane.paloma/index.html?section=cnn_latest

November 2, 2008
U.K.: Parts of the world may have to be abandoned because severe water shortages will leave them uninhabitable, the United Nations environment chief has warned. The executive director of the UN Environment Programme said water shortages caused by over-use of rivers and aquifers were already leading to serious problems, even in rich nations. With climate change expected to reduce rainfall in some places and cause droughts in others, some regions could become 'economic deserts', unviable for people or agriculture.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/02/climate-change-desertification-water-drought

October 31, 2008
NewScientist: Evidence has emerged that human activity, not natural phenomena, is directly responsible for heating up the polar ice caps. The news coincides with announcements earlier this week that the Arctic ice is now thinner than at any time since records began. "We knew the warming was happening there, especially in the Arctic," says Alexey Karpechko of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, UK, but pinning down the causes has not been possible until now.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn15085-humans-to-blame-for-polar-warming.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

October 31, 2008
Antarctic: In its landmark Fourth Assessment Report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) declared in 2007 that human influence on climate "has been detected in every continent except Antarctica". Now a paper in Nature Geoscience says that our impact can be found even in the last wilderness.
http://www.enn.com/climate/article/38541

October 29, 2008
Northeast: Thousands lack power after extreme storm strikes the Northeast.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081029/ap_on_re_us/northeast_storm

October 29, 2008
Washington: Levels of climate-warming methane -- a greenhouse gas 25 times as potent as carbon dioxide -- rose abruptly in Earth's atmosphere last year, and scientists who reported the change don't know why it occurred.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE49T0AD20081030?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

October 28, 2008
Arctic: The thickness of Arctic sea ice "plummeted" last winter, thinning by as much as one-fifth in some regions, satellite data has revealed. A study by UK researchers showed that the ice thickness had been fairly constant for the previous five winters. The team from University College London added that the results provided the first definitive proof that the overall volume of Arctic ice was decreasing.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7692963.stm

October 27, 2008
U.K.: Global warming is making the sea more salty, according to new research that demonstrates the massive shifts in natural systems triggered by climate change. Experts at the UK Met Office and Reading University say warmer temperatures over the Atlantic Ocean have significantly increased evaporation and reduced rainfall across a giant stretch of water from Africa to the Carribean in recent years. The change concentrates salt in the water left behind, and is predicted to make southern Europe and the Mediterranean much drier in future.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/27/climate-change-water

October 27, 2008
Boston: Scientists from Harvard and Boston University reported today that the mean annual temperature has climbed by 4 degrees since Thoreau's time in Concord, and over that same period, 27 percent of the species documented by Thoreau have disappeared. Another 36 percent are in such low numbers that their disappearance is imminent, despite the fact that 60 percent of Concord’s natural areas have been protected or undeveloped since Thoreau’s time.
http://www.boston.com/lifestyle/green/greenblog/2008/10/wildflowers_disappear_from_wal.html

October 27, 2008
Germany: Sea levels around the world will rise one metre this century, according to German scientists who warn that global warming is happening much faster than hitherto predicted. Citing UN date on climate change, two senior German scientists say that previous predictions were far too cautious and optimistic. Earlier estimates predicted a rise of 18 to 59 centimetres in sea levels this century. But that estimate is woefully understated, according to Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who heads the Potsdam Institute for Research on Global Warming Effects, and Jochem Marotzke, a leading meteorologist.
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/238677,sea-levels-to-rise-a-metre-this-century-german-experts-warn.html

October 24, 2008
PhysOrg: Scientists call ocean acidification "the other carbon dioxide problem." They warn that because it causes such fundamental changes in the ocean, it could impact millions of people who depend on the ocean for food and resources. "The growing amount of carbon dioxide in the ocean could have a bigger effect on life on Earth than carbon dioxide in the atmosphere," says JPL's Charles Miller, deputy principal investigator for NASA's new Orbiting Carbon Observatory, scheduled to launch next January.
http://www.physorg.com/news144066924.html

October 24, 2008
Russia: Polar bears are dying out in the remote Arctic region of Chukotka because of melting ice and increased killing by humans, an expert with the International Fund for Animal Welfare warned. "If this tendency continues, the population will disappear very quickly, said Nikita Ovsyanikov, a researcher from Wrangel Island natural park in Chukotka who has spent the past 18 years studying polar bears in the region.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081024/sc_afp/russiaenvironmentclimatewarminganimal_081024161800

October 22, 2008
Washington: More frequent and powerful hurricanes from the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico since the mid-1990s have created one of the most dangerous and costliest storm eras in recorded history, a USA TODAY analysis of weather data shows. Since 1995, there have been 207 named storms in the Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico — a 68% increase from the previous 13 years, according to statistics from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Of those storms, 111 were hurricanes, a 75% increase over the previous period.
http://news-press.com/article/20081022/WEATHER01/81022009

October 20, 2008
U.K.: Climate change is happening much faster than the world's best scientists predicted and will wreak havoc unless action is taken on a global scale, a new report warns. Extreme weather events such as the hot summer of 2003, which caused an extra 35,000 deaths across southern Europe from heat stress and poor air quality, will happen more frequently. Britain and the North Sea area will be hit more often by violent cyclones and sea level rise predictions will double to more than a metre putting vast coastal areas at risk from flooding. The bleak report from WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund - also predicts crops failures and the collapse of eco systems on both land and sea.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/20/eawwf120.xml

October 20, 2008
USAToday: For the first time, land trusts and other conservationists are factoring in evidence that global warming is altering the migration of species, reconfiguring coastlines and transforming natural habitats. "Natural habitat in one place now might move 100 miles in 50 years because of climate change," says Matt Shaffer of The Trust for Public Land. "It's hard to pinpoint where that migration is going to happen."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-10-20-landbuy_N.htm?csp=34

October 19, 2008
Yosemite: As signals of climate change begin to come into focus in the Sierra Nevada, its melting glaciers spell trouble in bold font. Not only are they in-your-face barometers of global warming, they also reflect what scientists are beginning to uncover: that the Sierra snowpack – the source of 65 percent of California's water – is dwindling, too.
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1325423.html

October 16, 2008
Arctic: Fall air temperatures have climbed to record levels in the Arctic due to major losses of sea ice as the region suffers more effects from a warming trend dating back decades, a report released showed. The annual report issued by researchers at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other experts is the latest to paint a dire picture of the impact of climate change in the Arctic.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE49F9OE20081016?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

October 16, 2008
Southwest: "By 2025 or so we are headed for a train wreck in the West," says Tim Barnett, a researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, who co-published a study that concluded Lake Mead would be empty by 2021 at current consumption rates. "The truth of the matter is that the Bureau of Reclamation will not let the reservoir go dry. They will just cut off deliveries. And that will send shivers down your spine, because someone will not get the water they are expecting. "There is no extra water," Barnett adds. "So when new people come into Phoenix or Tucson, tell them to bring their own water with them."
http://www.alternet.org/environment/103366/climate_change_threatens_to_dry_up_the_southwest's_future/

October 14, 2008
Los Angeles: Two huge wildfires driven by strong Santa Ana winds burned into neighborhoods near Los Angeles, forcing frantic evacuations on smoke-and traffic-choked highways, destroying homes and causing at least two deaths.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/nation/1219854,wildfire_101408.article

October 14, 2008
California: The Marek Fire is blamed for one death - it burned about 4,800 acres.
http://www.wsbtv.com/weather/17709107/detail.html?rss=atl&psp=nationalnews#-

October 13, 2008
Mexico: At least four people were killed by Hurricane Norbert when it ripped through northern Mexico; Norbert hit mainland Mexico as a Category 1 hurricane with winds near 85 mph after crossing the Baja California Peninsula.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/AP/story/724745.html

October 13, 2008
USAToday: The 2008 tornado season is on track to set a record for the number of tornadoes in the USA, according to National Weather Service data. Through July, 1,390 tornadoes were officially recorded in the first seven months of a year — the most ever. The annual record for tornadoes in the USA is 1,817, set in 2004.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/tornadoes/2008-10-12-Tornado_N.htm?csp=34

October 12, 2008
Japan: Warmer temperatures in the years ahead will dry up peatlands, release more carbon dioxide into the world's atmosphere and aggravate global warming, a study in Japan has found.
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE49B2MD20081012?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

October 8, 2008
Barcelona: Twelve diseases, including Ebola, cholera and red-tide algae blooms, are increasing their geographic range because of climate change, the Times reported, citing Wildlife Conservation Society scientists. The ``deadly dozen,'' lethal to humans and wildlife and sometimes able to spread faster with warmer temperatures, were among those identified yesterday by veterinary scientists from the wildlife group at the International Union for the Conservation of Nature conference in Barcelona, the London-based newspaper said.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601130&sid=anlemhsbycQM

October 6, 2008
USAToday: A report in the journal Science says that of the world's 5,487 mammal species, at least one in four land species and one in three marine species face extinction in the foreseeable future. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) predicted earlier that one in eight bird, one in three amphibian and one in three coral-reef species are endangered.
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2008-10-06-endangered-mammals_N.htm?csp=34

October 6, 2008
PhysOrg: A new NASA study shows that the rising frequency and intensity of arctic storms over the last half century, attributed to progressively warmer waters, directly provoked acceleration of the rate of arctic sea ice drift, long considered by scientists as a bellwether of climate change. Data from the study confirmed an accelerating trend in storm activity in the Arctic from 1950 to 2006. Acknowledging ice as a harbinger of climate change, they next analyzed ice drift data collected during the same 56-year period from drifting stations and after 1979 from drifting buoys positioned around the Arctic that measured surface air temperature and sea level pressure. The team found that the pace of sea ice movement along the Arctic Ocean's Transpolar Drift Stream from Siberia to the Atlantic Ocean accelerated in both summer and winter during the 55-year period.
http://www.physorg.com/news142527766.html

October 6, 2008
U.K.: Ground-level ozone pollution is contributing to hundreds of deaths a year in the UK - and climate change could help make the situation worse, a report from the Royal Society warned today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/groundlevel-ozone-pollution-to-increase-952823.html

October 5, 2008
Italy: Scientists calculate that the seas are absorbing so much carbon dioxide that they are 30 per cent more acidic than they were at the start of the Industrial Revolution. The change is three times greater and has happened 100 times faster than at any other time during the past 20 million years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/oct/05/climatechange.italy

October 4, 2008
NSIDC: Arctic sea ice extent during the 2008 melt season dropped to the second-lowest level since satellite measurements began in 1979, reaching the lowest point in its annual cycle of melt and growth on September 14, 2008. Average sea ice extent over the month of September, a standard measure in the scientific study of Arctic sea ice, was 4.67 million square kilometers (1.80 million square miles) (Figure 1). The record monthly low, set in 2007, was 4.28 million square kilometers (1.65 million square miles); the now-third-lowest monthly value, set in 2005, was 5.57 million square kilometers (2.15 million square miles).
http://nsidc.org/news/press/20081002_seaice_pressrelease.html

October 2, 2008
California: A small-to-moderate earthquake struck San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles. The magnitude-4.1 temblor was centered 6 miles northeast of Yucaipa and occurred at a depth of about 6 miles, according to a preliminary report from the U.S. Geological Survey.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-10-02-earthquake-california_N.htm?csp=34

October 1, 2008
Australia: Emissions rising faster this decade than last. The latest figures on the global carbon budget to be released in Washington and Paris indicate a four-fold increase in growth rate of human-generated carbon dioxide emissions since 2000.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/ca-erf100108.php

September 29, 2008
Maine: It threatened to be the first hurricane in 17 years to make landfall in Maine. Instead, Kyle delivered little more than a glancing blow equivalent to that of a classic nor'easter.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5906764

September 29, 2008
NewScientist: In marine dead zones – also known as hypoxic zones – the amount of dissolved oxygen in the water becomes too low for organisms to survive. They are usually caused by synthetic fertilisers, which are carried from fields, down rivers, and out to sea, where algal blooms gorge on the extra nutrients. When these phytoplankton die, they fall to the bottom where they are eaten by bacteria that consume all the local oxygen in the process. The situation is also predicted to get worse with climate change: warmer oceans can hold less dissolved oxygen. A recent study calculated that the area of hypoxic Danish coast could more than double over the coming century (Science, vol 320, p 655).
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/dn14835-marine-dead-zones-leave-crabs-gasping.html?feedId=earth_rss20

September 25, 2008
Reuters: The Global Carbon Project said in its report carbon dioxide emissions by mankind are growing about four times faster since 2000 than during the 1990s, despite efforts by 37 rich nations to rein in emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. The report confirms that the developing countries are now producing more greenhouse gases than rich nations which have been burning fossil fuels since the Industrial Revolution.
http://blogs.reuters.com/environment/2008/09/25/carbon-emissions-soar-despite-curbs/

September 23, 2008
Siberia: Scientists claim to have discovered evidence for large releases of methane into the atmosphere from frozen seabed stores off the northern coast of Siberia. A large injection of the gas - which is 21 times more potent as an atmospheric heat trap than carbon dioxide - has long been cited by climate scientists as the potential trigger for runaway global warming. The warming caused by the gas could destabilise permafrost further, they fear, leading to yet more methane release.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/23/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange1?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

September 23, 2008
Greenland: Greenland's ice cap, which covers more than 80 percent of the island, is melting faster than expected because of global warming, according to a Danish researcher. The 1.8-million-square-kilometre (695,000-square-mile) ice cap, which accounts for 10 percent of the planet's fresh water, is losing about 257 cubic kilometres (62 cubic miles) of ice per year. In 2080, it is expected to lose 465 cubic kilometres (111 cubic miles) per year, according to new estimates presented by a Danish-US team of scientists at the International Research Center in Fairbanks, Alaska. The net loss in 2080 would be "81 percent greater than today" and would cause "sea levels to rise by 107 millimetres" (4.2 inches), the team's head researcher Sebastian Mernild said in a statement received in Copenhagen. Satellite observations show that "the global water level has since 1993 risen by three millimetres (0.11 inches) per year, or at a much more accelerated pace than during the last century" when it rose by 1.7 millimetres (0.06 inches) per year.
http://www.physorg.com/news141322790.html

September 23, 2008
Southwest: According to Purdue University researchers, the weather in southern California, western Texas and northern Mexico is going to become increasingly unpredictable whatever we do. This is true in both a best-case scenario in which new technology curbs future emissions, and if the worst happens and population growth fuels a doubling in carbon dioxide levels. Residents in these areas will see pronounced fluctuations in temperature and rainfall from year to year - changes that will become harder to predict.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926743.900-turbulent-weather-ahead-for-southern-us.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news3_head_mg19926743.900

September 20, 2008
Australia: Dr Veron, former chief scientist with the Australian Institute of Marine Science, said acidification of the oceans would lead to mass extinctions once CO2 levels reached a tipping point and began driving themselves. He said the chemistry was simple: carbon dioxide is dissolved into water, creating very weak carbolic acid which attacks the carbonates that corals depend on. "The corals can't develop properly," he said. Some observers think 560ppm (parts per million) of CO2 is the "tipping point" at which a feedback mechanism kicks in, creating a self-fulfilling cycle driving itself towards mass extinctions. "There's no doubt about this at all," he said. "By 2050 ocean acidification will have taken hold. By perhaps 2060 it will be uncontrollable."
http://www.news.com.au/adelaidenow/story/0,22606,24381178-5006301,00.html?from=public_rss

September 19, 2008
Washington: One-third of the glaciers in the North Cascades — including Lyman — are doomed.
http://www.sierrasun.com/article/20080919/NEWS/809199950/1051&ParentProfile=&title=Glaciers%20vanish%20in%20North%20Cascades

September 19, 2008
Arctic: Arctic sea ice melted to its second-lowest level this summer, rising slightly from 2007's record but still showing a downward trend that is a key symptom of climate change, U.S. scientists said. The ice slipped to its minimum extent for 2008 on September 12, when it covered 1.74 million square miles (4.52 million square km).
http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSN1630231020080917?feedType=RSS&feedName=environmentNews

September 17, 2008
Discovery: Plant and soil can take up to two years to recover from an exceptionally hot year, a finding that has implications for the combat against global warming, according to research published. The recovery lag could cause a rethink about the ability of grasslands and soil to act as a sponge, also known as a "sink," that removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air, its authors said.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/09/17/grasslands-heat-carbon.html

September 16, 2008
Antarctica: The ozone hole over Antarctica, a doorway for harmful solar radiation, is bigger than last year, a worrying sign to scientists studying global warming, the World Meteorological Organization said. The area of atmosphere without ozone has grown to 27 million square kilometers (10.4 million square miles), 8 percent larger than the maximum reached in 2007, the group said today in an e- mailed statement. The hole usually reaches its maximum in late September or early October before receding in an annual cycle.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=ay8QV4bC6v4M

September 16, 2008
San Diego: UC San Diego scientists say it's too late to stop the effects of global warming. KPBS Reporter Ed Joyce has details. Scripps Institution of Oceanography researchers say irreversible warming will melt glaciers and cause the extinction of plants and animals. Even if greenhouse gas emissions are fixed at 2005 levels, the UCSD analysis shows damage has already been done. Climate Scientist V. Ramanathan says the earth will warm about 4.3 degrees farenheit above pre-industrial levels.
http://www.kpbs.org/news/local;id=12750

September 15, 2008
Greenland: Howat and his colleagues concentrated on the southeastern region of Greenland, an area covering about one-fifth of the island's 656,373 square miles (1.7 million square kilometers). They found that while two of the largest glaciers in that area – Kangerdlugssuaq and Helheim – contribute more to the total ice loss than any other single glaciers, the 30 or so smaller glaciers there contributed 72 percent of the total ice lost.
http://www.physorg.com/news140694754.html

September 15, 2008
Texas: Lack of rain and scorching temperatures hit Texas' agricultural crops and beef operations hard late spring and summer, leading to an estimated $1.4 billion in drought losses, Texas AgriLife Extension Service economists reported Sept. 8. Crop losses were estimated at $1.1 billion, while livestock losses tallied $260 million, which includes lost hay production, added supplemental feed costs and other production expenditures.
http://www.hpj.com/archives/2008/sep08/sep15/2008Texasdroughtlossesestim.cfm?title=2008%20Texas%20drought%20losses%20estimated%20at%20$1.4%20billion

September 13,2008
Texas: Coming ashore with 110 mph winds, Hurricane Ike ravaged the Texas coast, flooding thousands of homes and businesses, shattering windows in Houston's skyscrapers, knocking out power to millions of people, and causing loss of life.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,421788,00.html

September 12,2008
Phillipines: Climate change could have a devastating impact on the Philippines, leading to widespread destruction of the country's flora and fauna and flooding the capital Manila, a NASA scientist warned. The continued melting of Arctic ice caps, brought on by climate change, could cause sea levels to rise by seven metres (23 feet), said National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) physicist Josefino Comiso.
http://www.spacedaily.com/2006/080912101756.63h51snf.html

September 11,2008
PhyOrg: The world’s leading marine and freshwater scientists show direct human impacts will devastate lakes, rivers and coastal seas long before climate change takes full effect. The stark warning is the conclusion of a major new work compiled and led by Professor Nicholas Polunin, leading marine environmental scientist at Newcastle University.
http://www.physorg.com/news140353662.html

September 9,2008
BBC: A report by Oxfam International says emissions, primarily from developed countries, are exacerbating flooding, droughts and extreme weather events. As a result, harvests are failing and people are losing their homes and access to water.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7605927.stm

September 7,2008
NewScientist: Climate change is depriving coral reefs across the globe of the building materials used to make their shells. Current plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to fix the problem, according to new research.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn14676-climate-change-could-stop-corals-fixing-themselves.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

September 7, 2008
Connecticut: Hanna, blamed for disastrous flooding and more than 100 deaths in Haiti, took just a few hours to drop a month's worth of rain in N.Y. and New England.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2008-09-06-hanna_N.htm?csp=34

September 6, 2008
California: A minor earthquake rattled the San Francisco Bay area Friday night. The U.S. Geological Survey's preliminary report put the quake at a 4.0-magnitude.
http://news.aol.com/article/minor-quake-rattles-san-francisco/163093

September 5,2008
Canada: Soaring temperatures have led to the collapse of several huge ice shelves in the Canadian Arctic over the past few weeks. One 50 sq km ice shelf on the northern coast of Canada's Ellesmere Island simply "vanished" over three days, exposing a coast that lay buried under ice for at least 4,000 years.
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43803

September 5, 2008
Washington: Smog, soot and other particles like the kind often seen hanging over Beijing add to global warming and may raise summer temperatures in the American heartland by three degrees in about 50 years, says a new federal science report.
http://www.cbs46.com/weather/17397945/detail.html?rss=lnta&psp=news#-

September 4, 2008
Nature: Anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions could strip tropical oceans of oxygen and drastically expand the region's 'dead zones' by the end of this century. Large portions of the tropical oceans are oxygen-depleted and hostile to marine life. Although these poorly ventilated zones are known to be highly sensitive to climate change, it's not clear how they will fare over the next century.
http://www.nature.com/climate/2008/0810/full/climate.2008.92.html

September 4, 2008
California: Warming temperatures could soon cause California's giant sequoia trees to die off more quickly unless forest managers plan with an eye toward climate change and the impacts of a longer, harsher wildfire season, federal researchers warned.
http://cbs5.com/local/global.warming.sequoias.2.810523.html

September 3, 2008
Toronto: A 19-square-mile ice shelf in Canada’s northern Arctic has broken away from Ellesmere Island, surprising scientists who say the floating ice shelf is another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/international/americas/view.bg?articleid=1116772&srvc=rss

September 2, 2008
Seattle: Global warming is leaving its footprint throughout much of western North America. In Canada, the pine bark beetle has killed lodgepole pine forests from the B.C. Coast Range to the Continental Divide. The infestation in white bark pine forests will create killing zones from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierras of California, to the Oregon and Washington Cascades. In the Pacific Northwest, glaciers sustain river flow in late summer and early fall. South of Colonial Creek Campground on the North Cascades Highway, Thunder Creek carries runoff into Seattle City Light's Diablo Lake reservoir. The Columbia River is fed by ice fields of the Canadian Rockies and the Selkirk and Purcell mountains. Even the large South Cascade Glacier, which the U.S. Geological Survey has studied since 1950, has shrunk to an extent that it may be gone by 2050. In the Rockies, Glacier National Park will have no more glaciers by 2030. Glaciers in north-facing cirques of 13,000-foot Wind River peaks are shrinking rapidly.
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/377472_joel03.html?source=mypi

September 1, 2008
BBC: The 1998 hockey stick was a totem of debates over man-made global warming. The graph - indicating that Northern Hemisphere temperatures had been roughly constant for 1,000 years (the "shaft" of the stick) before turning abruptly upwards in the industrial age - featured prominently in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2001 assessment. A new study by climate scientists behind the controversial 1998 "hockey stick" graph suggests their earlier analysis was broadly correct.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7592575.stm

September 1, 2008
NewScientist: Sea level rises could far exceed IPCC estimates. The team calculated the volume of water that would have been released in each of these melting stages, and the rate at which it must have raised sea levels. They concluded that levels would have climbed 1.3 metres per century in the earlier period, and 0.7 metres per century in the final melt. Carlson then used a sophisticated computer model – one that is used to forecast future climate change – to check the results. The model predicted an average sea level rise of 1.3 metres per century, suggesting that predictions made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a sea-level rise of between 18 centimetres and 59 cm by 2100 – are very conservative.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn14634-sea-level-rises-could-far-exceed-ipcc-estimates.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

September 1, 2008
Bahamas: Hurricane Hanna lingered over the Bahamas and Turks and Caicos islands on a path that could hit the southeastern U.S. coast by midweek, while Tropical Storm Ike and still another weather pattern behind it raised the possibility of more havoc to come.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/09/01/hanna.storm.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

September 1, 2008
New Orleans: Gustav roared from the Gulf of Mexico into southern Louisiana as a Category 2 hurricane with sustained winds of 110 mph, bringing fierce winds and heavy rains from the Alabama-Florida border west into Texas, causing major property damage estimated in the billions and loss of life. Across Louisiana, more than 800,000 people were without electricity, and some may not see it restored for weeks, Gov. Bobby Jindal said.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/09/01/gustav/index.html

August 30, 2008
PhysOrg: From backyards in Tennessee to riverbanks in Southeast Asia, researchers said they have seen fireflies - also called glowworms or lightning bugs - dwindling in number. No single factor is blamed, but researchers in the United States and Europe mostly cite urban sprawl and industrial pollution that destroy insect habitat.
http://www.physorg.com/news139315961.html

August 29, 2008
Atlantic: Tropical Storm Hanna, the lesser known sibling of Hurricane Gustav, churned westward while forecasters in Florida kept a close watch on it. The storm is likely to move into the Bahamas and there was a possibility that it might pick up wind speeds to become a hurricane.
http://www.floridatoday.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080829/BREAKINGNEWS/80829061

August 28, 2008
Florida: Fay is the most significant and widespread inundation of Florida since five hurricanes smacked the state in 2004-05. Aside from knocking fruits off trees, the combination of wind and rain exacerbated citrus canker, a disease that infects leaves and causes fruit to drop prematurely. Fay is likely to have increased the spread of the disease.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20080828/us_time/thesourstateoffloridacitrus

August 27, 2008
Arctic: The National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that sea ice in the Arctic now covers about 2.03 million square miles. The lowest point since satellite measurements began in 1979 was 1.65 million square miles set last September. With about three weeks left in the Arctic summer, this year could wind up breaking that previous record, scientists said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2008/08/28/2008-08-28_global_warming_tipping_point_arctic_sea_.html

August 26, 2008
Carribean: Hurricane Gustav is strengthening rapidly as it heads into the Gulf of Mexico, posing perhaps the greatest threat to the U.S. gulf coast since the disastrous hurricane season of 2005.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121977310633573445.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

August 26, 2008
Idaho: A wind-whipped wildfire that forced the evacuation of more than 100 residents.
http://news.aol.com/article/wildfire-destroys-homes-in-boise/121937

August 25, 2008
Carribean: Haitians were told to prepare for evacuations as Tropical Storm Gustav formed quickly in the Caribbean on a path to hit the country's denuded southern coast as a hurricane before moving on to Cuba, the Bahamas and Florida.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/hurricane/2008-08-25-tropical-storm-gustav_N.htm?csp=34

August 25, 2008
HealthDay News: Recent research indicates that increasing global temperatures and carbon dioxide levels are causing longer ragweed seasons and more concentrated pollen counts, says the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology, which has devoted the September issue of its Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology to examining the effects of climate change on allergic disease.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20080825/hl_hsn/climatechangelinkedtolongerpollenseasons

August 25, 2008
New Mexico: Human-caused climate change has already shifted the jet stream that brings the Southwest its winter snowstorms to the north, which is making the region's late winter and early spring drier, according to new research by a team of Arizona scientists.
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/drought/2008-08-25-southwest-drought-climate-change_N.htm?csp=34

August 25, 2008
Colorado: At least four tornadoes touched down southeast of Denver between the towns of Castle Rock and Parker, but somehow managed to twist dangerously by new housing developments. The thunderstorms unleashed a sudden deluge of rain and hail on several subdivisions.
http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/aug/24/tornado-warning-douglas-county/

August 24, 2008
Paris: Climate change could release unexpectedly huge stores of carbon dioxide from Arctic soils, which would in turn fuel a vicious circle of global warming, a new study warned. According to one commentary on the research, current models of climate change have not taken this extra source of greenhouse gas into account.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080824/sc_afp/scienceclimatewarmingcarbonarctic

August 24, 2008
Yosemite: One century ago, alpine chipmunks owned the upper half of Yosemite. They skittered under logs and darted across rocks from the rugged Sierra crest down to the conifer forests at 7,800 feet. Today, they are missing in action below 9,800 feet. "It's lost half its geographic range," Patton said. "Climate is the culprit. I don't think there is any iota of reason not to think that."
http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1181298.html

August 23, 2008
New York: An analysis of recent earthquake activity around New York City has found that many small faults that were believed to be inactive could contribute to a major, disastrous earthquake.
http://news.aol.com/article/study-finds-new-york-quake-dangers/145504

August 22, 2008
Florida: Tropical Storm Fay hobbled across Florida for a fifth day as the state's death toll rose to five, while residents began plodding through muddy water to assess the flood damage to their homes. Fay has dumped more than two feet of rain along parts of Florida's low-lying central Atlantic coast and was making its third pass through the state in a week.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/florida/AP/story/653063.html

August 22, 2008
Denmark: Several species of sea birds will soon be gone from Denmark because climate change is forcing their food sources away, reports JydskeVestkysten newspaper.
http://www.cphpost.dk/get/108838.html

August 21, 2008
Alaska: An aerial survey by government scientists in Alaska's Chukchi Sea this week found at least nine polar bears swimming in open water - with one at least 60 miles from shore - raising concern among wildlife experts about their survival. A World Wildlife Fund (WWF) polar bear expert said the bears could have difficulty making it safely to shore and risk drowning, particularly if a storm arises.
http://www.centredaily.com/business/story/791293.html

August 21, 2008
Greenland: New satellite images reveal that a massive ice chunk recently broken away from one of Greenland's glaciers, which researchers say will continue to disintegrate within the next year. Scientists at Ohio State University monitoring daily NASA satellite images of Greenland's glaciers discovered that an 11-square-mile (29-square-kilometer) piece of the Petermann Glacier broke away between July 10 and 24. The chunk was about half the size of Manhattan.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080821/sc_livescience/greenlandglacierbreakupsuggestsimminentdisintegration

August 21, 2008
Michigan: According to a Union of Concerned Scientists projection based on the most recent climate change data, Michigan's temperatures will rise 6 to 10 degrees in winter and 7 to 13 degrees in summer by the end of this century. Extreme heat will be more common and the growing season will be eight to 10 weeks longer.
http://www.mlive.com/flintjournal/sports/index.ssf/2008/08/rapid_climate_change_threatens.html

August 20, 2008
Alaska: Records indicate that Alaska has already experienced the largest regional warming of any US state -- an average 5 degrees Fahrenheit (3 degrees Celsius) since the 1960s and about 8 degrees Fahrenheit (4.5 degrees Celsius) in the interior of the state during winter months.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/49858/story.htm

August 19, 2008
Australia: An Australian climate change expert says the world's sea levels could rise by up to four meters this century. The head of the climate change unit at the Australian National University and science adviser to the federal Government, Professor Will Steffen, says he believes the scientific community is underestimating the speed at which the climate is changing. Rising sea levels from global warming are predicted to make some Pacific islands unlivable within the next decade, with Tuvalu expected to be underwater by 2050.
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/news/stories/200808/s2340492.htm?tab=latest

August 19, 2008
PhysOrg: Since the 1970s the winter storm track in the western U.S. has been shifting north, particularly in the late winter. As a result, fewer winter storms bring rain and snow to Southern California, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, western Colorado and western New Mexico.
http://www.physorg.com/news138338828.html

August 19, 2008
NPR: Extreme temperatures around the world are likely to rise dramatically as a result of global warming, a new study finds. Some heavily populated parts of the world — including the American Midwest — could face heat waves in which the temperature soars above 120 degrees by the end of this century.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=93706882&ft=1&f=1004

August 18, 2008
Grand Canyon: Approximately 50 tourists and Hualapai Tribe members spent the night in a shelter after being lifted out of a flood-devastated gorge off the side of the Grand Canyon by helicopters.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/08/18/national/main4357660.shtml

August 14, 2008
Glacier National Park: In 1910 there were 150 glaciers in the park; now there are 25, which are losing 9 percent of their mass per year. Sometime between 2015 and 2020 they'll disappear. Locals joke the 1.4 million acres will be renamed "Puddles National Park."
http://www.alternet.org/water/95107/climate_change_is_already_affecting_the_west's_water/

August 13, 2008
India: World cotton production could decline by 5-12 percent by 2030 due to climatic changes according to Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation.
http://www.commodityonline.com/news/Global-cotton-output-to-be-hit-by-water-shortages-11099-3-1.html

August 13, 2008
Germany: One in five of Germany's plant species could lose parts of its current range, a study by scientists at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research (UFZ), the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the French Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine reveals. Species distributions will be rearranged as a result of climate change; this could have a dramatic impact particularly on the vegetation in south-western and eastern Germany.
http://www.physorg.com/news137838448.html

August 13, 2008
West Antarctica: Human activity and the El Nino weather pattern over the last century have warmed West Antarctica, part of the world's coldest continent, according to a study based on four years of collecting ice core data. The West Antarctic warmed in response to higher temperatures in the tropical Pacific, which itself has been warming due to weather patterns like a major El Nino event from 1939 to 1942 and greenhouse emissions from cars and factories, according to the study.
http://in.reuters.com/article/oilRpt/idINN1249988420080812

August 11, 2008
California: Warmer temperatures and longer dry spells have killed thousands of trees and shrubs in a Southern California mountain range, pushing the plants' habitat an average of 213 feet up the mountain over the past 30 years, a UC Irvine study has determined.
http://www.physorg.com/news137693059.html

August 11, 2008
Rocky Mountains: The impacts of global warming are already upon us, wreaking havoc on ecosystems and working landscapes. For example: In the Rocky Mountain region on both sides of the U.S.-Canadian border, the mountain pine beetle — flourishing at increasingly northern latitudes and for longer life cycles because of warmer temperatures — has devastated millions of acres of pine forests. The dead trees have a ripple effect on the ecosystem. Grizzlies can no longer count on squirrels to collect pine-nut caches, an important food source in the fall, and so the bears expand their search for food, increasing the chance of interactions with humans. Even more disturbing, the huge swaths of dead pine forests, which appear as vast, rust-colored patches from the air, are creating a tinderbox for forest fires.
http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/editorials/hc-greenhouse0811.artaug11,0,737326.story

August 7, 2008
Florida: Climate models have long predicted that global warming will increase the intensity of extreme precipitation events. A new study conducted at the University of Miami and the University of Reading (U.K.) provides the first observational evidence to confirm the link between a warmer climate and more powerful rainstorms.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-08/uomr-ccw080408.php

August 7, 2008
U.K.: The UK should take active steps to prepare for dangerous climate change of perhaps 4C according to one of the government's chief scientific advisers. In policy areas such as flood protection, agriculture and coastal erosion Professor Bob Watson said the country should plan for the effects of a 4C global average rise on pre-industrial levels. The EU is committed to limiting emissions globally so that temperatures do not rise more than 2C.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/aug/06/climatechange.scienceofclimatechange

August 6, 2008
Greenland: In some places of the world, that change is happening more quickly than in others, so quickly that our "fast-thinking human mind," as the University of Copenhagen geologist Minik Rosing says, can almost catch it. One of those places is the coastal town of Ilulissat, the last stop on our climate tour of Greenland.
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1829365,00.html?xid=rss-topstories

August 5, 2008
PhysOrg: Climate models project that rising temperatures over time can lead to an increase in dry, desert-like conditions, which will affect not only the survivorship of particular species, but also the natural resources they have adapted to use in their natural environment. Species are thus forced to move elsewhere to find places to live and food to eat.
http://www.physorg.com/news137054054.html

August 4, 2008
Denver: A number of states across south east USA have been reeling under intense heat, which has broken a number of records.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/world/news/03082008news.shtml

August 4, 2008
Arctic: The vast Arctic sea ice which spreads across the North Pole could disappear during the summer within a decade or two - or even by 2013 - leading scientists are warning.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/climate-of-fear-as-ice-vanishes/2008/08/03/1217701855502.html

August 4, 2008
Yosemite: Scientists predict that climate change will mean more rainfall and less snow in Yosemite in the next 50 years. If that happens, they say, one of the nation's premier outdoor destinations could experience problems — including severe floods in winter and spring, and dry wells in the summer.
http://www.montereyherald.com/ci_10091547?source=rss

August 3, 2008
Spain: From Spain to New York, to Australia, Japan and Hawaii, jellyfish are becoming more numerous and more widespread. They are showing up in places where they have rarely been seen before, scientists say. The explosion of jellyfish populations, scientists say, reflects a combination of severe overfishing of natural predators, such as tuna, sharks and swordfish; rising sea temperatures caused in part by global warming; and pollution that has depleted oxygen levels in coastal shallows.
http://www.denverpost.com/ci_10080759?source=rss

August 2, 2008
Arctic: In 2007 the sea ice at the North Pole was at its thinnest since records began. While the ice at the North Pole used to be thick "old" ice, much of it now is thinner first-year ice, which has had only a single winter to grow.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926673.400-arctic-ice-continues-to-thin.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news2_head_mg19926673.400

August 1, 2008
Arctic: Thawing permafrost, eroding lakeshores, a melting glacier and fears of flash floods at a national park on Baffin Island have forced the evacuation of 21 tourists and led officials to declare much of the wilderness reserve off-limits.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=df4096b2-211f-4458-9387-93bd95729ff8

July 31, 2008
Grist: By century's end, extreme temperatures of up to 122°F would threaten most of the central, southern, and western U.S. Even worse, Houston and Washington, D.C. could experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/31/12716/6312

July 30, 2008
California: Newly found mud pots and mud volcanoes now suggest that the San Andreas fault extends another 18 miles, going under the Salton Sea and beyond, in the desert southeast of Palm Springs.
http://news.aol.com/article/san-andreas-fault-longer-than-thought/108930

July 30, 2008
California: Despite shaking a large swath of Southern California, a magnitude-5.4 earthquake was not the "Big One" that scientists have long feared.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/29/state/n114525D55.DTL&feed=rss.news

July 29, 2008
Arctic: A chunk of ice spreading across seven square miles has broken off a Canadian ice shelf in the Arctic according to scientists - they were careful not to blame global warming, but said it the event was consistent with the theory that the current Arctic climate isn't rebuilding ice sheets.
http://news.aol.com/article/huge-ice-sheet-breaks-loose-in-arctic/107343

July 29, 2008
California: Visitors to Yosemite National Park weighed whether to cut their vacations short as a destructive wildfire raging miles from the famed wilderness threatened thousands of homes and left evacuees stranded. The blaze tearing through a steep, dry river canyon had destroyed 25 homes, and has forced the evacuation of about 300 homes in the nearby towns of Midpines and Coulterville and is endangering as many as 4,000 others.
http://news.aol.com/article/wildfire-threatens-thousands-of-homes/102378

July 28, 2008
SCIAM: A new study confirms that coral reefs could become yet another casualty of climate change if something is not done to cool the warming globe. The reason: marine cements that bind together reefs can't form in waters full of dissolved carbon dioxide (CO2).
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=coral-reefs-lose-grip-under-global-warming

July 26, 2008
U.K.: Numbers of puffins at England's largest colony, on the Farne Islands off the Northumberland coast, have mysteriously tumbled by a third in the past five years. Possible factors behind the decline are not yet properly understood but according to the trust, "this dramatic drop in numbers would suggest there is something happening at sea during the winter, for example, an intensification of storms as a result of our changing climate which could affect the ability of puffins to find food."
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/mystery-of-tumbling-puffin-population-877794.html

July 25, 2008
Washington: An EPA study concluded that "sea level rise will continue and exacerbate storm surge flooding and coastline erosion … in areas where heat waves already occur, they are expected to be more intense, more frequent, and longer-lasting." The EPA study also predicted that warming temperatures would lead to more wildfires in western US states and "additional strain" on already overtaxed water resources in the dry south-east and western regions.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/jul/25/carbonemissions.climatechange?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews

July 24, 2008
Missouri: Rising temperatures and reduced water supply could cost Kansas more than $1 billion in agriculture losses by 2017, according to a new study from the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research.
http://www.kansas.com/news/updates/story/473457.html

July 23, 2008
Maryland: Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for a number of U.S. states, says a new series of reports from the University of Maryland's Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The researchers conclude that the costs have already begun to accrue and are likely to endure.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/uom-coc072308.php

July 23, 2008
Texas: Hurricane Dolly strengthened to a Category 2 as its leading edge lashed the Gulf Coast near the Texas-Mexico border with heavy rain and powerful winds. The hurricane is expected to dump up to 15 inches of rain, threatening flooding that could breach levees in the heavily populated Rio Grande valley.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/americas/story/614606.html

July 21, 2008
CToday: The world's wetlands, threatened by development, dehydration and climate change, could release a planet-warming "carbon bomb" if they are destroyed, ecological scientists said on Sunday. Wetlands contain 771 billion tons of greenhouse gases, one-fifth of all the carbon on Earth and about the same amount of carbon as is now in the atmosphere, the scientists said before an international conference linking wetlands and global warming.
http://www.christiantoday.com/article/wetlands.could.unleash.carbon.bomb/20718.htm

July 21, 2008
San Francisco: California has been hit by 2,000 fires this year, and climate scientists are predicting that the situation will worsen as temperatures rise. The American West has been warming dramatically during the past 60 years at a rate surpassed only by Alaska. This year has been particularly dry for California, with less snowfall, earlier snowmelt and lower summer river flows.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/20/MNSC11Q7RD.DTL

July 21, 2008
ScienceDaily: The combined average global land and ocean surface temperatures for June 2008 ranked eighth warmest for June since worldwide records began in 1880, according to an analysis by NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. Also, globally it was the ninth warmest January – June period on record.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080720215335.htm

July 20, 2008
Australia: Up to a million people in Australia could face a shortage of drinking water if the country's drought continues, a report on the state of the nation's largest river system revealed.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080720/ts_afp/australiadroughtenvironment_080720093807

July 17, 2008
Antarctic: A new global warming threat to the fragile marine ecosystems of Antarctica has been identified, with the discovery that an increasing number of icebergs are tearing up the sea floor and destroying any life in their way.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4352962.ece

July 17, 2008
peopleandplanet: Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the burning of fossil fuels stood at a record 8.38 gigatons of carbon (GtC) in 2006, 20 per cent above the level in 2000.
http://www.peopleandplanet.net/doc.php?id=3339

July 17, 2008
Washington: The US Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, a critical finding that has languished in bureaucratic limbo since last December. In a 149-page document, the agency's scientists said that "warming of the climate system is unequivocal" and that potential health risks include more heat waves, floods and droughts, insect outbreaks and and wildfires, along with crop failure and decline in livestock and fisheries productivity.
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/49370/story.htm

July 16, 2008
NewScientist: If atmospheric temperatures rise by 3 to 5 °C by the year 2100, most models predict spring snowmelt will start about a month earlier than today. Scientists at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy, built an updated model that included detailed data about where snow lies. This showed that in some regions a two-month shift is more likely.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19926655.500-shifts-in-us-spring-melt-out-by-a-month.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

July 16, 2008
Montana: As wildfires roar through tinder-dry forests in California, the mountain pine beetle is silently killing even more trees — hundreds of thousands of acres of towering trees, mostly lodgepole pine, according to Robert Mangold, director of Forest Health Protection for the U.S. Forest Service. An epidemic of this magnitude hasn't been seen in the Mountain West in 25 years, he said. In 2007, the beetles were blamed for killing 3.9 million acres of trees in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Washington, Mangold said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2008-07-15-beetle-threat_N.htm?csp=34

July 14, 2008
Worldwatch: The trend of more frequent global natural disasters continues, due to an onslaught of weather-related crises in the first half of 2008. The total number of disasters as of June 30, 2008 already exceeds the average number of disasters recorded at mid-year over the past decade. During the first half of each year between 1998 and 2007, the average number of disasters recorded was 380. So far in 2008, 400 disasters have been reported, according to data released last week by Munich Re, a German reinsurance group.
http://www.worldwatch.org/node/5825

July 14, 2008
BBC: Demand for land to grow food, fuel crops and wood is set to outstrip supply, leading to the probable destruction of forests, a report warns. The Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) says only half of the extra land needed by 2030 is available without eating into tropical forested areas.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7503304.stm

July 13, 2008
Alaska: A volcano erupted with little warning on a remote island in Alaska, sending residents of a nearby ranch fleeing from falling ash and volcanic rock.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/remote-volcano-in-alaska-erupts/20080713095609990001?icid=200100397x1205673113x1200274338

July 11, 2008
California: Officials have said this unprecedented fire season, plagued by drought and high temperatures, has seen the most fires burning at any one time in recorded California history. Most of the blazes began during a massive June 21 lightning storm that sparked 800 wildfires across Northern California.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,380921,00.html

July 11, 2008
EPA: Smog is most likely to get worse in the Northeast, lower Midwest, and mid-Atlantic regions of the country, where numerous counties and cities are already struggling to clean up the air, according to a draft analysis by the Environmental Protection Agency.
http://www.physorg.com/news134969903.html

July 10, 2008
Florida: Coastal communities will be seriously affected as the world's coral reefs gradually decline under climate change, scientists say. The reefs are already dying at an increasing rate because of global warming and acidification of the oceans, said researchers meeting this week at the International Coral Research Symposium (ICRS) in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
http://news.theage.com.au/national/coral-reef-deaths-bring-bleak-outlook-20080710-3cvl.html

July 10, 2008
Arctic: The Wilkins Ice Shelf is experiencing further disintegration that is threatening the collapse of the ice bridge connecting the shelf to Charcot Island. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) said: "Wilkins Ice Shelf is the most recent in a long, and growing, list of ice shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula that are responding to the rapid warming that has occurred in this area over the last fifty years."
http://www.physorg.com/news134908534.html

July 9, 2008
California: Authorities ordered more than 10,000 residents of Paradise, California, to leave their homes as a stubborn wildfire threatened to jump a river and spread into town where a blaze destroyed 74 homes.
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N09359043.htm

July 8, 2008
Physorg: A new equation developed by a University of Michigan atmospheric and planetary scientist, could allow scientists to more accurately calculate the maximum expected intensity of a spiraling storm based on the depth of the troposphere and the temperature and humidity of the air in the storm's path. "This model allows us to relate changes in storms' intensity to environmental conditions. It shows us that climate change could lead to increases in how efficient convective vortices are and how much energy they transform into wind. Fueled by warmer and moister air, there will be stronger and deeper storms in the future that reach higher into the atmosphere."
http://www.physorg.com/news134752375.html

July 8, 2008
Argentina: A huge ice dam on Argentina's Perito Moreno glacier will break apart for the first time in the southern hemisphere winter, likely as a result of global warming, according to scientists and environmentalists.
http://www.physorg.com/news134708599.html

July 6, 2008
California: The current onslaught of wildfire “is what we’ve been projecting to happen, both in short-term fire forecasts and the longer term patterns that can be linked to global climate change,” said a professor at Oregon State University: “What I would tell people is that what they’re experiencing is very consistent with global warming.” Wildfires in the western U.S. now occur more frequently, last longer, and cover more ground than they did in the past. A 2006 study published in Science found that since 1986, the number of major wildfires has increased by 400 percent, and the amount of land these fires burned increased by 600 percent, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986.
http://www.independent.com/news/2008/jul/06/gap-fire-sign-global-warming/

July 6, 2008
ScienceDaily: A scientist at the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology noted that the oceans have absorbed about 40% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by humans over the past two centuries. This has slowed global warming, but at a serious cost: the extra carbon dioxide has caused the ocean's average surface pH (a measure of water's acidity) to shift by about 0.1 unit from pre-industrial levels. Depending on the rate and magnitude of future emissions, the ocean's pH could drop by as much as 0.35 units by the mid-21st century. This acidification can seriously damage marine organisms.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080703140716.htm

July 4, 2008
U.N.: Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), delivered the bleak warning at a gathering of European Union ministers - "we would have to stabilise the greenhouse-gas concentration at more or less the level at which we are today...But in order to do that, we have a window of opportunity of only seven years because emissions will have to peak by 2015 and reduce after that. We cannot permit a longer delay." Pachauri also sounded a note of caution about the 2 C (3.6 F) figure, as evidence was mounting that climate change was accelerating faster than thought. Heatwaves and floods were increasing, and higher temperatures were having a far-reaching effect on glaciers and snowfall.
http://www.physorg.com/news134398515.html

July 4, 2008
California: A total of 367 wildfires were burning across the state, most ignited by lightning, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection and the U.S. Forest Service. That figure was down from a peak of roughly 1,500 fires just a few days ago. A ferocious wildfire burning through the Los Padres National Forest continued creeping closer to Big Sur, after jumping a fire line and claiming several more homes. Locals who feared for their homes and businesses also had to worry about lost revenue during peak season.
http://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/west/view.bg?articleid=1104989&srvc=rss

July 3, 2008
Miami: Tropical Storm Bertha has formed in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, the second named storm of the season.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/tropical-storm-bertha-forms-in-atlantic/20080703085809990001

July 2, 2008
Washington: Computer model shows that by the end of the century, high temperatures for once-in-a-generation heat waves will rise twice as fast as everyday average temperatures. Chicago, for example, would reach 115 degrees in such an event by 2100. Paris heat waves could near 109 with Lyon coming closer to 114. A scientist with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute, projects temperatures for rare heat waves around the world in a study soon to be published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
http://www.nbc5.com/weather/16772494/detail.htmlrss=chi&psp=nationalnews

July 2, 2008
Nature: An increasing number of species are migrating in response to global warming; some alpine organisms are climbing to higher altitudes, others animals are moving towards the poles. A new study suggests that as sea temperatures rise, many fish may be electing to move into deeper, cooler waters, rather than moving to higher latitudes as many theorists had previously predicted.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080702/full/news.2008.929.html?s=news_rss

July 2, 2008
New Guinea: Using satellite images to reveal changes in forest cover between 1972 and 2002 ... Papua New Guinea lost more than 5 million hectares of forest over the past three decades ... Worse, deforestation rates may be accelerating, with the pace of forest clearing reaching 362,000 hectares (895,000 acres) per year in 2001. The study warns that at current rates 53 percent of the country's forests could be lost or seriously degraded by 2021.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/7/1/132058/2810

July 1, 2008
Washington: The dwindling march of the penguins is signaling that the world's oceans are in trouble according to scientists.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25465332/

June 29, 2008
Missouri: Once the Mississippi River starts to recede from another great flood, the tiny river towns that dot its banks in Missouri and Illinois will once again face the question: return and rebuild, or relocate?
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5270817

June 28, 2008
California: Hundreds of lightning-sparked wildfires have turned the air of Northern California into an unhealthy stew of smoke and ash, forcing the cancellation of athletic events and other outdoor activities.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080628.wwildfires0628/BNStory/International/?page=rss&id=RTGAM.20080628.wwildfires0628

June 27, 2008
CNN: The North Pole may be briefly ice-free by September as global warming melts away Arctic sea ice, according to scientists from the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado. The ice retreated to a record level in September when the Northwest Passage -- the sea route through the Arctic Ocean -- opened up briefly for the first time in recorded history.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/weather/06/27/north.pole.melting/index.html?section=cnn_latest

June 27, 2008
Missouri: Another levee has been lost at the eastern Missouri town of Winfield, but emergency workers are still hoping to save about 100 homes.
http://www.wtol.com/global/story.asp?s=8565273

June 26, 2008
London: Rising temperatures have forced many plants to creep to higher elevations to survive, researchers reported. More than two-thirds of the plants studied along six West European mountain ranges climbed an average of 29 meters (95 feet) in altitude in each decade since 1905 to better conditions on higher ground, the researchers reported in the journal.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL2680190120080626?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews

June 26, 2008
California: Flames from a huge wildfire burning through a national forest inched toward the scenic tourist town of Big Sur, where firefighters rushed to protect historic structures and hundreds of homes.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/06/24/state/n150800D07.DTL&feed=rss.news

June 26, 2008
Chicago: Extreme floods and droughts brought on by climate change can turn normally harmless infections into significant threats, international researchers said. Further, they said weather extremes can create conditions in which several fairly harmless diseases converge at once, creating a "one-two punch" that can devastate populations of wildlife or livestock.
http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSN2438313620080625?feedType=RSS&feedName=scienceNews

June 25, 2008
Washington: Global warming is likely to increase illegal immigration, create humanitarian disasters and destabilize precarious governments in political hot spots, all of which could affect U.S. national security, according to an assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2008-06-25-warming-report_N.htm?csp=34

June 24, 2008
Washington: 'We're toast' without action on global warming, warns James Hanson from NASA. He said Earth's atmosphere can stay this loaded with man-made carbon dioxide for only a couple more decades without changes such as mass extinction, ecosystem collapse and dramatic sea level rises.
http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/06/24/globalwarming.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

June 22, 2008
California: Wildfires were scattered around Northern California on Sunday in the heart of wine country and in remote forests, the latest in what has become an unusually destructive year. State officials said lightning started more than 500 fires.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/california-battles-hundreds-of-blazes/20080621093409990001

June 21, 2008
Wisconsin: Sea level changes a driving force in mass extinctions according to an extensive study by a University of Wisconsin-Madison assistant professor published in the journal Nature. Changes in ocean environments related to sea level exert a driving influence on rates of extinction, which animals and plants survive or vanish, and the composition of life in the ocean.
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/292715

June 21, 2008
NewScientist: Much of the north-western US wilderness is already a tinderbox, but thanks to global warming, wildfires will be scorching even more land every year by the end of the century.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/mg19826615.500-global-warming-to-increase-us-wildfires.html?feedId=climate-change_rss20

June 21, 2008
Los Angeles: An extreme heat wave blanketing much of the California coast showed no signs of letting up as temperatures headed back toward triple digits.
http://www.syracuse.com/newsflash/index.ssf?/base/national-105/121407355116840.xml&storylist=topstories

June 21, 2008
San Francisco: A fast-moving fire erupted along the Northern California coast, burning homes, forcing hundreds of residents to flee.
http://news.aol.com/story/_a/hundreds-flee-california-wildfire/20080621093409990001

June 20, 2008
Missouri: Three Mississippi River levees broke Thursday in Lincoln County, sending a creeping wave of water toward Foley and causing more concern in nearby Winfield. The river was overflowing 90 percent of the levees in eastern Lincoln County, and at least four more breaches were expected to aggravate the flooding.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5209696

June 20, 2008
Washington: Floodwaters loaded with farm runoff are heading down the Mississippi River, and scientists fear the deluge will dramatically increase this summer's dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, covering an area the size of Maryland.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080620/ap_on_sc/sci_midwest_flooding_dead_zone

June 20, 2008
Chicago: The sprawling network of levees — built over many years to protect the Upper Mississippi basin from the sort of disastrous flooding that has claimed homes, lives, and millions of acres of farmland — was never designed to withstand the magnitude of a 500-year flood. And so towns like Gulfport, Ill., and La Grange, Mo., have watched as waters spilled over the tops of levees that were supposed to keep them dry.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20080620/ts_csm/alevees_1

June 20, 2008
Dallas: The first report to assess observed and projected changes in weather and climate extremes for the U.S. was released by the government's Climate Change Science Program. According to the report, significant changes in extreme weather events have been observed throughout the U.S., including unusually hot days and nights, fewer unusually cold days and nights, fewer frost days and more frequent and intense heavy downpours.
http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/stories/2008/06/16/daily44.html?ana=from_rss

June 19, 2008
AlterNet: Scientists acknowledge an uncomfortable fact: global warming is the real cause of extreme weather like the Midwest floods.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/88739/

June 18, 2008
Iowa: Storms and flooding across six states this month have killed 24 people, injured 148 and caused more than $1.5 billion in estimated damage in Iowa alone — a figure that's likely to increase as river levels climb in Missouri and Illinois.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=5189162

June 18, 2008
Paris: The dramatic proliferation of jellyfish in oceans around the world, driven by overfishing and climate change, is a sure sign of ecosystems out of kilter, warn experts.
http://www.canada.com/theprovince/story.html?id=df0dd5f7-2074-4ed7-8a1f-84b2499de430

June 18, 2008
PhysOrg: New research suggests that ocean temperature and associated sea level increases between 1961 and 2003 were 50 percent larger than estimated in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report. An international team of researchers compared climate models with improved observations that show sea levels rose by 1.5 millimeters per year in the period from 1961-2003. That equates to an approximately 2½-inch increase in ocean levels in a 42-year span.
http://www.physorg.com/news133019164.html

June 18, 2008
U.N.: The UNHCR says climate change is expected to drive increasing numbers of people from their homes as more conflicts are fuelled by water scarcity and a lack of food.