Emergency services were on standby as an intense cold front‚ accompanied by heavy rain and gale force winds‚ made landfall in Cape Town early on Thursday. Lightning flickered above the city as the rain poured down before sunrise‚ bringing with it potential flash floods in the city‚ Cape Winelands‚ Overberg and West Coast‚ which will continue into Friday. The South African … [Read more...]
A look at active volcanoes
This year has seen its share of explosive volcanic activity, from Hawaii's Kilauea eruptions that have so far forced more than 1,700 people to evacuate their homes to Guatemala's Fuego volcano eruption in early June that killed at least 99 people. However, these volcanoes are just two of many active volcanoes around the globe. Mount Yasur, Vanuatu Mount Yasur on the Tanna … [Read more...]
New coal plants not the way forward for drought-prone SA
Support for new coal-fired power plants like the proposed Thabametsi coal-fired power plant in Lephalale, Limpopo is fast drying up in a region where the Water and Sanitation Department rated water security as “high risk” because supply only just meets demand at present. Coal-fired power stations are responsible for half of South Africa’s carbon emissions, and in addition to … [Read more...]
Gulf Stream current at ‘record low’ with potentially devastating consequences for weather
Catastrophic changes in global weather patterns could be on the horizon as scientists confirm the warming Atlantic current has reached a “new record low”. The Gulf Stream current, which has not been running at peak strength for centuries, is now at its weakest point in the past 1,600 years. Climate change resulting from rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is … [Read more...]
Climate change reversal window closing as Bonn talks stall
As the second week of talks at the Bonn Climate Change Conference gets underway, some 200 country delegates remain far from agreeing on a rulebook to implement the Paris Agreement, the historic accord signed in 2015 to reduce emissions and keep the worst effects of climate change at bay. The rulebook is central to the discussions because it outlines how the targets agreed … [Read more...]
Rain floods Cape Town roads as cold front hits
Overnight rain in parched Cape Town has resulted in flash flooding and the closure of some roads in the city. "I don't have much information for you. I only [know] about flooding in Koeberg Road," provincial traffic chief Kenny Africa told News24. He said that the Huguenot Tunnel was closed for traffic due to a power failure. The City of Cape Town's Disaster Risk … [Read more...]
Fallen trees, traffic and flooding – rain wreaks havoc in Johannesburg
Three lanes on the M1 North were closed, after a tree fell on the highway, and two homes were flooded in Klipspruit as overnight flooding wreaked havoc in Johannesburg on Friday. Johannesburg Metro police spokesperson Wayne Minnaar confirmed the incidents and emergency services personnel cut up the tree. He described traffic as "very bad" and confirmed that a pedestrian … [Read more...]
Archbishop speaks out on climate action urgency in Fiji
The Archbishop of Canterbury was formally welcomed to Fiji today – and he took the opportunity, before the President and leading members of Fijian society, to make a ringing public declaration about the need for climate action. The Archbishop, who arrived in Fiji last night to join the three-day Oceania Fono – the annual gathering of the Primates of Australia, Melanesia, … [Read more...]
Can fossil fuel companies be sued for climate disruption?
Last summer, Ryan Coonerty, a county supervisor in Santa Cruz, got word that the neighboring county of San Mateo was about to take a bold step in adapting to climate change. Rising seas are already eroding San Mateo’s coast, and the county will need to spend billions of dollars on new sea walls and other infrastructure to protect itself in the years to come. So in July, San … [Read more...]
Long-buried US military secret revealed by climate change
At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, the Greenland ice sheet hosted a number of clandestine U.S. Army bases whose job it was to get an estimated 600 medium-range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads ready for deployment. The largest of these sites was Camp Century, which had the public facade of a science station. The Army never finished what it started at Camp … [Read more...]
Climate disruption has officially ended the era of stable climate
A study recently published in the journal Nature brings grim news: anthropogenic climate disruption (ACD) has officially ended the era of stable climate that has made possible the development of modern civilization. The world we live in today, based on industrial-scale agriculture capable of feeding billions of people and sustaining these vast numbers of humans, is only … [Read more...]
How Australia’s extreme heat might be here to stay
A section of highway connecting Sydney and Melbourne started to melt. Bats fell dead from the trees, struck down by the heat. On the northern Great Barrier Reef, 99% of baby green sea turtles, a species whose sex is determined by temperature, were found to be female. In outer suburban Sydney, the heat hit 47.3C (117F) before a cool change knocked it down - to the relative … [Read more...]
Mathematics predicts a sixth mass extinction
In the past 540 million years, the Earth has endured five mass extinction events, each involving processes that upended the normal cycling of carbon through the atmosphere and oceans. These globally fatal perturbations in carbon each unfolded over thousands to millions of years, and are coincident with the widespread extermination of marine species around the world. The … [Read more...]
