At 54.4°C, Death Valley in US sees hottest temp since 1913

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 17: A thermometer at Death Valley’s Furnace Creek in the Southern California desert has soared to 54.4 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature in more than a century, the US National Weather Service said.

“If verified, this will be the hottest temperature officially verified since July of 1913,” NWS Las Vegas said of the reading on Sunday afternoon, emphasising that it was preliminary. It will need to undergo a review before the record is confirmed, it said on its Twitter feed.

The automated weather station close to the Furnace Creek visitors’ centre near the border with Nevada hit the high at 3.41pm local time.

Death Valley’s all-time record high, according to the World Meteorological Organization, is (56.7°C) taken on July 10, 1913 at Greenland Ranch. It still stands as the hottest ever recorded on the planet’s surface, according to the WMO.

Coming soon: Arctic Summer Without Ice

There’s a standard image of the Earth as seen from space: vast blue seas, green bands of forests, and frozen white caps on the top and bottom.

But by the summer of 2035, it may no longer be so. Scientists say that in just 15 years, Arctic summer sea-ice could disappear.

The new research is the latest in a steady stream that has moved up the predicted time frame for the ice-free Arctic milestone.

Temperature hits 100 F degrees in Arctic Russian town

MOSCOW, June 21: A Siberian town with the world’s widest temperature range has recorded a new high amid a hear wave that is contributing to severe forest fires.

Russia’s meteorological service said the temperature in Verkhoyansk hit 38 degrees Celsius (100.4 F) on Saturday. The town is located above the Arctic Circle in the Sakha Republic, about 4,660 kilometers (2,900 miles) northeast of Moscow.

The town of about 1,300 residents is recognized by the Guinness World Records for the most extreme temperature range, with a low of minus-68 degrees C (minus-90 F) and a previous high of 37.2 C (98.96 F..)

Much of Siberia this year has had unseasonably high temperatures, leading to sizable wildfires.

In the Sakha Republic, more than 275,000 hectares (680,000 acres) are burning, according to Avialesokhrana, the government agency that monitors forest fires.

Ozone layer heals as humans stay indoors amid coronavirus outbreak

NEW DELHI, Mar 26: The Ozone layer above Antarctica has registered a significant recovery as it healed to create a positive global wind movement.

A new study suggests the Montreal Protocol - the 1987 agreement to stop producing ozone depleting substances (ODSs) - could be responsible for pausing, or even reversing, some troubling changes in air currents around the Southern Hemisphere.

The study has been published in Nature.

Adding to it is massive suspension of industrial operation across the globe, resulting in less pollution and better environment need.

Our planet swirls faster at the high altitudes near poles, resulting in fast air currents, also referred as jet streams. Before the turn of the century, ozone depletion had been driving the southern jet stream further south than usual. This ended up changing rainfall patterns, and potentially ocean currents as well.

Nearly a decade ago, the world agreed upon a protocol and the results are significant.

In other words, the impact of the Montreal Protocol appears to have paused, or even slightly reversed, the southern migration of the jet stream. And for once, that's actually good news.

To put the picture in perspective, Australia was on the verge of facing draught like situation as the rainfalls had started shifting away from the coastal areas. If the trend does reverse, those rains might return.

"The 'weather bands' that bring our cold fronts have been narrowing towards the south pole, and that's why southern Australia has experienced decreasing rainfall over the last thirty years or so," says Ian Rae, organic chemist from the University of Melbourne who was not involved in the study.

"If the ozone layer is recovering, and the circulation is moving north, that's good news on two fronts (pun not intended)."

Well, there is not much to cheer about it as the carbon dioxide emission has been massive and increasing and when the operations resumes, the things will start to deplenish.

"We term this a 'pause' because the poleward circulation trends might resume, stay flat, or reverse," says atmospheric chemist Antara Banerjee from the University of Colorado Boulder.

"It's the tug of war between the opposing effects of ozone recovery and rising greenhouse gases that will determine future trends."

The Montreal Protocol is proof that if we take global and immediate action we can help pause or even reverse some of the damage we've started. Yet even now, the steady rise in greenhouse gas emissions is a reminder that one such action is simply not enough.

A lot has happened, but nothing has been done yet to save the planet: Greta Thunberg

GENEVA, Jan 21: Young climate campaigner Greta Thunberg on Tuesday said a lot has happened since her campaign caught eyes of the world but “nothing has been done” actually to save the planet.

“In one aspect, lots has happened since last year. The mass mobilisation of young people around the world has put climate at the top of the agenda,” the 17-year old campaigner from Sweden said here at the WEF Annual Meeting.

“People are more generally aware now. The climate and the environment is a hot topic. But - and it’s a big but: From another perspective, pretty much nothing has been done,” she said.

It is just the “very beginning” and a lot needs to be done given the ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions, she said.

Thunberg also said she can’t complain about not being heard as she is a person who is being heard all the time, drawing applause from the audience.

Thunberg and a panel of other young activists were speaking at a session on ‘Forging a Sustainable Path towards a Common Future’ about how their efforts to improve the world can achieve the desired results.

The participants included Salvador Gómez-Colón, who raised funds and awareness after Hurricane María devastated his native Puerto Rico in 2017.

Natasha Mwansa, from Zambia who campaigns for girls’ and women’s rights, and Autumn Peltier, Chief Water Commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation of indigenous people in Canada, were also present.

In 2018, Thunberg began protesting outside the Swedish parliament during school hours with a sign painted with the words, ‘Skolstrejk for Klimatet’ (School Strike for Climate). She has continued to strike every Friday, inspiring hundreds of thousands of children worldwide to follow her example.

“... why is it so important to stay below 1.5 degrees celsius? Because even at 1 degree people are dying from climate change because that is what the united science calls for, to avoid destabilising the climate so that we have the best possible chance to avoid setting off irreversible chain reactions,” she said.

Thunberg stressed that every fraction of a degree matters.

Citing parts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that came out in 2018, she said that if we are to have a 67 per cent chance of limiting the global average temperature rise to below 1.5 degrees celsius, we had on January 1st, 2018, about 420 gigatons of CO2 left to emit in that budget.

“... of course, that number is much lower today, as we emit, about 42 gigatons of CO2 every year, including in land use. With today’s emissions levels, that remaining budget is gone within less than eight years,” she noted.

According to her, these numbers also don’t include most feedback loops, non-linear tipping points nor additional warming hidden by toxic air pollution.

“Most models, however, assume that future generations will, however, somehow be able to suck hundreds of billions of tons of CO2 out of the air with technologies that do not exist today in the scale required - and perhaps never will,” Thunberg noted.