Several states of emergency remain in force in the lower North Island after widespread flooding that's being called a huge disaster.
Rural roads near Whanganui could be closed for a month or more, while drinking water is being brought in to a small communtity in South Taranaki.
Hundreds of Whanganui people were forced to leave their homes last night and they are being told not to return under any circumstance.
The eastern part of the city remains isolated because bridges are unsafe
Mumbai Braces for More Rain After Downpour Stalls Financial Hub
Downpours
are again forecast for parts of Mumbai after the heaviest June
rainfall in a decade on Friday stalled commuter trains and closed
schools in India’s financial hub.
Mumbai
received 15.6 centimeters (6.1 inches) of rain in the 24 hours to
Saturday morning, the weather office said on its website. The storms
stalled the city’s three major train lines that carry 8 million
people daily before service was restored today, the Press Trust of
India reported.
Cars
and motorcycles floated in flooded streets, and taxis and other
public transport shut down, television images showed. Authorities
advised people to stay indoors, while navy and National Disaster
Response Force personnel were put on standby, NDTV television station
reported.
Karachi breaks 10-year record with 45 degrees scorching heat
A spokesman for the meteorological department said that the heat-wave is likely to continue on Sunday (June 21), which will be the longest day of the year.
The city is expected to receive rainfall on Monday and Tuesday, said Ghulam Rasool, the director-general of the meteorological department.
The highest ever recorded temperature in Karachi was 47.8 degrees Celsius, recorded in May, 1938.
Several
Russian cities, including Moscow and Kursk, were partly flooded on
Saturday. While streets turned into "rivers" as sewer
systems failed to cope with the torrents of water, local authorities
said that everything was "normal."
Santiago, which sits below the ski resorts, has seen just 1.2 centimeters of rain this year, 86 percent less than normal, and there is none forecast for at least another seven days. The situation gets more complicated for Valle Nevado and the other ski resorts in the Andes mountains by the capital in a week or so, when package tours start to arrive from countries such as Brazil.
People began skiing toward the end of May last year, with the resort officially opening June 14. This year there isn’t so much a shortage of snow, as a complete absence
18
June
The
National Weather Service is warning of record heat in Southern
Arizona for Friday and Saturday, with temperatures spiking as high as
10 degrees above normal. People and pets outdoors or without air
conditioning will face an elevated risk of heat-related illness as
the mercury climbs as high as 116 degrees.
An
upper-level ridge of high pressure will bring dangerously high
temperatures to the desert Southwest this weekend, NWS said. Daytime
highs are expected to reach near-record levels. An excessive heat
warning has been issued for locations below 4,000 feet, effective 11
a.m. Friday through 9 p.m. Saturday.
Several US states hit by early wildfire season
It's
going from worse to worst each week in California.
Suffering
in its third year of drought, more than 58 percent of the state is
currently in "exceptional drought" stage, according to the
latest U.S. Drought Monitor map. That marks a huge jump from just
seven days ago, when about 36 percent of the state was categorized
that way.
Exceptional
drought, the most extreme category, indicates widespread crop and
pasture losses and shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and
wells.
If
the state continues on this path, there may have to be thoughts about
moving people out, said Lynn Wilson, academic chair at Kaplan
University and who serves on the climate change delegation in the
United Nations.
"Civilizations
in the past have had to migrate out of areas of drought," Wilson
said. "We may have to migrate people out of California."
Wilson
added that before that would happen, every option such as importing
water to the state would likely occur— but "migration can't be
taken off the table."
Warm
river temperatures in Oregon trigger die-off of threatened salmon
Hundreds of spring Chinook salmon have been found dead in Oregon rivers over the past week, in a sign that abnormally high water temperatures are taking a toll on the threatened species, wildlife officials said on Friday.
Low snowpack linked to a historic drought has prevented icy-cold runoff from entering rivers as normal this year, according to federal hydrologists.
Temperatures in the Willamette River, a tributary of the Columbia River, have risen from 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 Celsius) over the past week, about 12 degrees F (6.5 Celsius) higher than it was the year prior, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Rick Swart said.
"Anything above 70 degrees, the fish are really stressed," Swart said.
Hundreds of spring Chinook salmon have been found dead in Oregon rivers over the past week, in a sign that abnormally high water temperatures are taking a toll on the threatened species, wildlife officials said on Friday.
Low snowpack linked to a historic drought has prevented icy-cold runoff from entering rivers as normal this year, according to federal hydrologists.
Temperatures in the Willamette River, a tributary of the Columbia River, have risen from 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21 Celsius) to 75 degrees Fahrenheit (24 Celsius) over the past week, about 12 degrees F (6.5 Celsius) higher than it was the year prior, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife spokesman Rick Swart said.
"Anything above 70 degrees, the fish are really stressed," Swart said.
Lack
of snow of Ice in the Himalayas
Photo - Kevin Hester
From
Kevin Hester
“I
have just come back from Nepal leaving 2 days before what I consider
a climate change enhanced earthquake that killed thousands and
destroyed monuments that have stood for centuries, some since the
13th century. This photo shows how little snow was in Nepal 7 weeks
ago. The photo was shot at approximately 3500m with the snow line
another 1000m higher. In NZ we still have glaciers 300m above sea
level in the North Island reiterating Guy's contention that we could
be one of the last habitable places on earth with i's attendant
responsibilities and problems.”
Everest
in the distance. We are about 3500m at this point, note the lack of
snow and ice.
Following
a four-year review, the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) will
next month remove the eastern cougar from its list of endangered and
threatened species — where it has been for the last 43 years.
The
big cat, which once roamed North America from Canada to South
Carolina, will no longer receive Endangered Species Act protections.
Having
a moribund economy helps but fair play to the EU for making a start.
Every bit slows down the 6th great extinction.
For
the first time in forty years, the world’s C02 emissions have been
held in check. Though they continue to rise in North America, China’s
decreased for the first time in re
Ecuador
is planning to auction off three million of the country’s 8.1
million hectares of pristine Amazonian rainforest to Chinese oil
companies, Jonathan Kaiman of The Guardian reports.
The
report comes as oil pollution forced neighbouring Peru to declare an
environmental state of emergency in its northern Amazon rainforest.
Ecuador
owed China more than $7 billion — more than a tenth of its GDP —
as of last summer.
In
2009 China began loaning Ecuador billions of dollars in exchange for
oil shipments. It also helped fund two of the country’s biggest
hydroelectric infrastructure projects, and China National Petroleum
Corp may soon have a 30 per cent stake in a $10 billion oil refinery
in Ecuador.
Climate
change has caused Alaska’s glaciers to melt so quickly that a
one-foot thick layer of water could completely cover the entire state
of Alaska every seven years, according to a new study.
Alaskan
glaciers have lost 75 billion metric tons of ice every year from 1994
through 2013, The Washington Post′s Chris Mooney reported from the
study, which was recently accepted for publication in the
peer-reviewed Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American
Geophysical Union. Mooney also reported that the Columbia Glacier
(see GIF above) alone has been sending 4 billion metric tons of water
into the oceans every year.
Alaska’s melting glaciers are “punching far above their weight” when it comes to contributing to sea level rise, CBS News‘s Michael Casey pointed out, referring to how Alaska only holds one percent of the Earth’s glacial ice volume, with most of the Earth’s ice found in Antarctica and Greenland’s ice sheets.
But as the authors of the new study explained, “Despite Greenland’s ice covered area being 20 times greater than that of Alaska, losses in Alaska were fully one third of the total loss from the ice sheet during 2005-2010.”.
Heavy
downpours have swollen rivers in China's Hubei Province, sweeping
away houses and forcing thousands to evacuate
Five people died and another four are still missing following torrential rains in central China's Hubei Province, according to the Chinese state agency Xinhua.
Scientists
have found elevated levels of cancer-causing chemicals in the
drinking water in North Texas’ Barnett Shale region — where a
fracking boom has sprouted more than 20,000 oil and gas wells.
Researchers
from the University of Texas, Arlington tested water samples from
public and private wells collected over the past three years and
found elevated levels of heavy metals, such as arsenic. Their
findings, released Wednesday, showed elevated levels of 19 different
chemicals including the so-called BTEX (benzene, toluene, ethyl
benzene and xylenes) compounds.
The
Heartland Institute got out ahead of the curve, publishing a piece
titled Is
The Global Left Counting on Pope to Split the Catholic Church Over
Global Warming? back
in May. Take a moment to ponder this:
Has the Left finally come out with a method that will destroy the power of the Church to cause further damage to an already weakened Church, having been busy for years preparing for this moment? Not to be forgotten is the unholy alliance of international communism with the jihadi Islamists.
According
to the article, the Pope’s stance on global warming is part of a
left-wing communist conspiracy to… do something. You can read the
whole thing here.
Steve
Milloy, co-founder of the conservative Free Enterprise Action Fund,
offered up a plethora of shocked tweets, calling the pope a communist
and saying climate change is not real.....
A talk describing my experience seeing climate change while working at Crater Lake and Everglades National Parks over the past 20 years.
Seeing climate change in our National Parks
Seasonal park ranger and climate change communicator Brian Ettling describes his experience seeing climate change while working at Crater Lake and Everglades National Parks. He gave this presentation at John Knox Presbyterian Church in Florissant, MO on April 26, 2015
Summer
officially begins on Sunday in the northern hemisphere, but the
wildfire season in the US is already well underway. Sparked largely
by a drought in the west, several states have spared no efforts in
battling ongoing wildfires.
Hawaii's honeybee population dropping
Honeybees
are responsible for pollinating millions of dollars worth of crops in
Hawaii. Should the bees vanish entirely, experts say it will have a
huge impact on Hawaii's economy.
For
more: http://bit.ly/1hxKwsa
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.