“In the last few years, the Vavilov Ice Cap in the Russian High Arctic has dramatically accelerated, sliding as much as 82 feet a day in 2015, according to a new multi-national, multi-institute study led by CIRES Fellow Mike Willis, an assistant professor of Geology at CU Boulder. That dwarfs the ice’s previous average speed of about 2 inches per day and has challenged scientists’ assumptions about the stability of the cold ice caps dotting Earth’s high latitudes.
“In a warming climate, glacier acceleration is becoming more and more common, but the rate of ice loss at Vavilov is extreme and unexpected,” said Mike Willis, CIRES Fellow and lead author of the paper published this week in Earth and Planetary Science Letters.”
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-unprecedented-ice-loss-russian-cap.html#jCp
“Two people have died and several others have required hospital treatment as Storm Ali swept across the north of Ireland, central Scotland and northern England on Wednesday with winds of over 100mph. Throughout the day, thousands were left without power, or facing severe travel disruption as lorries overturned, roads were blocked by falling trees and train services were cancelled while, in SW Scotland, children were banned from walking home from school because of the risk of injury from flying debris.”
“A tropical cyclone could hit Tunisia in the next few days. Indeed, according to the Italian Institute of Meteorology, this tropical storm threatens to threaten the central Mediterranean on September 20th and 21st…
“…according to experts, this phenomenon can only be rare…”
https://www.espacemanager.com/le-cyclone-tropical-menace-la-tunisie.html
“South Africa might as well be two different countries this week. In the south-west, it’s cold and rainy… In the north-west… PTA smashed a long-standing record, with 33.8C recorded on Tuesday. That’s even hotter than the previous hottest temperature of 33.5C. As it turns out, half of the country is currently boiling… Hoedspruit’s new hottest temperature of 40.9C is the highest on our list.”
https://www.thesouthafrican.com/sa-heatwave-temperature-records-september-2018/
“Close on the heels of the devastating deluge, Kerala seems to be slated to face a severe drought. If the indications are to be taken as a prophetic foreboding of yet another natural calamity, Kerala is in a very precarious state.
“The gushing rivers have started drying up.”
“South Odisha and coastal Andhra Pradesh have been put on alert after India Meteorological Department (IMD) issued warning of a cyclone
“…which is likely to hit the eastern coast of India around Thursday midnight.”
“Lesser known but just as severe are the disastrous impact typhoon Mangkhut may have on the livelihoods of farmers and the resulting huge losses in food production. It made landfall in northern Luzon island, Philippines early Saturday morning but effects of its strong winds and heavy rain were felt over a wide swath of land which included the Philippines “ricebowl” area in Central Luzon, and major corn growing provinces… The typhoon’s path also included Guangdong province which is among the top ten rice-growing areas of China, and coastal waters off Southern China where there is much fish-farming.”
“The north and north central regions [of Vietnam] just suffered two storms in two consecutive months, Son Tinh in July and Bebinca in August… In the south, the Mekong Delta – the nation’s rice bowl, is also at risk.
“The seasonal floods are happening much sooner than normal…”
“The Japanese insurance industry seems to have recognized the risks related to weather-related natural disasters, particularly with climate change likely worsening the scale and frequency of typhoons and other events. With policyholders more likely to make disaster-related claims and companies in which the insurance firms invest their massive assets under management likely to have profits hit by weather disruptions, the industry has begun to take action.”
“The drought in Australia is having an impact on its neighbours, with 5 million people in Indonesia suffering from an extended dry season.
“Hot, dry air intensified by drought conditions in Australia has circulated north, contributing to water shortages in 4,000 Indonesian villages.”
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-20/drought-in-australia-spreading-to-indonesia/10249940
“New research finds that the mass bleaching event that led to the death of 30 percent of shallow-water corals on the Great Barrier Reef in 2016 also had a substantial impact on deep reefs… The researchers ultimately determined that deep reefs’ ability to offer “ecological refuge” has some important limitations, and that both shallow and deep reefs are at risk of mass bleaching in the future.”
“The largest sheet of ice in the world, the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which contains half the world’s freshwater, could melt if rising temperatures persist, scientists warn.
“The East Antarctic Ice Sheet, known as the EAIS, is around 60 times bigger than Britain and measures some 27 million km³…
“The fall-out from such a significant rise in global sea levels would be catastrophic for Earth’s climate as well as coastal communities, experts say.”
“Flooding on the Amazon River has increased fivefold over the last two or three decades, a new study has found.
“Analysis of more than 100 years of river level records from the Amazon showed that both floods and droughts had become more frequent.”
“The 2018 wildfire season is shaping up to be California’s most destructive and expensive on record… A report released 27 August, the fourth in a series of climate change assessments commissioned by the state, found that if global warming continues at its current rate, California residents can expect more deadly weather patterns, including longer droughts, higher temperatures and bigger wildfires.”
“It has been miserably hot over the last few days in New Orleans. In fact, it’s been so hot, the city broke record temperatures three days in a row this week…
“”It is abnormally warm,” said Robert Ricks, a forecaster with the National Weather Service.”
https://www.nola.com/weather/index.ssf/2018/09/the_heat_is_on_new_orleans_bre.html
“Flooding across the Carolinas in the aftermath of Hurricane Florence, which has killed 36 people, was expected to worsen over the next couple of days, forecasters said…
“Florence dumped up to 36 inches (91 cm) of rain in parts of North Carolina, and many areas remained cut off by floodwaters and inundated roads.”
“Earth’s accelerated warming trend continued this August, as the sweltering month proved to be one of the hottest Augusts in recorded history. In fact, each of the last five Augusts are now the warmest since reliable record-keeping began nearly 140 years ago, in the early 1880s. August 2018 is officially the fifth-warmest, but nearly indistinguishable from 2014, 2015, and 2017.
“”The data show that global warming continues relentlessly, as predicted already in the 1970s,” climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf, head of Earth System Analysis at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said over email.
“The record-breaking rainfall we’ve seen over the past year, from the likes of Hurricane Harvey and now Florence, carry with them this palpable climate influence.”
https://mashable.com/article/global-warming-august-2018-climate-change/?europe=true#xQUExOfcTiqP
