Frostweed On A Warming Planet First published by Bruce Melton PE in the Austin Sierran as a part of its cover image description on February 7, 2024 The most common species of frostweed in Central Texas is, Verbesina virginica. These “ice flowers” come from ice exuded by the stem. It takes a good hard freeze…
Image: The “Flats” on the back side of Padre Island in South Texas. Just inches above sea level, these flats are mostly gone today from sea level rise. The Last Year Below 1.5 C – Remarkable Warming Acceleration In 2023 Surpasses the Dangerous Warming Threshold The Global 1.5 °C Climate Change Threshold Was Unexpectedly Exceeded…
Worst Drought Ever in the Amazon, Caused By Climate Change The fifth, 100-year drought since 2005 has struck the Amazon in 2023; this one more extreme than any of the previous events. Each of these droughts except one were more extreme than the previous. These were 2010, 2015/2016, the smaller one in 2020, and the…
Busted: The global 1.5 degree C above normal dangerous climate change threshold Climate Emergency Hope for 2024 A Remarkable Jump in Temperature? Bruce Melton PE, ClimateDiscovery.org Happy New Year all, I want to let you all know about what may to some seem like a perverse perception of “hope” with our accelerating climate emergency. In 2024…
Lake Travis at 630.6 feet elevation in 2013. Today, Travis is at 631.2. Lake Travis: Record Low? Despite the rains, Lake Travis’ water elevation of 631.1 feet elevation is only two and a half feet higher than it’s low pf 628.5 feet in October. And this is only 11 feet higher than the low during…
Image: Lakeway City Park on Lake Travis, 2011 Drought of Record, elevation approximately 630. The elevation for February 2024 was 631.34. 2023’s Heat Cost Texas $24 Billion First published at the Dallas Federal Reserve by Jayashankar et al., on October 18, 2023 Note: The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Billion Dollar Weather Events…
A Photographic Summary of Climate Change Across America Healthy Planet Action Coalition November 30, 2023 4:40 ET, 3:30 CT, 1:30 PT From Padre Island to the North Slope of Alaska: beach erosion, desert species mortality, fire, debris flow, native insect infestations, forest regeneration failure, extreme cold, epic drought, greening of the Arctic, and permafrost collapse……
A Photographic Summary of Climate Change Across America Healthy Planet Action Coalition Presentation Zoom November 30, 2023 4:40 ET, 3:30 CT, 1:30 PT From Padre Island to the North Slope of Alaska: beach erosion, desert species mortality, fire, debris flow, native insect infestations, forest regeneration failure, extreme cold, epic drought, greening of the Arctic, and…
Instagram Filming Logs: Beetles, Fire and Regeneration Failure, September 2023 – Central Rockies Bruce Melton, ClimateDiscovery.org (Instagram logs with photos and video are below the summary.) Across the Central Rockies from the San Juans to Rocky Mountain National Park, beetle attacks are growing again. The beetles and impacted trees are changing though. Gone are the…
Windsor Park Climate Conversation Bruce Melton and Justin Schoof August 23, 2023 – Record droughts in some area, record flooding in others. A polar vortex freezes Texas, then an atmospheric river replaces the waters of California overnight. All of these forces are at play in our daily weather patters and science is trying very hard to…
Image: Crayons on a driveway of a friend, 103 degrees. Note how the white crayons hardy melted. How Much Hotter Is It Because of Climate Change? One of the things I tell folks these days about the heat is that the absolute temperature in Austin is not really that much warmer than in the past….
It’s not the heat, it’s the warming beyond evolutionary boundaries. Bruce Melton ClimateDiscovery.org First published as an abridge version on The Rag Blog, as a part of an-in-depth radio interview on the Rag Radio syndicated on Pacifica on 7/21/2023 There’s a quote that has been around forever, variously worded and attributed to many. The origin…
Rag Radio 2023-07-21, Climate Change scholar and activist Bruce Melton is Thorne Dreyer’s guest on Rag Radio where they discuss the unprecedented heat in the summer of 2023. Among topics Bruce addresses are: What is going on with this increasing frequency of extreme events? Is the heat increasing faster? The additional causes of extreme heat beyond climate…
Hottest on Record – What about the heat island? World daily temperature records have been smashed this week, according to preliminary data. by Lucie Aubourg, Phys.org, July 8, 2023 (Editor’s note: Rarely mentioned in this repeatedly recurring journalism on the topic is the heat island and this Phys.org article is no exception. If weather…
Record flooding on Onion Creek, Austin, October 2013 Advanced Rainfall Science in a Warming Climate Hydrology is one of our advanced culture’s most important engineering design areas because so much of our lives depend on not being flooded out, or having our streets flood or roofs collapse from excess rainfall. Hydrology is the study of…
The smoketastrophe in New York City. Image Wikicommons What climate change-caused -tastrophe will be next month? This month’s climate change-caused disaster was the smoketastrophe on the upper east coast. If you have been living under a rock (lucky you), smoke from unprecedented climate change-caused Canadian wildfires was sucked up into a low pressure system that…
Brief Report: Climate Tipping, Earth Systems Collapse Initiation, Climate Restoration Reverses Some Sea Level Rise, and the Barrier Island Disintegration Threshold, Limit to Sea Level Rise Adaptation A brief discussion with summarized academic findings. Climate Tipping, Earth Systems Collapse Initiation Greenland and Antarctica have seen their tipping activated. This does not mean they have passed…
Ocotillo mortality, Big Bend Ranch State Park, Three Dike Hill. The ocotillo in the foreground succumbed to bark beetles last season. Many more are in the frame, just hard to tell! It’s the desert ~ ~ ~ Chihuahuan Desert Walkabout – Desert Mortality from Climate Change By Bruce Melton We just returned from filming more…
Permafrost collapse, Glenn Highway, Alaska. Though permafrost has been thawing slightly since the end of the Little Ice Age, the rate of thaw today is so great that in combination with Amazon collapse and collapse of Canadian forests, natural feedback emissions rival all of transportation globally. Faster than forecast, climate impacts trigger tipping points in…