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Drought

Worst Drought Ever in the Amazon, Caused By Climate Change

By Abrupt changes, Drought, Earth systems, Emissions flip, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Point of No Return, Shifting Ecology, Tipping

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…

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2023’s Heat Cost Texas $24 Billion

By Drought, Extreme Weather, Heat, Impacts, rainfall, Temperature

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…

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Climate Change Across America Photographic Review PowerPoint 342 slides)

By Abrupt changes, Arctic warming, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, Drought, Extreme Weather, Flooding, forest health, Forest Mortality, frozen ground, Glaciers, in-depth and Popular Press, Permafrost, Permafrost melt, Presentations, Sea Level Rise, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Tipping, Winter Weather

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……

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Chihuahuan Desert Walkabout – Desert Mortality from Climate Change

By Abrupt changes, Drought, evolutionary boundaries, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Heat, Impacts, The Unexpected, Vegetation Response

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…

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Giant Sequoias: A Tipping Point

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Climate Catastrophes, climate emergency, climate restoration, Drought, Earth systems, Fire, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Legacy Policy, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Tipping

The Sequoia Burn Giant Sequoias: A Climate Tipping Point by Bruce Melton PE Follow MeltOn in the field on Instagram See the abridged version on Truthout.org: August 9, 2022. Summary: Up to 13,000 mature sequoias were killed by wildfire between 2015 and 2021, with a total known population of only about 75,500 mature trees. Sequoias…

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Climate Change Across America – Fall Filming 2021: Beetle Kill in SW CO and Forest Failure at Mesa Verde National Park

By Abrupt changes, Drought, Earth systems, Fire, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, pine beetle

Climate Change Across America Fall Filming Report Southern and Southwestern Colorado Beetle Attack and Forest Regeneration Failure at Mesa Verde National Park We returned to filming after a long covid. No trouble. On the big drive from Texas to the mountains, New Mexico was grand with their indoor mask mandate. Colorado and Texas were about…

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Titanic II: Icebergs on a Warmer Planet

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Drought, Extreme Weather, Gulf Stream, Impacts, rainfall, Truthout.org

In an Age of Climate Change, Even Titanic II Is Not Safe From Icebergs Bruce Melton First Published on Truthout November 13, 2018 Titanic II is set to sail in 2022. It’s a $500 million replica of the doomed Titanic that hit a North Atlantic iceberg in 1912. A local news report about the new ship postulated…

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Climate Change Across America 2018: Full Trip Log

By Abrupt changes, Climate Catastrophes, Drought, Extreme Weather, Fire, flood, Flooding, forest health, Forest Mortality, Glaciers, Heat, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, Mega-Landslides, Permafrost, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology

Climate Change Across America – Instagram Trip Logs Full Trip Log, Summer Filming Season 2018: June 27 through August 11 – Austin to the Arctic Circle via California. The expedition was 16,199 miles, 46 days, 42 different camps, 2 motels – Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Yukon Territory, Alaska, Montana, Idaho, Utah,…

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New Evaluation of Climate Models Reveals Abrupt Changes Ahead of Schedule

By Abrupt changes, Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Gulf Stream, ice sheets, Impacts, modeling, The Unexpected

  New Evaluation of Climate Models Reveals Abrupt Changes Ahead of Schedule It’s not the averages that will mess up your hair, it’s the gusts. This work on modeling the unmodelable (Drijfhout 2015) is a couple of years old now, but it gives enormous insight into why it is that “ice cube melt climate science” is…

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What’s the Big Deal With Climate Change?

By Abrupt changes, Climate Culture, Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Drought, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, Messaging, Myths, pine beetle, Psycho, Shifting Ecology, Strategy, The Unexpected, What we can do

What’s the Big Deal With Climate Change? We all understand climate change is trouble. Even a really significant percentage of oil and gas professionals understand. Of a recent poll (2014) of 474 oil and gas industry insiders, 85 percent believed global warming was happening, 58 percent were either very sure or extremely sure, and 57 percent…

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Forestkill: Coniferous, Deciduous, Palm and Cactus — Climate Change is Everywhere

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Vegetation Response

Slowly and insidiously, or abruptly and finitely. Forests of all kinds are succumbing to climate change. Mountain forests, city forests, forests in the southeast and the far north. Pine, spruce, fir, oak, maple. Nontraditional forests too; the palms of LA, succulents in the desert. Yes, deserts are at risk too. Deserts as ecosystems are fragile…

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Third 100-year Plus Drought in Amazonia in Ten Years

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Shifting Ecology

The list of Amazonian drought records has grown to Amazonian proportions. Three 100-year plus droughts in a decade have taken their toll. Along with continual man-created ecological compromise, climate warming, and forest mortality from drought a very strong El Nino has grown into their strongest drought ever recorded since record keeping began in 1900. The…

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Climate Change Happening Now — Unprecedented: Drought to Flood, CA

By Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, Drought, Extreme Weather, flood, global warming psychology, Impacts, Temperature

It’s all around us but masked by “noise” in the media; enabled by fairness in journalism, driven by myth that has been propagated by experiences that we as a society have never before experienced. When Unprecedented drought in California was replaced by unprecedented flooding, the paper says: “The media, resource management entities, and the scientific…

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Apparent Drought, Extremes and Future Impacts

By Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Heat, Impacts, Myths, rainfall, Shifting Ecology, Temperature, Vegetation Response

One of the general quandaries about current climate change impacts and those with our future climate has been: “how do we end up with drying when precipitation increases with warming as we already see happening and is further projected in the future?” This research from Princeton, University of Southampton and the US Geological Survey does…

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Climate Impacts Happening Now: Westward (?) Migration of Forests

By Drought, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, rainfall, Shifting Ecology, The Unexpected, Vegetation Response

A recent article in Atlantic implies climate change to be wrongly viewed as something we don’t yet know much about. This article “American Trees Are Moving West, and No One Knows Why”, is half correct. The authors in the study reported upon reveal the reasons why trees are shifting west (as well as north), and…

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Warm Winter, Early Spring: Is Climate Change a Mixed Bag or are we Kidding Ourselves?

By Abrupt changes, adaptation, Beaches coastal, Climate Catastrophes, Climate Policy, Climate Reform, Deniers and Delayers, Drought, economics, Emissions, Emissions Scenarios, Extreme Weather, forest health, Forest Mortality, Glaciers, Gulf Stream, ice sheet, ice sheets, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, modeling, Negative emissions, Oceans, pine beetle, politics, Psycho, Scenarios, Sea Level Rise, Shifting Ecology, West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Winter Weather

President Trump it seems, has given us permission to backslide with our thinking about climate change. Until we have rule or law that tells us we must do something about climate pollution, “those that would rather it not be real” have won. This allows the debate to rage encouraging doubt. The Clean Power Plan and…

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We Can Have a Healthy Climate With Zero Warming in Our Lifetimes, by Bruce Melton

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, in-depth and Popular Press, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Truthout.org

  We can have a healthy climate — a climate with zero warming — in our lifetimes. The message for the last 20 years has been that we have to reduce emissions drastically to prevent dangerous climate change of more than 2 degrees C (3.6 F). This strategy would have likely worked when it was…

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The Beetles: 6,000 Miles of Climate Change — Long Version

By Abrupt changes, Drought, forest health, Forest Mortality, Impacts, pine beetle, Shifting Ecology, Vegetation Response

This is the original long version with much more detail and all of the destinations and forest health descriptions along the 6,000 mile route. The abbreviated  2,000 word version was published on Truthout on February 16, 2016 is here. We were awash for 19 days in a tumultuous sea of mountains and forests, drifting a course through the heart…

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