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Archive for February 16th, 2011
Floods linked to manmade climate change: studies
Posted by Baltimore Sun: Gerard Wynn on February 16th, 2011
Baltimore Sun: Man-made greenhouse gas emissions are linked to more frequent heavy rainfall, two studies published found on Wednesday, portraying a clearer human fingerprint after a spate of floods around the world.
Scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the world and expect that in turn would lead in the future to more evaporation of water, more moist air and heavier rainfall.
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But the two new papers were the first to pin an increase...
Floods linked to manmade climate change: studies
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 16th, 2011
Reuters: Man-made greenhouse gas emissions are linked to more frequent heavy rainfall, two studies published found on Wednesday, portraying a clearer human fingerprint after a spate of floods around the world.
Scientists agree that greenhouse gas emissions are warming the world and expect that in turn would lead in the future to more evaporation of water, more moist air and heavier rainfall.
But the two new papers were the first to pin an increase in heavy rainfall in the second half of the last century...
VIDEO: Climate change ‘increases flood risk’
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 16th, 2011
BBC: Greenhouse gas emissions are making extreme rainfall events more common, scientists say and in the UK, have increased the risk of flooding.
That autumn saw the highest rains in England and Wales since records began in 1766.
New York City Can Buy More Watershed Land, State Says
Posted by New York Times: MIREYA NAVARRO on February 16th, 2011
New York Times: New York City can continue to buy land to protect its watershed in the Catskills and Hudson River Valley from development under an agreement announced on Wednesday by the city and state.
Officials with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the city’s Environmental Protection Department said the state had issued a permit under the agreement that allows New York City to continue the land acquisition program for the next 15 years.
The land and watershed-protection effort,...
United Kingdom: Study: Climate change linked to extreme rain
Posted by Associated Press: Doyle Rice on February 16th, 2011
Associated Press: John Fogerty once crooned "Who'll stop the rain?" Not humanity, apparently, as new research shows that human-caused climate change has significantly increased the chances of extreme rain- and snowfall around the world, along with the deadly floods that follow.
This is according to two new studies published Wednesday in the British journal Nature.
While other studies have suggested that global warming may be partly responsible for an increase in heavy precipitation, what's new in this study...
Posted in Water Conservation 
Comments Off on United Kingdom: Study: Climate change linked to extreme rainBlame human emissions for British floods
Posted by New Scientist: Catherine Brahic on February 16th, 2011
New Scientist: Al Gore famously had his knuckles rapped for implying that human-induced climate change had caused hurricane Katrina. The scientific party line then was "No single weather event can be attributed to climate change". It's a line that has held strong but is beginning to fray.
This week, a study has shown that the devastating floods which damaged nearly 10,000 properties in England and Wales in 2000, and cost £1.3 billion in insurance losses, were made significantly more...
Increased flooding driven by climate change: study
Posted by Agence France -Presse: None Given on February 16th, 2011
Agence France -Presse: Global warming driven by human activity boosted the intensity of rain, snow and consequent flooding in the northern hemisphere over the last half of the 20th century, research released Wednesday has shown.
Two studies, both published in Nature, are among the first to draw a straight line between climate change and its impact on potentially deadly and damaging extreme weather events.
Australia, Sri Lanka, Brazil and Pakistan have all been recently ravaged by massive flooding, raising questions...
Bill McKibben: Climate Change Is Our Most Urgent Challenge
Posted by Nation: Sara Jerving on February 16th, 2011
Nation: Bill McKibben, author and founder of the international environmental organization 350.org, says that without a global campaign to curb climate change, the ecological devastation of our warming climate will make our planet uninhabitable. His appeal to citizens and policy-makers, the sixth video in the series "Peak Oil and a Changing Climate" from The Nation and On The Earth Productions, is a call to action as much as it is a sobering account of the damage we're already doing to our environment.
It's...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Bill McKibben: Climate Change Is Our Most Urgent ChallengeClimate change doubled likelihood of devastating UK floods of 2000
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 16th, 2011
Guardian: Global warming made the floods that devastated England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, costing £3.5bn, between two and three times more likely to happen, new research has found. This is the first time scientists have quantified the role of human-induced climate change in increasing the risk of a serious flood and represents a major development in climate science.
"It shows climate change is acting here and now to load the dice towards more extreme weather," said Myles Allen of Oxford University,...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change doubled likelihood of devastating UK floods of 2000Climate change and extreme flooding linked by new evidence
Posted by Washington Post: Juliet Eilperin on February 16th, 2011
Guardian: There's a sound rule for reporting weather events that may be related to climate change. You can't say that a particular heatwave or a particular downpour – or even a particular freeze – was definitely caused by human emissions of greenhouse gases. But you can say whether these events are consistent with predictions, or that their likelihood rises or falls in a warming world.
Weather is a complex system. Long-running trends, natural fluctuations and random patterns are fed into the global weather...
Posted in Water Conservation Comments Off on Climate change and extreme flooding linked by new evidence