canaries in the coalmine

canaries in the coalmine: Observable impacts of climate change
Baltic sea ice cover hits an all-time low: meteorologists - PhysOrg The extent of ice covering the Baltic sea this winter reached an all-time low, since measurements began more than a century ago, Swedish meteorologists said.	4th May 2008
California drought fears mount - Contra Costa Times SACRAMENTO - Californians are being asked to water their lawns less, plant native shrubs and install more-efficient irrigation systems to stave off water shortages and mandatory rationing amid growing worries about a possible long-term drought.	3rd May 2008
Federal agency declares West Coast salmon fishery a disaster - PhysOrg (AP) -- Federal authorities have declared the West Coast ocean salmon fishery a failure, opening the way for Congress to appropriate economic disaster assistance for coastal communities in California, Oregon and Washington.	3rd May 2008
Major Arctic sea ice melt is expected this summer - PhysOrg (AP) -- The Arctic will remain on thinning ice, and climate warming is expected to begin affecting the Antarctic also, scientists said Friday. "The long-term prognosis is not very optimistic," atmospheric scientist Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University said at a briefing.	3rd May 2008
Murray-Darling woes linked to global warming: report - ABC via Yahoo!7 News A group of Australian researchers claim to have found further evidence that lower rainfall and reduced run-off in the south-east of the country are linked to global warming. See also: Australia Loses 10% of Farm Families During Drought, ABC Says - Bloomberg.com	3rd May 2008
Growing ocean dead zones leave fish gasping - New Scientist Ocean "deserts" containing too little oxygen for animals to breathe are expanding, possibly as a result of rising surface temperatures caused by global warming	2nd May 2008
World's largest lake warming rapidly - Reuters Siberia's Lake Baikal has warmed faster than global air temperatures over the past 60 years, which could put animals unique to the world's largest lake in jeopardy, U.S. and Russian scientists said. The lake has warmed 1.21 degrees Celsius (2.18 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1946 due to climate change, almost three times faster than global air temperatures, according to a paper by the scientists to be published next month in the journal "Global Change Biology."	1st May 2008
Big squid imperil fish, people - Times Colonist Canada, BC: Nightmarish packs of rapacious giant devil squid are hunting off the B.C. coast -- and as their numbers increase, scientists are worrying about an attack on fish stocks. Humboldt squid, called diablos rojos or red devils in Mexico, have been known to attack scuba divers and were once a rarity in B.C. waters. But a changing ocean environment has brought them northward, and they may now be permanently establishing themselves off the B.C. coast.	29th April 2008
Ward Hunt Ice Shelf destined to disappear - Toronto Star New cracks in the largest remaining Arctic ice shelf suggest another polar landmark seems destined to break up and disappear. Scientists discovered the extensive new cracks in the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf earlier this year and a patrol of Canadian Rangers got an up-close look at them last week.	12th April 2008
End of the sequoias? - Scripps News FRESNO, Calif. -- The 2,000-year-old giant sequoias east of Fresno, Calif., have survived warm spells lasting centuries, but in just 100 years, global warming could snuff them out -- along with many Sierra Nevada species.	12th April 2008
Drought brings 'staggering fire behaviour' - Australian Broadcasting Corporation Firefighting authorities say they have been staggered by changes to fire behaviour because of ongoing drought in South Australia.	12th April 2008
Warming trends rise in large ocean areas -study - AlertNet Warming trends in a third of the world's large ocean regions are two to four times greater than previously reported averages, increasing the risk to marine life and fisheries, a U.N.-backed environmental study said.	10th April 2008
East Lancashire pays the price of extreme weather - This Is Lancashire EXTREME weather caused by climate change is leaving local councils facing a multi-million pound bill. Council bosses say things are getting worse after an internal report warned the true cost of bad weather was "grossly underestimated".	10th April 2008
CLIMATE CHANGE: European Mountain Top Vanishes - IPS BERLIN, Apr 7 (IPS) - The peak of the Stubai Mountains in the Austrian Alps has vanished. It was around a couple of months back, but since then no one can say exactly when it disappeared.	8th April 2008
Global warming continues, regardless of La Nina weather pattern - TREND Information The long-term trend of global warming is continuing, despite the current La Nina weather phenomenon that is bringing relatively cooler temperatures to parts of the Equatorial Pacific region, the United Nations World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said yesterday. Worldwide temperatures this year are expected to be above the long-term average, even though La Nina is also likely to persist through to the middle of 2008, WMO said in a press statement issued in Geneva.	6th April 2008
Koalas in danger - Independent The future of the koala, perhaps Australia's best-loved animal, is under threat because greenhouse gas emissions are making eucalyptus leaves – their sole food source – inedible. Scientists warned yesterday that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were reducing nutrient levels in the leaves, and also boosting their toxic tannin content.	6th April 2008
Spanish region may ship water to relieve drought - Environmental News Network MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's northeast Catalonia region will need to import water by ship and train from May to ensure domestic supplies if the current drought persists, the regional government said in a report. The report, sent to Reuters on Friday, said rainfall in all but one of Catalonia's 15 river basins was below emergency levels for the year so far.	6th April 2008
Georgia lawmakers approve request to redraw borders, hoping to alleviate a drought - Boston Herald ATLANTA - Lawmakers in drought-parched Georgia voted Friday to ask mapmakers to redraw their state’s northern boundary in hopes of tapping the Tennessee River, in a vote that potentially escalates a conflict with their neighbor.	6th April 2008
US mulls Pacific salmon fishing ban - BBC News A collapse in Pacific salmon stocks is leading the US government to consider a fishing ban, the BBC's Rajesh Mirchandani reports.	4th April 2008
Canadian Researchers Warn Of New Arctic Worries - Planet Ark Melting ocean ice is apparently allowing larger storm surges to flood into the delta in Canada's far north, a change that could have an impact on energy development plans for the region, said Lance Lesack, who has been tracking environmental changes in the region for more than a decade. "With receding sea ice, suddenly we're seeing bigger storm surges moving into the delta from storms that really aren't any bigger than they have been historically," said Lesack, a geographer from Simon Fraser University near Vancouver.	4th April 2008
Harmful algae taking advantage of global warming - PhysOrg You know that green scum creeping across the surface of your local public water reservoir" Or maybe it`s choking out a favorite fishing spot or livestock watering hole. It`s probably cyanobacteria - blue-green algae - and, according to a paper in the April 4 issue of the journal Science, it relishes the weather extremes that accompany global warming.	4th April 2008
Severe Spanish drought sparks regional fights over water - Channel NewsAsia MADRID: The worst drought in decades in Spain is leading to regional disputes over scarce water resources with areas with more reserves resisting transfers to more parched zones.	4th April 2008
US West Warming Faster Than Rest Of World - Study - Planet Ark LOS ANGELES - The US West is heating up at nearly twice the rate of the rest of the world and is likely to face more drought conditions in many of its fast-growing cities, an environmental group said on Thursday.	31st March 2008
Thai temple fights off encroaching tide as world sea levels rise - Raw Story Thailand: Visanu Kengsamut, 26, has already moved three times in his life, while his mother -- the village chief -- has fled the crumbling coast and rebuilt her home eight times, and each time the village has paid for its own relocation. Khun Samut Chin now sits about one kilometre inland from the temple. "We know that the cause of this is the effects of global warming," says Visanu.	31st March 2008
Time runs out for islanders on global warming's front line - Guardian Unlimited Rising sea levels threaten to flood the Ganges delta, leading to an environmental disaster	30th March 2008
Austrian glaciers shrink the most in five years Austria's glaciers retreated more than 22 metres (24 yards) on average last year, in the biggest shrinking for five years, the country's Alpine Club said Saturday.	30th March 2008
The lesser-spotted butterfly - Independent The lesser-spotted butterflyIndependent, UK. With the losses greater in south-east England, Butterfly Conservation says that suggests the problem may be linked to climate change, because climate ...	29th March 2008
Climate change affecting trees, streams in the West - San Diego Union-Tribune SALT LAKE CITY – Around the same time the American West started heating up five years ago, Colorado started losing its lodgepole pine forests to a beetle infestation.	29th March 2008
Ice shelf collapse video	27th March 2008
Russian, Canadian Winter Days Much Milder - UK Study - Planet Ark OSLO - The coldest winter days in Russia and Canada have become up to 4 Celsius (7 Fahrenheit) milder since the 1950s in an extreme sign of climate change, the British Meteorological Office said on Wednesday.	27th March 2008
Australian industry dying on the vines - Toronto Star MELBOURNE–Australian grape growers reckon they are the canary in the coal mine of global warming, as a long drought forces winemakers to rethink the styles of wine they can produce and the regions they can grow in.	27th March 2008
Western Canadian Pine Beetle Infestation Spreads - Planet Ark VANCOUVER, British Columbia - About half of the marketable pine trees in West Coast Canadian province of British Columbia have been ravaged by a nearly decade-long beetle infestation, according to new government statistics.	27th March 2008
Ice shrinks in Arctic sea - International Herald Tribune Winter sea ice around a Norwegian Arctic island has thinned to less than one metre (3 feet) since the 1960s, according to a study on Tuesday of a region that may be more attractive to oil firms because of climate change. The Norwegian Polar Institute said ice around Hopen island southeast of the Svalbard archipelago had become more than 40 cms (16 inches) thinner in the past 40 years, in what it called the first long-term study of ice thickness in the Barents Sea.	26th March 2008
New Parasite Discovered; Infects Waterfowl, Other Species - PhysOrg.com The findings were just reported in the International Journal for Parasitology, and raise concerns not only about the new parasite but about others that may become more widespread, cause more health problems or possibly even move into new species as a result of global warming and climate change.	26th March 2008
Pine beetle infestation impacting salmon runs - Canada.com If the heat of climate change weren't enough of a danger to Pacific salmon, scientists are cataloging how the effects of the global-warming-aided mountain pine beetle infestation are adding to salmon's woes. Because the enormous pine forests are dead or dying, the tree boughs don't intercept snow and rain, or shade the forest floor to slow the spring snow-melt. The result is bigger snow packs, more rapid snow melts leading to flash flooding and higher peak stream flows that erode streams. Then rapid runoffs mean more summer droughts, combined with higher summer water temperatures, the report notes.	26th March 2008
Sea levels rising too fast for Thames Barrier - The Independent A fear that sea levels will rise far faster than predicted this century has led to a revision of the plan to protect London from a devastating flood caused by the sort of storm surge in the North Sea that resulted in the closure of the Thames Barrier yesterday.	23rd March 2008
Noah's Ark for salmon - Salt Lake Tribune As global warming bears down on our Western rivers and watersheds, it threatens one of the great symbols of Western abundance: wild salmon. With each passing year, their numbers have dropped precipitously. This decline is believed to be in part the result of warming temperatures in streams and rivers.	23rd March 2008
Bat 'die-off' raises alarms - Times Herald-Record US: Unprecedented "die-off" of thousands of cave-dwelling bats across the Northeast - climate change has kept bats flying during fall, winter and spring periods when insects are in short supply or almost nonexistent.	21st March 2008
Icy start, but 2008 may be in top 10 warmest years - Environmental News Network OSLO (Reuters) - After the coldest start to a year in more than a decade, spring will bring relief to the northern hemisphere from Thursday. Bucking the trend of global warming, the start of 2008 saw icy weather around the world from China to Greece. But despite its chilly start, 2008 is expected to end up among the top 10 warmest years since records began in the 1860s.	20th March 2008
Dams: Deep trouble - Independent Are vast dams around the world masking the full extent of sea-level rises?	20th March 2008
Israel suffers worst drought in decade - AP via Yahoo! News Israel is suffering its worst drought in a decade and will have to stop pumping from one of its main sources of drinking water, the Sea of Galilee, by the end of the summer, an official said Wednesday.	20th March 2008
How the blurring of the seasons is a harbinger of climate calamity - Independent Spring, which officially starts today, is starting to dissolve as a distinct season as climate change takes hold. See also: Spring keeps coming earlier for birds, bees, trees, and sneezes because of global warming - Seattle Times	20th March 2008
Arctic losing long-term ice cover - BBC News Despite colder conditions, the Arctic is losing a lot of its old, stable ice, according to satellite data.	19th March 2008
Faster climate change fears - Adelaidenow SOUTH Australians are being warned to brace for harsher and more regular heatwaves amid fears climate change may be occurring faster than forecast. Meteorologists and researchers say timeframes calculated by organisations such as the CSIRO for climate change impacts of higher temperatures, falling rainfall and rising sea levels are now conservative at best. And they warn the normal four seasons will blur as temperatures increase and summer stretches well into the autumn months.	16th March 2008
Global warming is taking a toll on streams - The Daily American Pennsylvania is predicted to lose 50 percent of its trout habitat in the coming decades. Other states such as North Carolina and Virginia could lose up to 90 percent of habitat. Even warmwater species are being impacted by climate alterations. The ongoing concern of the disappearance of and disease infested smallmouth bass in the Susquehanna River watershed is now being seen as result of heavy rains during the spring spawning season that have almost wiped out entire year classes of fish. Then followed by a long dry summer that escalates water temperature further stressing those fish that survive.	16th March 2008
INTERVIEW-Antarctic glacier melted more quickly last year - AlertNet A glacier used as a benchmark to measure global warming's impact on the Antarctic Peninsula melted more than usual in the past year, according to an Argentine glacier researcher. For more than 20 years, Pedro Skvarca has studied the Devil's Bay glacier on Vega Island off the Antarctic Peninsula, a part of Antarctica that is warming five times faster than the average in the rest of the world.	14th March 2008
"It's An Ill Wind" -- Well Not All That Ill! - DeSmogBlog Powerful winter storms sweeping across Europe have boosted wind power, oversupplying the wholesale market for electricity and driving down prices by some 12 percent since Friday. Even though road, rail and ship travel has been disrupted and insurers facing claims from damage brought by high winds, operators of wind turbines have been able to generate and sell more supply of the renewable energy into the power network.	14th March 2008
Sea Level Increase Is Kept Down by Reservoirs, Masking Ice Melt - Bloomberg.com March 13 (Bloomberg) -- Man-made reservoirs have cut sea- level gains by 30 millimeters (1.2 inches), masking the true extent of the contribution from melting ice, scientists said.	14th March 2008
Peru Bets On Desalination To Ensure Water Supplies - Planet Ark LIMA - Peru plans to start desalinating water from the Pacific Ocean to make up for declining supplies from fast-melting glaciers affected by climate change, President Alan Garcia said on Tuesday.	13th March 2008
Amazon's worst-ever drought in 2005 caused by global warming - People's Daily Brazil's drought in 2005, the worst-ever hitting the Amazon, was caused by global warming instead of the El Nino weather phenomenon as previously thought, the country's National Space Research Institute (INPE) announced Sunday.	11th March 2008
Global Warming Alliance warns accident risk due to aircraft design weakness - openPR ‘The maximum crosswind limits have only increased on Boeing aircraft by 7 knots since the beginning of the jet age,’ says Donald Burfitt-Dons, Chairman of the Global Warming Alliance and a former airline pilot. ‘The control systems are designed to cope with a 30 to 35 knot crosswind on landing. That is no longer sufficient’. He is urging an immediate review of safety standards to ensure future aircraft can handle the meteorological conditions of today. Ship engineers also need to look at rudder control limitations in order for vessels particularly high sided ones, to maintain directional control in the hurricane strength winds now being encountered often in straits with limited room to manoeuvre.	11th March 2008
Salmon fishing ban mulled in California as run suffers record plunge - The Sacramento Bee The decline occurred because the jet stream changed course in spring 2005, in turn disrupting ocean currents. The currents drive an upwelling of nutrient-rich waters, touching off a phytoplankton bloom that forms the base of the food chain. That bloom either failed to happen in some places or was delayed, leaving the menu empty when hungry young salmon went looking for food. Scientists have said the disrupted jet stream is consistent with changes likely to be caused by global warming. Salmon guide, J.D. Richey,may be one of Sacramento's first climate change victims. "A lot of people don't realize it's more than just a fish going away. We're losing a significant neighbor," Richey said. "I felt this last year there was something missing – almost at the soul level. I could just feel the salmon weren't anywhere, and it just bummed me out.".	11th March 2008
Seal cubs threatened by global warming, WWF warns Hundreds of newborn seal cubs risk dying of hunger and cold because global warming is making ice in the Arctic Circle melt too fast, the World Wide Fund for Nature in Germany warned Monday.	11th March 2008
Reef Fish Get Lost As Climate Changes - Planet Ark SYDNEY - Climate change might be causing reef fish to get lost, unable to return to breeding grounds from the open ocean, which could have profound implications for the survival of reef ecosystems, Australian scientists say.	11th March 2008
New Research Confirms Antarctic Thaw Fears - Spiegel Online New research confirms that ice sheets in West Antarctica are thinning at a far faster rate than in past millennia. Although scientists are divided as to the cause of the melt, many feel it is directly related to climate change.	8th March 2008
Expanding ‘Deserts,' by Land and Sea - New York Times Scientists have long projected that areas north and south of the tropics will grow drier in a warming world –- from the Middle East through the European Riviera to the American Southwest, from sub-Saharan Africa to parts of Australia.	7th March 2008
Global Warming Means Fewer Flowers in the Rockies - RedOrbit Spring in the Rockies begins when the snowpack melts. But with the advent of global climate change, the snow is gone sooner. Research conducted on the region’s wildflowers shows some plants are blooming less because of it.	6th March 2008
Northern Quebec town mulls relocation as global warming softens ground - CNews MONTREAL - Mudslides, buckled roads and sinking buildings are threatening the northern Quebec village of Salluit, leaving residents with the unwanted prospect of moving their town.	6th March 2008
Drought arrives early this year in the North - Bangkok Post Drought has arrived early this year and it may be a lengthy one as nine northern provinces are already bracing for water shortages. The dry spell has gripped Chiang Rai, Chiang Mai, Lampang, Uttaradit, Nan, Phrae, Kamphaeng Phet, Sukhothai and Tak, according to officials.	6th March 2008
Will global warming increase plant frost damage? Widespread damage to plants from a sudden freeze that occurred across the Eastern United States from 5 April to 9 April 2007 was made worse because it had been preceded by two weeks of unusual warmth, according to an analysis published in the March 2008 issue of BioScience.	4th March 2008
Scientists warn of new plague of jellyfish - Guardian Unlimited Scientists in Spain blame over-fishing and global warming for summer invasion of jellyfish	29th February 2008
Winter temperature in Finland hits record high - Xinhua The average temperature in the Finnish capital Helsinki in January was 0.6 degrees Celsius, which was 4.8 degrees higher than that of the period between 1971 and 2000, said the institute.	29th February 2008
Hottest arctic winter ever - Barents Observer This winter might become the mildest winter in Northern Norway ever registered. So far the average temperature in parts of the region has been up to eight degrees Celsius above the normal.	27th February 2008
Antarctic glaciers surge to ocean - BBC News UK scientists working in Antarctica have found some of the clearest evidence yet of instabilities in the ice of part of West Antarctica.	26th February 2008
Nature's in bloomin' chaos as global warming turns the seasons on their head - Daily Mail UK: Early spring brings with it a host of dangers to our flora and fauna. The balance of Nature is being upset and the knock-on effect may be devastating. Some species are able to adapt, while others may vanish, and their disappearance will have a significant effect on the rest of the ecosystem.	26th February 2008
Watching Peru's Oceans for Cholera Cues - NPR Warming oceans were behind Peru's cholera outbreaks in the 1990s, and global warming may cause future outbreaks. Some scientists in Peru are closely watching microscopic marine life, hoping to catch an outbreak before it begins.	26th February 2008
Drought hits more than 2 million in northern China - Houston Chronicle While parts of China have been rocked by record snowfalls this winter, a drought in northern China has left more than 2 million people without sufficient drinking water, a state news agency said.	26th February 2008
Europe's truffle harvests drying up amid drought that farmers blame on global warming - IHT France: Farmers say production is down by 50-75 percent this winter season and they blame global warming.	23rd February 2008
As South American Rivers Dry Up, Miners Tap Ocean - Planet Ark CERRO LINDO - Vast mines in Peru and Chile that supply the world with crucial metals have started to pump water from the Pacific Ocean high into the Andes Mountains because of chronic water shortages exacerbated by climate change.	23rd February 2008
Greenland's rising air temperatures drive ice loss at surface and beyond - PhysOrg A new NASA study confirms that the surface temperature of Greenland's massive ice sheet has been rising, stoked by warming air temperatures, and fueling loss of the island's ice at the surface and throughout the mass beneath.	21st February 2008
Spain suffering worst drought in over a decade - BBC News Spain faces water restrictions widely this summer as it suffers its worst drought in more than a decade. In one of the worst affected areas, Catalunya, the Barcelona government is hoping to pre-empt a summer crisis by importing water by tanker.	21st February 2008
Climate Change Has Major Impact On Oceans - Science Daily Climate change is rapidly transforming the world's oceans by increasing the temperature and acidity of seawater, and altering atmospheric and oceanic circulation, reported a panel of scientists at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in Boston.	18th February 2008
Southern Ocean rise due to warming, not ice melts - AlertNet Rises in the sea level around Antarctica in the past decade are almost entirely due a warming ocean, not ice melting, an Australian scientist leading a major international research programme said.	18th February 2008
Birds choke to death on migrant fish - Guardian Unlimited Baffled scientists warn of a 'catastrophic' impact as snake pipefish flood into British waters	17th February 2008
World Wine Map Changing With Climate - Discovery Channel Climate change is threatening to redraw the world's wine-producing map, and the effects are already being seen in earlier harvests and coarser wines, experts told an international conference Friday.	16th February 2008
Pacific Northwest hypoxic events unprecedented - EurekAlert! CORVALLIS, Ore. – A review of all available ocean data records concludes that the low-oxygen events which have plagued the Pacific Northwest coast since 2002 are unprecedented in the five decades prior to that, and may well be linked to the stronger, persistent winds that are expected to occur with global warming.	15th February 2008
Mosquito invasion threatens a plague on Ulster - Belfast Telegraph Ulster has been invaded by mosquitoes - and the diseases they carry could pose a heightened risk to human health as climate change starts to bite.	14th February 2008
Growers face early start to Myzus pest migration - Farming UK UK: Potato, sugar beet and vegetable growers must be ready for an early attack of Myzus persicae again this year, predicts aphid expert Dr Richard Harrington of Rothamsted Research. And it is a trend that is set to continue with climate warming, he reported. Official forecasts will be issued at the end of February, but the mild conditions so far make early aphid movement look likely.	14th February 2008
Antarctica is Cold? Yeah, We Knew That - RealClimate Guest commentary from Spencer Weart, science historian Despite the recent announcement that the discharge from some Antarctic glaciers is accelerating, we often hear people remarking that parts of Antarctica are getting colder, and indeed the ice pack in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica has actually been getting bigger. Doesn't this contradict the calculations that greenhouse gases are warming the globe? Not at all, because a cold Antarctica is just what calculations predict… and have predicted for the past quarter century. It's not just that Antarctica is covered with a gazillion tons of ice, although that certainly helps keep it cold.	13th February 2008
King Penguins Declining Due to Global Warming - National Geographic Warming seas near Antarctica are making prey scarce for the large birds, which are forced to travel further distances to feed their chicks.	12th February 2008
Super-sized squid may be indicator of climate change - Eureka Times-Standard There's a new squid in town. Southern waters were once the domain of Humboldt squid, but over the course of decades the tentacular jumbos have been gradually ranging farther north.	11th February 2008
Climate change affects Ugandan coffee output - Independent Online The temperature is rising a little too quickly in Uganda - and coffee farmers are getting worried. Growers say that global warming is damaging production of coffee, Uganda's biggest export. Ask coffee farmer Emmanuel Kawesi, who has a "feeling" about the impending danger. "It's hotter now - this is not usual,"	9th February 2008
Botanists see winter fading away in U.K. - PhysOrg Climate change is leading some British botanists to conclude that winter is disappearing as a distinct season in the United Kingdom.	9th February 2008
Hottest year on record for Shanghai in 2007: official media - PhysOrg Shanghai may have endured one of its coldest months ever in January but 2007 was the eastern Chinese city's hottest year on record, state press reported on Friday.	9th February 2008
UK 'set for early spring arrival' - BBC Researchers suggest spring is likely to arrive early in the UK.	5th February 2008
Lack of 'good ice' in winter stresses area's water levels - Toledo Blade Tthe Great Lakes, the region's greatest natural resource and the backbone of its economy, take a beating from these on-again, off-again winters.	5th February 2008
Andes glaciers gone in 20 years - Channel 4 News Scientists in Peru have issued a dire warning, claiming that glaciers high in the Andes will all but disappear within two decades.	4th February 2008
California salmon collapse roils West Coast fishing industry - San Francisco Chronicle Humboldt County fisherman Dave Bitts is bracing for another lean year after the sudden collapse of California's most important salmon run. Like many West Coast fisherman, Bitts depends on wild "king" salmon for up to two-thirds of his income. Now, he doesn't know how he's going to pay his bills. "We've never been in this situation before," said the 59-year-old Bitts. "It's my bread-and-butter, as it is for all my pals. And this year, it appears our bread-and-butter is not there." Federal fishery regulators said this past week that the number of chinook salmon returning to the Sacramento River and its tributaries last fall was astonishingly low.	4th February 2008
Ice cores show faster global warming - United Press International Ice cores from Greenland and Antarctica show that Earth warmed faster in the 20th century than at any other time in the past 22 millennia, researchers said. Climatologists from Bern University said their study also showed that concentrations of greenhouse gases are increasing at a faster rate, Swissinfo.com reported. For example, the concentration of carbon dioxide increased by 31 parts per million during one 1,600-year interval in the pre-industrial period -- its fastest growth before the industrial age -- and went up by the same amount in the past 20 years.	2nd February 2008
Greenhouse effect has 'significantly dried' the western United States - Nature.com Stop development in southwestern states, say researchers. Human activity is largely to blame for the worsening water shortages in the western United States over the past half-century, a new study shows. The analysis of climate trends that influence the availability of freshwater shows that humans are responsible for 60% of the observed changes.	1st February 2008
Peat bogs leaking CO2 emissions - Guardian Unlimited Science environment: Scientists drop heather on peat bogs to halt dangerous emitter of carbon dioxide	31st January 2008
Increased hurricane activity linked to sea surface warming - PhysOrg The link between changes in the temperature of the sea`s surface and increases in North Atlantic hurricane activity has been quantified for the first time. The research - carried out by scientists at UCL (University College London) and due to be published in Nature on January 31 - shows that a 0.5°C increase in sea surface temperature can be associated with a ~40 per cent increase in hurricane activity.	31st January 2008
warming exposes ancient vegetation - Canada.com Large tracts of land and ancient vegetation that has not seen the light of day in 1,600 years have been liberated from ice caps on Baffin Island, confirming the unprecedented scale of climate change underway in Canada's North. The "current warming exceeds any sustained warm episode in at least the past 1,600 years," reports a U.S. research team that is dating the landscape reappearing as the island's ice disappears.	31st January 2008
CU study: 'No-ice' alert in Arctic - Boulder Daily Camera "Even with no additional warming, our study indicates that these ice caps will be gone in 50 years or less. That hasn't certainly happened in 1,600 years."	30th January 2008
Calif. Salmon Population Declines - PhysOrg (AP) -- The number of chinook salmon returning to California's Central Valley has reached a near-record low, pointing to an "unprecedented collapse" that could lead to severe restrictions on West Coast salmon fishing this year, according to federal fishery regulators.	30th January 2008
China weather chaos a sign of things to come: experts - AFP via Yahoo! News Don't tell the thousands of Chinese stuck at railway stations or airports, but the chaos caused by a vicious cold spell afflicting much of China could be just a taste of things to come, experts say.	30th January 2008
2007 Was Tenth Warmest For U.S., Fifth Warmest Worldwide - Science Daily The average temperature for the contiguous U.S. in 2007 is officially the tenth warmest on record, according to data from scientists at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The agency also determined the global surface temperature last year was the fifth warmest on record.	28th January 2008
Environment: Will Coffee Be a Casualty of Climate Change? - Alternet Coffee farmers in South America don't need to read the latest IPCC reports; they already know.	26th January 2008
Creepy-crawlies head to Europe thanks to globalisation, climate - PhysOrg Europe now has 1,517 alien species of insects, worms, mussels and other invertebrates, a tally that is growing steadily thanks to globalisation and climate change, French researchers said on Friday.	26th January 2008
Tuvalu struggles to hold back tide - BBC News The nine tiny South Pacific islands of Tuvalu only just break the surface of the ocean - but for how much longer? See also:The ebb and flow of sea level rise - BBC News	23rd January 2008
Red Cross says changing climate worsens disasters - Reuters Climate change is making it harder for many people to access clean water and food, and widening the spread of malaria and dengue fever, the world's largest humanitarian aid agency said on Monday. The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) is asking donors for $292 million per year for 2008 and 2009 to help communities steel themselves for the threats of global warming.	22nd January 2008
Greenhouse gases at new peak in sign of Asia growth - Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News Atmospheric levels of the main greenhouse gas have set another new peak in a sign of the industrial rise of Asian economies led by China, a senior scientist said on Saturday.	20th January 2008
Peninsula flood creates 'islands' - BBC News Regular flooding turns parts of the Lleyn peninsula turn into islands say people living there.	20th January 2008
Ferry study of jellyfish 'threat' - BBC News Experts are organising spotters on ferries for signs of 'glow-in-the-dark' jellyfish heading for the coast.	19th January 2008
Sea adventure: Thoreson saw changes caused by warming - DesMoinesRegister.com Sea adventure: The sea-weary crew of six with Dave Thoreson of Okoboji was halfway into the 73-day trek on the edges of the Earth, trying to become the first American yacht to travel east to west through the Northwest Passage. Thoreson, surprised by the lack of Arctic ice, knew they had made it.	18th January 2008
Dry, polluted, plagued by rats: the crisis in China's greatest river - Guardian Unlimited Ships stranded as China's greatest river reaches 142-year low	18th January 2008
'Big climate impact' on UK coasts - BBC News Climate change is having a major impact on Britain's coasts, coastal seas and sea life, a report concludes.	17th January 2008
Spring comes early for Max the stork - Physorg Max the stork, currently the oldest animal being tracked by satellite, is flying north after a remarkably short winter sojourn in southern Spain, a natural history museum in Switzerland said Wednesday.	17th January 2008
2007 was tied as Earth's second warmest year - PhysOrg Climatologists at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City have found that 2007 tied with 1998 for Earth`s second warmest year in a century.	17th January 2008
Ice loss from Antarctica accelerating - NEWS.com.au GLOBAL warming has caused annual ice loss from the Antarctic ice sheet to surge by 75 per cent in a decade, according to the most detailed survey ever made of the white continent's coastal glaciers.	14th January 2008
Study: Northeast Winters Warming Fast - Physorg (AP) -- Earlier blooms. Less snow to shovel. Unseasonable warm spells. Signs that winters in the Northeast are losing their bite have been abundant in recent years and now researchers have nailed down numbers to show just how big the changes have been.	13th January 2008
Global warming taking its toll on Kootenays - Globe and Mail Global warming taking its toll on KootenaysGlobe and Mail, Canada. Ian Bruce, a climate-change specialist with the David Suzuki Foundation, said there are troubling signs the Kootenay region is changing more quickly than ...	12th January 2008
Older Arctic sea ice replaced by young, thin ice - Physorg A new study by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers indicates older, multi-year sea ice in the Arctic is giving way to younger, thinner ice, making it more susceptible to record summer sea-ice lows like the one that occurred in 2007.	12th January 2008
Winter Ice on Lakes, Rivers, Ponds: A Thing of the Past? If you're planning to ice skate on a local lake or river this winter, you may need to think twice, according to scientists John Magnuson, Olaf Jensen and Barbara Benson of the University of Wisconsin at Madison. The records show that later freezing and earlier ice breakup occurred on lakes and rivers across the Northern Hemisphere from 1846 to 1995. Over those 150 years, said Magnuson, changes in freeze dates averaged 5.8 days per 100 years later, and changes in ice breakup dates averaged 6.5 days per 100 years earlier. The findings translate to increasing air temperatures of about 1.2 degrees Celsius each century.	12th January 2008
Thames hit by alien mussels boom - BBC News An "explosion" of alien mussels in the Thames has been caused by global warming, a scientist says.	12th January 2008
Drought-hit Cyprus considers importing water - Environmental News Network Drought-stricken Cyprus may import water to beat a crippling shortage that is threatening to tap the island's reservoir reserves dry, its agriculture minister said on Wednesday. The decision to bring water in sea tankers from Greece would depend on weather over the next two months, but the outlook for rain was not promising, Photis Photiou said.	10th January 2008
Australia floods strand thousands - BBC News Thousands of people remain stranded by some of the worst flooding in eastern Australia for 20 years.	8th January 2008
Global Warming Hits China - Forbes There are few more startling embodiments of climate change than the current health of China's largest freshwater lake, Poyang Lake, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi. The surface area of Poyang Lake has shrunk to 50 square kilometers from its peak of more than 3,000 during the summer--it is 1.67% of its size six months ago. Some perspective is needed. A spectacular fluctuation in the lake's area from the summer flood season to the winter dry period has long been commonplace. However, the Jiangxi hydrological bureau reported that the area of the lake last winter was 300 to 500 square kilometers, up to 10 times larger than this year's figure. The lake's title would seem to require a caveat: China's largest freshwater lake-- in July.	7th January 2008
Warmer climate brings new faces to UK - The Independent Britain's bird of the year in 2008 may turn out to be a beautiful white heron whose original home was Africa.	7th January 2008
On the brink - Guardian Unlimited Hardly anybody else has mentioned it, so I might as well. An estimated £38bn ($75bn) went up in smoke, down the drain, was swept away or blown to kingdom come during 2007. Or to put it another way, human disasters triggered by natural hazards pushed economic losses to alarming levels.	5th January 2008
This drought may never break - Sydney Morning Herald IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation's most senior weather experts warned yesterday.	4th January 2008
Global temperatures 2008: another top ten year - Government News Network Although 2008 is set to be cooler globally than recent years say Met Office and University of East Anglia climate scientists, it is still forecast to be one of the top ten warmest years.	4th January 2008
Australia Hit by Floods, Fires Amid Global Warming - Planet Ark CANBERRA - Australia endured bushfires, floods and record high temperatures in its drought-ravaged foodbowl in 2007 as global warming brought the nation's sixth hottest year on record, the weather bureau said on Thursday.	4th January 2008
2007 Was One of the 10 Warmest Years, Met Office Says - Bloomberg.com Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- 2007 was one of the 10 warmest years ever, based on global recorded temperatures, according to the Met Office, the U.K. weather forecaster.	3rd January 2008
Rich harvest for Devon fleet as anchovies invade - The Independent Warm ocean currents have bought a welcome windfall to a Devon fishing fleet in the form of shoals of valuable anchovies.	2nd January 2008
Significant decline in monsoon rainfall - The Hindu Bangalore: The southwest monsoon, responsible for 80 per cent of the country's annual rainfall and the basis of Indian agriculture, has substantially reduced in the last 50 years, shrinking in duration, spatial distribution and quantum.	31st December 2007
Terror of the north on the brink - Globe and Mail The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is expected to announce within days whether, in light of the animal's shrinking habitat, it will classify the polar bear as a threatened species under the U.S. Endangered Species Act.	31st December 2007
US drought spans coast to coast; dancing for rain - EARTHtimes.org The drought gives a glimpse of what climate scientists are predicting for the coming century if global warming continues and greenhouse gasses are not brought under control.	31st December 2007
Netherlands Has Another Record Warm Year in 2007 - Planet Ark AMSTERDAM - The average temperature in the Netherlands in 2007 matched 2006, the warmest year in 300 years, and the Dutch meteorological institute said it was a sign of global warming.	31st December 2007
The Year in Review: The planet - The Independent The sheer scale of what happened hasn't sunk in, it probably hasn't sunk in at all, with most people. They're not looking back on 2007 and talking about it, in the office, in pubs or over dinner. Listen to them: they're talking about Brown taking over from Blair, or David Cameron's prospects, or England failing to qualify for the European football championships. Or they're talking about getting and spending, or love and hate, as they always have. But what happened in September dwarfs all that.	28th December 2007
Insured losses from natural disasters nearly double, risks up on global warming - CBC News From winter storms in Europe, flooding in Britain and wildfires in the U.S., losses to insurers from natural disasters nearly doubled this year to just below US$30 billion globally after an unusually quiet 2006, a leading reinsurer said Thursday. Munich Re warned that climate change could mean a growing number of weather-related catastrophes in coming years. "The trend in respect of weather extremes shows that climate change is already taking effect and that more such extremes are to be expected in the future," board member Torsten Jeworrek said in a statement. "We should not be misled by the absence of mega-catastrophes in 2007."	28th December 2007
Year hottest ever in N. Hemisphere - Toronto Star When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder. January was the warmest first month on record worldwide – 0.85 degrees Celsius above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year. And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. See also: Melting Arctic ice cap top weather story: Environment Canada - CNews Weather odds could become the norm - CBC North	27th December 2007
Climate change adversely affecting predators in world's oceans - TopNews Climate change adversely affecting predators in world's oceansTopNews, India. "Global warming may lead to severe contraction of favorable reproductive zones for some species of tunas that will have larger effects than fisheries on ...	26th December 2007
Erosion threatens Canada's coastlines - Times Colonist Crumbling coastlines are hardly a problem unique to P.E.I. Bigger storms are eroding Canadian shorelines, particularly throughout the North and the Atlantic region. Scientists identify climate change as one of the culprits.	24th December 2007
Group says warming imperils ribbon seals - Seattle Times The Center for Biological Diversity on Thursday filed a 91-page petition with the National Marine Fisheries Service seeking to list ribbon seals as threatened or endangered. The group says the classification is needed because sea ice is disappearing because of climate change brought on by humans.	23rd December 2007
South China in the midst of its worst drought in 50 years - BBC News More than one million people in south China are now without water as the country suffers from its worst drought in over 50 years.	17th December 2007
Glaciers in West China shrink by up to 18% - China Daily Lanzhou -- Glaciers in China's high-altitude western areas have shrunk seven to 18 percent over the past five years, according to a new survey by Chinese scientists.	15th December 2007
Carbon dioxide levels at 650,000-year high - Denver Post More than two miles above the Pacific surf, at the summit of the world's largest volcano, the evidence of human influence on global warming is in the air.	15th December 2007
2007 data confirms warming trend - BBC News This year has been one of the warmest since 1850, despite the cooling influence of La Nina conditions, according to scientists..	14th December 2007
Without its insulating ice cap, Arctic surface waters warm to as much as 5 C above average - PhysOrg Record-breaking amounts of ice-free water have deprived the Arctic of more of its natural "sunscreen" than ever in recent summers. The effect is so pronounced that sea surface temperatures rose to 5 C above average in one place this year, a high never before observed, says the oceanographer who has compiled the first-ever look at average sea surface temperatures for the region.	13th December 2007
Norway's Arctic islands at their hottest since Viking era: scientists Norway's Arctic archipelago of Svalbard recently experienced its highest temperatures since the end of the Viking Age around 800 years ago, the Norwegian Polar Institute said Tuesday.	12th December 2007
Scientist: 'Arctic is screaming' - CNN.com WASHINGTON (AP) -- An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years.	12th December 2007
2007's weather extremes: 263 all-time high temps broken in US ... - UI The Daily Iowan 2007's weather extremes: When the calendar turned to 2007, the heat went on and the weather just got weirder. January was the warmest first month on record worldwide - 1.53 degrees above normal. It was the first time since record-keeping began in 1880 that the globe's average temperature has been so far above the norm for any month of the year. And as 2007 drew to a close, it was also shaping up to be the hottest year on record in the Northern Hemisphere. U.S. weather stations broke or tied 263 all-time high temperature records, according to an Associated Press analysis of U.S. weather data. England had the warmest April in 348 years of record-keeping there, shattering the record set in 1865 by more than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit. It wasn't just the temperature. There were other oddball weather events. A tornado struck New York City in August, inspiring the tabloid headline: "This ain't Kansas!" In the Middle East, an equally rare cyclone spun up in June, hitting Oman and Iran. Major U.S. lakes shrank; Atlanta had to worry about its drinking water supply. South Africa got its first significant snowfall in 25 years. And on Reunion Island, 400 miles east of Africa, nearly 155 inches of rain fell in three days - a world record for the most rain in 72 hours.	12th December 2007
New Tibetan ice cores missing A-bomb blast markers; Suggest Himalayan ice fields haven't grown in last 50 years Ice cores drilled last year from the summit of a Himalayan ice field lack the distinctive radioactive signals that mark virtually every other ice core retrieved worldwide. Scientists believe that the missing signal means that this Tibetan ice field has been shrinking at least since the A-bomb test half a century ago. If true, this could foreshadow a future when the stockpiles of freshwater will dwindle and vanish, seriously affecting the lives of more than 500 million people on the Indian subcontinent.	12th December 2007
Penguins in decline due to global warming - Times Online The Emperor penguins which won the hearts of millions of children in the film Happy Feet have suffered a devastating population slump in the last 50 years, according to a report. Many colonies have fallen in size by 50 per cent as the penguins have been squeezed by the effects of climate change and overfishing, the WWF said in its report, Antarctic Penguins and Climate Change.	12th December 2007
Warming climate triples northern fire frequency - CNET Black spruce forests in Alaska and Canada have burning more often and more deeply since 1987--and releasing more carbon dioxide as a result.	11th December 2007
China suffers worst drought in 10 years - China Daily China experienced serious drought this year, which was the worst for a decade, the State Flood Control and Drought Relief Headquarters said on Friday.	8th December 2007
British Climate Impact Report Sets Scene For Future - Planet Ark LONDON - Land and sea temperatures around Britain have risen sharply under the influence of climate change and more is on the way, a government report said on Friday.	7th December 2007
SA fire danger reaches 'extreme' level - The Australian SA fire danger reaches 'extreme' levelThe Australian, Australia. FIREFIGHTERS fear South Australia is "breaking new ground" as climate change brings days of extreme fire danger earlier in the summer.	7th December 2007
Global warming wreaks havoc with nature - Seattle Post Intelligencer While humans debate at U.N. climate change talks in Bali, global warming is already wreaking havoc with nature. Most plants and animals are affected, and the change is occurring too quickly for them to evolve.	6th December 2007
Greenhouse robs rainfall in farm belt - Sydney Morning Herald GLOBAL warming has caused the world's tropical regions to expand much more rapidly than predicted, raising the prospect of an even drier farm belt in southern Australia, and the spread south of diseases such as dengue fever. As talks on climate change begin at a United Nations meeting in Bali today, research reveals the tropical zone has widened by more than two degrees of latitude over the past 25 years..	3rd December 2007
Global warming resulting in an increased similarity of plants in Alps - The Cheers New research by environmentalists indicates that global warming has resulted in an increased similarity of vegetation in mountain summits in the Alps. The findings indicate that as a result of climate change, an upward shift of flora is taking place in the area. This is not only increasing the number of species on the mountain summits studied, but also leading to an increasing homogenization of the species composition of Alpine summit vegetation. This means that species diversity within individual areas is increasing, but that species diversity across ecosystems is declining. According to biologists, the resulting homogenization of the flora could lead to a reduction in regional biodiversity, as more and more species are now forced to share the summits.	3rd December 2007
Daffodils blooming early at Eden - BBC News Gardeners at Cornwall's Eden Project are delighted by the early arrival of two daffodil varieties.	30th November 2007
2007 cools, set to be 6th warmest year on record - AlertNet Source: Reuters By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent OSLO, Nov 28 (Reuters) - This year is set to be the sixth warmest since records began 150 years ago, cooler than earlier predicted which means a slight respite for European ski resorts or bears trying to hibernate. "2007 will likely be near equal with 2006, so joint sixth warmest year," Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at Britain's University of East Anglia, told Reuters.	29th November 2007
Global warming sends salamanders packing - PhysOrg A genetic study of the salamander family that encompasses two-thirds of the world's salamander species shows that periods of global warming helped the amphibians diversify and expand their range from North America into Europe and Asia, where pockets of them are still found today.	28th November 2007
Flying foxes fall prey to Earth's rising temperature - Times Online Flying foxes have been dropping off trees and dying in droves because of the effects of climate change, researchers say. More than 30,000 of the fruit bats are estimated to have died since 1994 in heat waves associated with global warming. Mass deaths from heat stress have occurred at least 19 times since 1994, as opposed to only three anecdotal reports of similar flying fox deaths before then. The bats started to die as temperatures approached 42C, the study in Australia found. They are the first large mammal other than humans to be shown to suffer mass mortality during a heat wave.	28th November 2007
Melting Ice Displaces Walruses In The Russian Arctic - Science Daily Some 40,000 walruses have appeared on the Russian Arctic coast, a phenomenon that scientists believe is a result of global warming melting Arctic sea ice. According to WWF, this is the largest walrus haul out - areas where walruses rest when they are out of the water - registered in the Russian Arctic.	27th November 2007
This winter may be warmest ever - WZZM 13 Grand Rapids The Northern Hemisphere is the warmest this year since record-keeping started 127 years ago, according to the National Climatic Data Center. Temperatures for January through October averaged 1.3 degrees above the norm.	27th November 2007
Polar bears dying in years of early ice melt - Nature A census of polar bears in Canada’s Hudson Bay has lent some hard numbers to the long-held fear that retreating sea ice is causing some bears to starve or drown. Now, looking at 20 years of data from bears captured along the coast of Hudson Bay, a team of scientists from the United States and Canada has found that fewer of the youngest and oldest bears survived in years when the ice broke early.	24th November 2007
Early climate change victim: Andes water - Las Cruces Sun-News Bolivia: El Alto and its sister city of La Paz, the world's highest capital, depend on glaciers for at least a third of their water—more than any other urban sprawl. And those glaciers are rapidly melting because of global warming..	24th November 2007
Killer jellyfish hit Irish salmon farm for the second time A massive invasion of deadly jellyfish threatened Northern Ireland's only salmon farm for a second time in two weeks yesterday.	24th November 2007
Climate change a growing threat in Tibet, media report - Phayul Climate change is causing more weather-related disasters than ever in the Himalayan region of Tibet, where the temperature is rising faster than the rest of China, state press reported Wednesday.	22nd November 2007
Snowdonia shows signs of global warming - Daily Post Welsh environment minister Jane Davidson said last night she was shocked by photographs taken ten years apart, one showing Snowdon covered in snow and the other more recent picture, without its white peaks. They are part of an exhibition by the National Trust entitled Exposed – Climate Change in Britain’s Backyard, which opened in the Senedd building in Cardiff Bay last night.	22nd November 2007
Billions of jellyfish wipe out N. Irish salmon farm - CNN.com DUBLIN, Ireland (AP) -- The only salmon farm in Northern Ireland has lost its entire population of more than 100,000 fish, worth $2 million, to a spectacular jellyfish attack, its owners said Wednesday.	22nd November 2007
Cranberries are headed north - The Christian Science Monitor Farmers see signs that the climate-sensitive cold-loving berries are shifting their range into Canada. Blueberries, too. What's to be done?	21st November 2007
Primroses flower in warm autumn - BBC News BBC Scotland continues to record unusual weather events to illustrate possible climate change.	21st November 2007
Flocks of 'lost' auks spark climate change fears - The Independent Record-breaking sightings of vast flocks of little auks in Britain have prompted new concerns over the impact of climate change on the migration patterns of bird species. The record for the size of flock has been broken twice in four days, according to the National Trust, with 18,000 of the tiny black-and-white seabirds recorded around the Farne Islands off Northumberland last week - 7,000 more than the previous record set off Flamborough Head, East Yorkshire, in 1995. But even this vast gathering was dwarfed by the flock spotted there on Sunday when 29,000 little auks were seen.	15th November 2007
The big thirst: The great American water crisis - Independent The US drought is now so acute that, in some southern communities, the water supply is cut off for 21 hours a day. Leonard Doyle reports from Chattanooga, Tennessee, on a once-lush region where the American dream has been reduced to a single four-letter word: rain.	15th November 2007
Chile's San Rafael glacier fast disappearing - PhysOrg Chunks of glacial ice tinkled in whisky glasses as chilled tourists gazed in wonder from their boat at the massive San Rafael glacier and the markers tallying its losing battle against global warming.	10th November 2007
Global Warming Behind Water Crisis in Northeast China - DeSmog Blog Government officials in China are claiming global warming as the culprit behind massive water shortages in Northeast China. The famous Crescent Moon lake used to be over 10 meters deep, but is now only 1 meter deep as the encroaching desert sucks up the water. The disappearing lake at this point of the Silk Road is the most powerful symbol of an emerging water crisis. China's Water Resources minister, Chen Lei, said recently that an annual water shortage of nearly 40 billion cubic meters in China can be blamed on global warming. "The changes have led to a combination of both frequent drought and flooding." water shortage water crisis china global warming climate change crescent moon lake	10th November 2007
Surprised gardener grows strawberries in November - UKTV Gardens Signs that the climate is becoming warmer continue as a Suffolk gardener grows strawberries in the winter.	9th November 2007
Climate change is delaying spring in some areas - New Scientist Contrary to expectations, plants in the southern US are blooming later in the year as the climate warms	8th November 2007
Humpback whales seen in Arctic - The West Australian Endangered humpback and fin whales swam hundreds of kilometres north of their usual habitat this northern summer. Environmentalists say it is another sign of the effects of global warming and the shifting Arctic ecosystem.	7th November 2007
Tibetans wake up to nosebleeds in super-dry autumn BEIJING (Reuters) - Moisture has become a luxury in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa where many locals are waking up to nosebleeds in the dry autumn, state media said on Monday as the Himalayan region faces growing threat of global warming.	6th November 2007
Mass exodus from Mexico flooding - BBC News Hundreds of thousands of people flee severe flooding in the southern Mexican state of Tabasco.	4th November 2007
Lake Huron water levels spell deep trouble - Toronto Star When Julie Woodyear was a kid, she and her brother raced each other around their family's Georgian Bay island in dinghies. Thirty years later, a dinghy race would involve dragging the boats over land because her island is no longer an island. It's become part of the mainland.	4th November 2007
Shrinking ice means Greenland is rising fast - New Scientist The country's landmass has become surprisingly buoyant - accelerating upwards as its ice cap reduces in size, say scientists	3rd November 2007
Flooding traps 300,000 in Mexico - BBC News Rescue workers battle to help those trapped by flooding in Mexico's Tabasco state, with more rains forecast.	3rd November 2007
Glacier melting: Pandora's Box? - China Internet Information Center As global warming continues, glacier recession on the Tibetan Plateau has quickened, triggering a series of environmental calamities.	1st November 2007
Forests losing the ability to absorb man-made carbon - PhysOrg The sprawling forests of the northern hemisphere which extend from China and Siberia to Canada and Alaska are in danger of becoming a gigantic source of carbon dioxide rather than being a major "sink" that helps to offset man-made emissions of the greenhouse gas.	1st November 2007
Western Canada's Glaciers Hit 7000-Year Low Tree stumps at the feet of Western Canadian glaciers are providing new insights into the accelerated rates at which the rivers of ice have been shrinking due to human-aided global warming.	31st October 2007
More astounding NASA video: Arctic Sea Ice Loss 1979 to 2007 For some of our readers, the video we posted last week of the startling loss of Arctic sea-ice as recorded by NASA this summer just wasn't enough to convince them that the planet is in serious trouble. So here's a new NASA video showing the massive Arctic sea ice loss over the last 28 years. Look at the difference between 2005 and 2007 alone. Startled now? This animation is from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio at the Goddard Space Flight Center. This animation compares the 2005 annual Arctic minimum sea ice from 09/21/2005 (shown in orange) with the 2007 minimum sea ice from 09/14/2007.	31st October 2007
Methane Bubbling From Arctic Lakes, Now And At End Of Last Ice Age - Science Daily A team of scientists led by a researcher at the University of Alaska Fairbanks has identified a new likely source of a spike in atmospheric methane coming out of the North during the end of the last ice age.	26th October 2007
Massive California fires consistent with climate change - PhysOrg The catastrophic fires that are sweeping Southern California are consistent with what climate change models have been predicting for years, experts say, and they may be just a prelude to many more such events in the future - as vegetation grows heavier than usual and then ignites during prolonged drought periods.	25th October 2007
South struggles to cope with drought - The Christian Science Monitor via Yahoo! News Kids in Jefferson, Ga., are shutting the tap off as they brush their teeth. Adults are doing bigger, but fewer, laundry loads. And just about everybody is glancing nervously at the puddle passing for the town's reservoir.	23rd October 2007
Sweatin' the Mediterranean Heat - RealClimate Guest Commentary from Figen Mekik This quote from Drew Shindell (NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, New York) hit me very close to home: "Much of the Mediterranean area, North Africa and the Middle East rapidly are becoming drier. If the trend continues as expected, the consequences may be severe in only a couple of decades. These changes could pose significant water resource challenges to large segments of the population" (February, 2007-NASA, Science Daily). I live in Michigan, but Turkey is my home where I go for vacation on the Med. This year's drought was especially noteworthy, so I would like to share some of my observations with you, and then explore the links between the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), Mediterranean drought and anthropogenic global warming (AGW).	23rd October 2007
Inch By Inch, Great Lakes Are Getting Smaller, And Cargo Carriers Face Losses - Free Internet Press Water levels in the Great Lakes are falling; Lake Ontario, for example, is about seven inches below where it was a year ago. And for every inch of water that the lakes lose, the ships that ferry bulk materials across them must lighten their loads by 270 tons - or 540,000 pounds - or risk running aground, according to the Lake Carriers' Association, a trade group for United States-flag cargo companies.	23rd October 2007
Oceans 'soaking up less CO2' - BBC News Scientists say there has been a worrying drop in the amount of CO2 soaked up by the world's oceans.	20th October 2007
Drought-Stricken South Facing Tough Choices - New York Times A drought in the Southeastern United States has become so severe that some cities are just months away from running out of water.	17th October 2007
THREATENED SEABIRDS THRIVE IN CORNWALL - The Cornishman Global warming has led to the waters and cliffs of Cornwall increasingly becoming a haven for Europe's most threatened seabird - a species usually found in the Mediterranean. A new survey by National Oceanography Centre, Southampton, and the RSPB has discovered that a significant chunk of the world population of Balearic shearwaters now spend summer and autumn in Cornwall - with some staying on all year.	17th October 2007
Acid oceans warning - University of Queensland The world's oceans are becoming more acid, with potentially devastating consequences for corals and the marine organisms that build reefs and provide much of the Earth's breathable oxygen.	17th October 2007
Carteret Islands sinking fast - The National THE Carteret Islands are almost invisible on a map of the South Pacific, but the horseshoe scattering of atolls in eastern-most Papua New Guinea is on the frontline of climate change, as rising sea levels and storm surges eat away at their existence.	17th October 2007
Drought causing foundations to crack - WAFF 48 News Huntsville North Alabama's drought has destroyed crops and drained lakes. Now it could cause your house to shift, costing you big.	13th October 2007
Beer prices rise as drought continues - Sydney Morning Herald The price of beer and other Australian staples are set to rise in NSW due to prolonged drought.	13th October 2007
Thousands of walrus on Alaska shore alarm scientists; global warming cited - CNews ANCHORAGE, Alaska - Thousands of walrus have appeared on Alaska's northwest coast in what conservationists are calling a dramatic consequence of global warming melting the Arctic sea ice.	8th October 2007
Kashmir glaciers face the heat - OneWorld South Asia Owing to global warming, most of the small glaciers in Indian administered Kashmir have totally melted down while the big glaciers in most of the areas have decreased in size.	6th October 2007
Dengue fever epidemic hits Caribbean, Latin America