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<font size="+1"><i>April 20, 2018</i></font><br>
<br>
[Living on Earth - about those lawsuits]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00015&segmentID=1">Making
Big Oil Companies Pay for Climate Disruption (Audio)</a></b><br>
CURWOOD: From PRI, and the Jennifer and Ted Stanley Studios at the
University of Massachusetts, Boston, this is Living on Earth. I'm
Steve Curwood. Major fights over the fallout of climate change are
heating up in state and federal courts in California. The odds are
long, but a win by the municipalities could prove historic. San
Francisco, Oakland, Santa Cruz, and other towns and some counties
have filed several actions against Chevron, Shell, Exxon Mobil and
other fossil fuel companies, claiming the use of their products
raises sea level.<br>
The plaintiffs want these companies to pay for some of the
infrastructure that is needed to protect against floods. Exxon Mobil
and some other defendants allegedly knew for decades about the
damaging impacts of carbon fuel on climate stability. <br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://loe.org/audio/stream.m3u?file=/content/2018-04-13/loe_180413_web_a1.mp3">stream</a>/<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.loe.org/content/2018-04-13/loe_180413_web_a1.mp3">download</a>
this segment as an MP3 file <br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00015&segmentID=1">https://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=18-P13-00015&segmentID=1</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Wunderground]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning">Why
Is Oklahoma Burning?</a></b><br>
Bob Henson <br>
Oklahoma's third megafire in three years-the Rhea Fire, which has
torched some 242,000 acres in less than a week-may grow even worse
on Tuesday, as horrific fire weather conditions sweep in from New
Mexico and west Texas. Relative humidity may drop as low as 3% in
northwest OK, with temperatures expected to be well above 90F and
winds predicted to gust above 40 mph.<br>
<br>
The NOAA/NWS Storm Prediction Center has placed a huge swath of New
Mexico, Colorado, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma under an "extremely
critical" fire weather threat for Tuesday. It's the most dire rating
of fire threat used by SPC, and the second extremely-critical day in
the past week, following Friday, April 13. "Given dry fuels and
ongoing drought, the stage will be set for fast-moving fires
exhibiting extreme behavior," warned SPC in the outlook issued at 1
am CDT Tuesday.<br>
- -- - - <br>
Weather, climate, vegetation: How they're conspiring to bring
megafires to Oklahoma...<br>
- - - - - -<br>
The office began using the RFTI in its fire weather graphics in
2016. Last Friday, April 13, was the first time that forecast
conditions reached the "historically critical" category (essentially
a subset of the "extremely critical" designation by SPC). It showed
up again in the forecast for Tuesday, April 17, .. <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://s.w-x.co/wu/fire-wx-outlook-OUN-4.17.18-725px.jpg">see
graphic</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://s.w-x.co/wu/fire-wx-outlook-OUN-4.17.18-725px.jpg">https://s.w-x.co/wu/fire-wx-outlook-OUN-4.17.18-725px.jpg</a>
<br>
- - - - - <br>
Alternating wet and dry periods leading to a profusion of fire-prone
vegetation....<br>
Likewise, the summers of 2016 and 2017 were on the moist side, said
McManus. "We also had a pretty severe ice storm during January 2017
that left lots of big fuels on the ground waiting for that spark,"
McManus said. Later that year came the the state's second-wettest
August on record. "August would normally be a time we'd get rid of
some growth in our typical summer burn season," said McManus.<br>
<br>
The landscape of the Southern High Plains has been extraordinarily
dry over the last six months. The western third of Oklahoma has seen
little more than 2" since October-only about 20% of average-and most
of the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandles have received much less than
1", making it the driest six months on record in some locations. Any
moistening of the landscape has been all too brief, which has left
the landscape highly vulnerable to a spell of fire-friendly weather.<br>
- - - - -<br>
A growing complication for fire risk across the Southern Plains is
the expansion of eastern redcedar. These small, tough evergreen
trees, native to nearly all of Oklahoma, are the nation's most
widespread tree-sized juniper. Prior to European settlement, fires
set by lightning or by Native Americans kept eastern cedar limited
to small canyons or outcrops where the fires burned less
intensely...<br>
- - - - <br>
A fascinating pair of studies recently published in Earth
Interactions (see <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/EI-D-17-0011.1">Part
1</a> and <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/EI-D-17-0012.1">Part
II</a>) discusses the eastward progression of the arid-to-humid
boundary across the Southern Plains-historically associated with
longitude 100W, or the 100th meridian-as a result of climate change.
This gradual shift may become an increasingly important factor in
the fire-and-climate mix in and near Oklahoma as the century
unfolds. <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2018/04/11/the-100th-meridian-where-the-great-plains-used-to-begin-now-moving-east/">Columbia
University</a> and weather.com have more on these studies....<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning">https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/why-oklahoma-burning</a></font><br>
- - - - - - -<br>
[follow the fire]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5746/">Rhea Fire
Information - InciWeb the Incident Information System</a></b><br>
- Use the map or search bar to locate wildland fire and other
natural resource incidents. Click a marker on the map and use the
"Go to Incident" button for detailed information. From the incident
page you can access announcements, closures, news, maps, and
photographs from the menu below the map (on ...<br>
<hr size="2" width="100%"> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5746/">https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5746/</a><br>
---<br>
[Bookmark this site]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true" href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/">InciWeb
- Incident Information System</a></b><br>
About<br>
InciWeb is an interagency all-risk incident information management
system. The system was developed with two primary missions:<br>
Provide the public a single source of incident related information<br>
Provide a standardized reporting tool for the Public Affairs
community<br>
A number of supporting systems automate the delivery of incident
information to remote sources. This ensures that the information
regarding active incidents is consistent, and the delivery is
timely.<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/">https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/</a></font><br>
- - - - - -<br>
[space tech video]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wildfiretoday.com/2018/04/18/time-lapse-of-colorado-fires-detected-by-satellite/">Time-lapse
of Colorado fires detected by satellite</a></b><br>
video <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs</a><br>
This is a time-lapse of wildfires in southeast Colorado detected by
the fire temperature sensor on the GOES 16 satellite between 1700
UTC April 17 and 0400 UTC April 18. The fire near the arrow is the
117 Fire between Colorado Springs and Pueblo. At the lower right a
fire can be seen burning from Colorado into Stanton and Morton
counties in Kansas. Several other fires can also be seen. The fires
were pushed by very strong winds that stirred up clouds of dust.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpPmnweVkrs</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Well, duh...]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/18/glacier-loss-is-accelerating-because-of-global-warming">Glacier
loss is accelerating because of global warming</a></b><br>
The Guardian John Abraham<br>
As climate scientists predicted, glaciers are vanishing due to
rapidly warming temperatures.<br>
With global warming, we can make <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2015/jul/31/climate-models-are-even-more-accurate-than-you-thought">predictions</a>
and then take measurements to test those predictions. One prediction
(a pretty obvious one) is that a warmer world will have less snow
and ice. In particular, areas that have year-round ice and snow will
start to melt.<br>
Alpine glaciers are large bodies of ice that can be formed high in
mountains, typically in bowls called cirques. The ice slowly flows
downwards, pulled by gravity, and is renewed in their upper regions.
A sort of balance can occur where the loss of ice by melting or
flowing at the bottom is equal to the gain of snow and ice by
precipitation.<br>
As the Earth warms, the melt line moves upwards so that the glacier
melts faster and faster at the bottom, shortening the glacier and
reducing its mass. Ultimately, the melted water flows into streams
and rivers and ends up in the oceans, contributing to <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/feb/27/scientists-have-detected-an-acceleration-in-sea-level-rise">accelerating
sea level rise</a>.<br>
While glaciers are interesting from an intellectual standpoint, they
are also important to ecosystems and society. For example, the rate
of glacier melt affects downstream water levels, river flowrates,
and the water available for human use. So, it would be really
important for us to be able to predict what will happen with
glaciers in the future and plan for how water availability will
change.<br>
Of the groups that track glaciers, my favorite is the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/">World
Glacier Monitoring Service</a>, which publishes a survey of the
mass changes from selected glaciers around the world, available <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://wgms.ch/latest-glacier-mass-balance-data/">here</a>...
<br>
<font size="-1"><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/18/glacier-loss-is-accelerating-because-of-global-warming">https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/apr/18/glacier-loss-is-accelerating-because-of-global-warming</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Really? Competition?]<br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180418092052.htm">Competition
between males improves resilience against climate change</a></b><br>
Science Daily <br>
"Our results indicate that these competitive mating systems can play
an important role in determining the response to new environments,
whereas species where there is less competition for mates are likely
to be less able to adapt to new conditions."<br>
The authors caution that the study is only a laboratory
demonstration of the effect and more research is needed to fully
understand how these effects might operate in natural systems.<font
size="-1"><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180418092052.htm">https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180418092052.htm</a></font><br>
<br>
<br>
[Art] <br>
<b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/three-to-see-new-york-19-4">Three
to see New York 19-4</a></b><br>
Art Newspaper<br>
In Times Square, Chin has made tablets and mobile phones available
to show a new augmented reality piece, Unmoored, which "floods" the
famous tourist destination so that viewers can experience a climate
change-induced world of water, part of a collaboration with Times
Square Arts.<font size="-1">..<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/three-to-see-new-york-19-4">https://www.theartnewspaper.com/news/three-to-see-new-york-19-4</a></font><br>
<br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html"><br>
</a><font size="+1"><b><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html">This
Day in Climate History - April 20, 2007</a> - from D.R.
Tucker</b></font><br>
April 20, 2007: The Washington Post reports:<br>
<blockquote>"A third of Americans say global warming ranks as the
world's single<br>
largest environmental problem, double the number who gave it top<br>
ranking last year, a nationwide poll shows.<br>
<br>
"In the new poll, conducted jointly by The Washington Post, ABC
News<br>
and Stanford University, most of those surveyed said that climate<br>
change is real and that they want the federal government to do
more<br>
about it. But the survey also shows there is little public
agreement<br>
about the policies the United States should adopt to address it.<br>
<br>
"The findings come weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that the<br>
federal government has the right to regulate carbon dioxide, the<br>
largest contributor to human-caused warming. Congress is pressing
to<br>
enact limits on all greenhouse-gas emissions linked to climate
change,<br>
but it remains unclear how soon the House or the Senate could pass<br>
such legislation."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html">http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/19/AR2007041902527_pf.html</a><br>
<br>
<br>
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