Earth on verge of five catastrophic climate tipping points, scientists warn – the Guardian
Humanity faces ‘devastating domino effects’ including mass displacement and financial ruin as planet warms…“Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity,” said Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. “They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse…”
Ecosystems as Infrastructure: A New Way of Looking at Climate Resilience – Yale Environment 360
Landscape architect Kate Orff works on rebuilding natural systems to help communities and cities reduce their climate risks. Places with interwoven ecological systems, she says, are more resilient and better able both to respond to emergencies and adapt for the future….
Long Story Shorts: How Do Invasive Species Take Over? – Hakai Institute
Invasive species start as strangers in a strange land but over time come to dominate their new homes. The ocean has played host to some of the most prolific of these infiltrations of our time. So just how are these marine invaders able to adapt and thrive in new neighborhoods?
A disappearing island: ‘The water is destroying us, one house at a time’ – NPR
With nearly a third of its population living in coastal areas, and its heavy reliance on subsistence agriculture and fishing, Sierra Leone has been identified as one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change, despite having contributed just a tiny fraction of global CO2 emissions. With a GDP per capita of barely $2,000, it is also one of the least prepared to deal with those impacts….
Is Earth in a New Time Period: The Plasticene? – Frontiers for Young Minds
Earth has a special calendar called the geologic time scale…We are currently in the Holocene Epoch, but some scientists believe we have entered a new time called the Anthropocene or the “Age of Humans” because of our impact on the planet. One of the biggest changes humans have made is inventing and using plastic..Because plastic is now found everywhere, some scientists, like us, think we have entered a new stage in Earth’s history called the Plasticene…
Earth Just Had the Hottest 12-Month Span in Recorded History – Scientific American
As this past October came to a close, it marked the hottest 12-month period ever recorded, a new analysis finds. This stark milestone is the latest in a string of superlatives to emerge this year that show how much carbon pollution has warmed the planet—and how that trend is accelerating. It also comes just weeks before international negotiators are set to meet and hash out issues around achieving the Paris climate accord’s fundamental goal: limiting global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial temperatures…
No, 11,200 Climate Refugees Aren’t Heading to Australia – the New York Times
Low-lying Tuvalu has reached a deal with its large Pacific neighbor to address the challenge of rising oceans, but it is not planning to pack up and go…
Ancient Warning of a Rising Sea | Interactive – the Washington Post
By studying the long-dead coral reefs, researchers have revealed not only how high sea levels can reach, but where the deluge will hit hardest. As temperatures surge and ice sheets melt, the fossils show, the oceans won’t rise evenly around the planet. Instead, the loss of polar ice will trigger profound changes in Earth’s gravity and shape — which, in turn, will create dramatic disparities in where ocean water flows…
Melting Ice Shelves
“Together, the Antarctic and Greenland Ice Sheets contain more than 99 percent of freshwater ice on Earth. If they both completely melted, they would raise sea level by an estimated 67.4 meters (223 feet). Long-term satellite data indicate that through most of the twentieth century, the ice sheets made very little contribution to sea level, and were nearly in balance in annual snowfall gain and ice or meltwater loss. However, the stability of the ice sheets has changed considerably in the twenty-first century…” – Ice Sheets Today