Corals are bleaching in every corner of the ocean, threatening its web of life – the Washington Post

Bleached plate corals and Sea Fans on Molasses Reef, Key Largo, Florida (by Matt Kieffer CC BY-SA 2.0 DEED via Flickr).

First around Fiji, then the Florida Keys, then Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, and now in the Indian Ocean. In the past year, anomalous ocean temperatures have left a trail of devastation for the world’s corals, bleaching entire reefs and threatening widespread coral mortality — and now, scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and International Coral Reef Initiative say the world is experiencing its fourth global bleaching event, the second in the last decade…

Nanoplastics linked to heart attack, stroke and early death, study finds – CNN

Microplastics with a diameter of 0.5 μm (small green spheres) penetrating the cytoplasm of MH-22a hepatocyte cells. (by Karimov Denis and Valova Iana, captured by ZEISS Axio Imager 2, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia).https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Microplastics_that_have_penetrated_inside_cells.png

People with microplastics or nanoplastics in their carotid artery tissues were twice as likely to have a heart attack, stroke or die from any cause over the next three years than people who had none, a new study found…“To date, our study is the first that associated the plastic contamination with human diseases,” said Raffaele Marfella, lead author of the study published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine…

The planet saw its hottest day on record this week – CNN

The Burning of the Sky (byJustin Vidamo CC BY 2.0 via Flickr ).

On Monday, the average global temperature reached 17.01 degrees Celsius (62.62 Fahrenheit), the highest in the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction’s data, which goes back to 1979. On Tuesday, it climbed even further, reaching 17.18 degrees Celsius and global temperature remained at this record-high on Wednesday…

California cleans up from one storm as it prepares for another – CNN

Days after California was hit by “the most impressive storm in nearly 20 years,” the state – fully saturated in many places – is gearing up this weekend for yet another series of atmospheric river events, with flooding, hail, powerful wind gusts and even funnel clouds possible in spots…