Decades after the US buried nuclear waste abroad, climate change could unearth it – Grist Magazine

Aerial view of the Runit Dome (or Cactus Dome), Runit Island, Enewetak Atoll c. 1977-1980. The crater created by the Cactus shot of Operation Hardtack I was used as a burial pit to inter 84,000 cubic meters of radioactive soil scraped from the various contaminated Enewetak Atoll islands Courtesy of US Defense Special Weapons Agency, Public domain, via Wikimedia).

A new report says melting ice sheets and rising seas could disturb waste from U.S. nuclear projects in Greenland and the Marshall Islands…The report summarizes disagreements between Marshall Islands officials and the U.S. Department of Energy regarding the risks posed by U.S. nuclear waste. The GAO recommends that the agency adopt a communications strategy for conveying information about the potential for pollution to the Marshallese people.

Category 6-level hurricanes are already here, a new study says – Grist Magazine

In early September 2019, a loose chain of tropical cyclones lined up across the Western Hemisphere.(by Joshua Stevens, using GOES 16 imagery courtesy of NOAA and the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS). Caption by Kathryn Hansen, courtesy of NASA Earth Observatory,)

In the real world, Category 5 is synonymous with the biggest and baddest storms. But some U.S. scientists are making the case that it no longer captures the intensity of recent hurricanes. A paper published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences lays out a framework for extending the current hurricane-rating system…with a new category for storms that have winds topping 192 miles per hour. According to the study, the world has already seen storms that would qualify as Category 6s…

Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction – Grist Magazine

Irreversible (by YongL CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DEED via DeviantArt).

Grist’s Imagine 2200: Climate Fiction for Future Ancestors short story contest celebrates stories that offer vivid, hope-filled, diverse visions of climate progress. From 1,000 submissions, our reviewers and judges selected the three winners and nine finalists you will discover in this collection. These stories are not afraid to explore the challenges ahead, but offer hope that we can work together to build a more sustainable and just world….