Many of Scotland’s homes will fail to protect people against deadly heatwaves brought by global warming, experts have warned. Long-term planners believe the nation’s housing stock, designed to withstand cold and wet but not scorching summers, must be future-proofed to avoid mass fatalities. Experts, including those who formally advise governments, say modern flats and houses, especially from the 1960s and 1970s, will have to be retrofitted with new ventilation and shade systems to stop residents becoming insufferably hot, sometimes dangerously so. Scotland recorded one of its longest, hottest summers ever last year and climate scientists predict such weather will become increasingly normal over the next three decades.
Herald 9th April 2019 read more »
Global warming is transforming the Arctic, and the changes have rippled so widely that the entire biophysical system is shifting toward an “unprecedented state,” an international team of researchers concludes in a new analysis of nearly 50 years of temperature readings and changes across the ecosystems. Arctic forests are turning into bogs as permafrost melts beneath their roots. The icy surface that reflects the sun’s radiation back into space is darkening and sea ice cover is declining. Warmth and moisture trapped by greenhouse gases are pumping up the water cycle, swelling rivers that carry more sediment and nutrients to the sea, which can change ocean chemistry and affect the coastal marine food chain. And those are just a few of the changes.
Inside Climate News 8th April 2019 read more »
Earth’s glaciers are melting much faster than scientists thought. A new study shows they are losing 369 billion tons of snow and ice each year, more than half of that in North America. The most comprehensive measurement of glaciers worldwide found that thousands of inland masses of snow compressed into ice are shrinking 18 percent faster than an international panel of scientists calculated in 2013. The world’s glaciers are shrinking five times faster now than they were in the 1960s. Their melt is accelerating due to global warming, and adding more water to already rising seas, the study found.
AP 9th April 2019 read more »
