Unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP), popularly known as UFOs, are probably just balloons, planes, or solar glints and not extraterrestrial life, as per a recent report by NASA, Business Insider reported. NASA assembled an independent panel last year to study UAPs and compile data. The report, released Thursday, suggests new methods to study UAPs and confirms the lack of evidence for alien visitors on Earth.
According to David Spergel, the chair of the UAP Independent Study Team, unusual sightings can often be explained by planes, balloons, drones, weather phenomena, and instrument features. He cited a Chinese spy balloon mistaken for a UFO as an example.
The report also recommends the use of AI and machine learning to analyze data collected by NASA’s instruments, like the James Webb Space Telescope. Nicola Fox, head of the science directorate at NASA, affirmed that AI could help find patterns in complex data faster than humans.
NASA has also created a new position, Director of UAP Research, to lead these investigations. The appointed official, whose identity hasn’t been disclosed due to harassment concerns, will focus on determining the cause of these phenomena. NASA still maintains the possibility of extraterrestrial life somewhere in the universe.
“If you ask me: Do I believe there is life in a universe that is so vast like ours… My personal answer is yes,” said Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator. He added that such life would have to belong to a highly advanced civilization due to the vast distances involved.
Cal Fire, the firefighting agency in California, has embraced the power of AI in its ongoing battle against wildfires.
Captain Chris Africa, stationed at the Cal Fire Emergency Command Center in Grass Valley, is at the forefront of this technological revolution. The newly installed wildfire cameras, driven by AI algorithms, generate real-time alerts whenever smoke is detected.
Africa explained, "These cameras are all auto-generated and have all moved based off AI indicators." The dispatch monitors now prominently display a red box whenever the cameras identify smoke, which Africa referred to as "signatures."
By clicking on the Raw AI option, he can access a comprehensive view of cameras currently detecting these signatures, indicating the potential presence of smoke or other anomalies the camera system perceives.
In addition to visual detection, computers equipped with cutting-edge technology are helping predict the trajectory of wildfires by considering various factors such as topography and wind speeds.
Cal Fire Battalion Chief David Krussow, based at the Grass Valley Air Attack Base, relies on computer models accessible via his smartphone. This information provides real-time updates on the fire's location and projected path, revolutionizing how firefighting operations are coordinated.
A recent study has highlighted under-prepared regions across the world most at risk of the devastating effects of scorching temperatures.
The University of Bristol-led research, published in Nature Communications, shows that unprecedented heat extremes combined with socioeconomic vulnerability puts certain regions, such as Afghanistan, Papua New Guinea, and Central America,most in peril.
Countries yet to experience the most intense heatwaves are often especially susceptible, as adaptation measures are often only introduced after the event. A high chance of record-breaking temperatures, growing populations, and limited healthcare and energy provision, increase the risks.
Beijing and Central Europe are also on the list of hotspots, as if record-breaking heatwaves occurred in these densely populated regions millions of people would be adversely affected. In light of the findings, the researchers are calling for policy makers in hotspot regions to consider relevant action plans to reduce the risk of deaths and associated harms from climate extremes.
Lead author, climate scientist Dr Vikki Thompson at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment, said: "As heatwaves are occurring more often we need to be better prepared. We identify regions that may have been lucky so far -- some of these regions have rapidly growing populations, some are developing nations, some are already very hot. We need to ask if the heat action plans for these areas are sufficient."
The researchers used extreme value statistics -- a method to estimate the return periods of rare events -- and large datasets from climate models and observations to pinpoint regions globally where temperature records are most likely to be broken soonest and the communities consequently in greatest danger of experiencing extreme heat.
The researchers also cautioned that statistically implausible extremes, when current records are broken by margins that seemed impossible until they occurred, could happen anywhere. These unlikely events were found to have transpired in almost a third (31%) of the regions assessed where observations were deemed reliable enough between 1959 and 2021, such as the 2021 Western North America heatwave.
Co-author Dann Mitchell, Professor in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Bristol Cabot Institute for the Environment, said: "Being prepared saves lives. We have seen some of the most unexpected heatwaves around the world lead to heat-related deaths in the tens of thousands. In this study, we show that such record smashing events could occur anywhere. Governments around the world need to be prepared."
Human-induced climate change is causing an increase in the frequency, intensity, and duration of heatwaves, which have the potential to lead to thousands more excess deaths globally. Improving our understanding of where society may not be ready for climate extremes can help prioritize mitigation in the most vulnerable regions. In recognition of the dangerous consequences of climate change, evidenced by the work of its climate experts, in 2019 the University of Bristol became the first UK university to declare a climate emergency.
Scientists have identified 27 global warming accelerators known as amplifying feedback loops, including some that the researchers say may not be fully accounted for in climate models.
They note that the findings, published today in the journal One Earth, add urgency to the need to respond to the climate crisis and provide a roadmap for policymakers aiming to avert the most severe consequences of a warming planet.
In climate science, amplifying feedback loops are situations where a climate-caused alteration can trigger a process that causes even more warming, which in turn intensifies the alteration. An example would be warming in the Arctic, leading to melting sea ice, which results in further warming because sea water absorbs rather than reflects solar radiation.
Postdoctoral scholar Christopher Wolf and distinguished professor William Ripple led the study, which in all looked at 41 climate change feedbacks. "Many of the feedback loops we examined significantly increase warming because of their connection to greenhouse gas emissions," Wolf said. "To the best of our knowledge, this is the most extensive list available of climate feedback loops, and not all of them are fully considered in climate models. What's urgently needed is more research and modeling and an accelerated cutback of emissions."
The paper makes two calls to action for "immediate and massive" emissions reductions:
Minimize short-term warming given that "climate disasters" in the form of wildfires, coastal flooding, permafrost thaw, intense storms and other extreme weather are already occurring.
Mitigate the possible major threats looming from climate tipping points that are drawing ever-closer due to the prevalence of the many amplifying feedback loops. A tipping point is a threshold after which a change in a component of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating.
"Transformative, socially just changes in global energy and transportation, short-lived air pollution, food production, nature preservation and the international economy, together with population policies based on education and equality, are needed to meet these challenges in both the short and long term," Ripple said. "It's too late to fully prevent the pain of climate change, but if we take meaningful steps soon while prioritizing human basic needs and social justice, it could still be possible to limit the harm."
Ripple, Wolf and co-authors from the University of Exeter, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, the Woodwell Climate Research Center and Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates considered both biological and physical feedbacks. Biological feedbacks include forest dieback, soil carbon loss and wildfire; physical feedbacks involve changes such as reduced snow cover, increased Antarctic rainfall and shrinking arctic sea ice.
MIT spin-off Quaise says it's going to use hijacked fusion technology to drill the deepest holes in history, unlocking clean, virtually limitless, supercritical geothermal energy that can re-power fossil-fueled power plants all over the world. Using millimeter wave drilling systems, Quaise Energy states their technology can drill up to 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) deep and harness the "virtually unlimited" amount of heat found below. The firm has now sourced $40 million in Series A funding for their venture. “A rapid transition to clean energy is one of the biggest challenges faced by humanity,” said Arunas Chesonis, Managing Partner of Safar Partners, who are leading the financing round, in a statement.
Everyone knows the Earth's core is hot, but maybe the scale of it still has the power to surprise. Temperatures in the iron center of the core are estimated to be around 5,200 °C (9,392 °F), generated by heat from radioactive elements decaying combining with heat that still remains from the very formation of the planet – an event of cataclysmic violence when a swirling cloud of gas and dust was crushed into a ball by its own gravity.
Where there's access to heat, there's harvestable geothermal energy. And there's so much heat below the Earth's surface, according to Paul Woskov, a senior fusion research engineer at MIT, that tapping just 0.1 percent of it could supply the entire world's energy needs for more than 20 million years.
The problem is access. Where subterranean heat sources naturally occur close to the surface, easily accessible and close enough to a relevant power grid for economically viable transmission, geothermal becomes a rare example of totally reliable, round-the-clock green power generation. The Sun stops shining, the wind stops blowing, but the rock's always hot. Of course, these conditions are fairly rare, and as a result, geothermal currently supplies only around 0.3 percent of global energy consumption.
The deepest human drill holes are not deep enough
If we could drill deep enough, we could put geothermal power stations just about anywhere we wanted them. But that's harder than it sounds. The Earth's crust varies in thickness between about 5-75 km (3-47 miles), with the thinnest parts tending to be way out in the deep ocean.
The deepest hole humanity has ever managed to drill is the Kola Superdeep Borehole. This Russian project near the Norwegian border struck out in 1970, aiming to puncture the crust right down to the mantle, and one of its bore holes reached a vertical depth of 12,289 m (40,318 ft) in 1989, before the team decided it was unfeasible to go any deeper, and ran out of money. At that depth, the Kola team members expected the temperature to be somewhere around 100 °C (212 °F), but in reality they found it was closer to 180 °C (356 °F). The rock was less dense and more porous than expected, and these factors combined with the elevated heat to create nightmare drilling conditions. The Kola site has fallen into complete disrepair, and this "entrance to hell," a pinnacle (or perhaps nadir) of human achievement, is now an anonymous, welded-shut hole.
Conventional drills glide easily through rock and minerals found at shallow depths in the crust but get deeper and hard rock, extreme pressure, and increases in temperature make drill bits useless. To create a material that can withstand such conditions would be expensive to the point of redundancy, and so drilling has remained strictly near the surface. Enter Quaise Energy’s "gyrotron-powered drilling platform". The company will use conventional drilling to reach basement rock, before using their new platform that directs high energy waves downward using a long guide. There is no conventional drill bit to melt, and the waves should be able to handle the dense and hot rock found in the depths below. Quaise's millimeter wave drilling system uses a technology that has been theorized for almost a decade, but is yet to be produced at scale. Considered a form of "directed energy drilling" – which sounds like something ripped straight out of Star Trek – the technology involves using high-frequency waves to heat the rock in its path to such a temperature that it either melts or vaporizes. It sounds sci-fi because it quite literally is – or so scientists thought. Quaise would then use this heat to "repower traditional power plants", removing the need for fossil fuels.
"Our technology allows us to access energy anywhere in the world, at a scale far greater than wind and solar, enabling future generations to thrive in a world powered with abundant clean energy" said Carlos Araque, CEO and co-founder of Quaise Energy, in a statement. To date, the company has understandably remained relatively quiet on the exact capabilities of its technology. As such, it is difficult to tell whether the technology will be viable at this stage, but millimeter wave drilling systems are not without their challenges. For one, they require large amounts of energy to produce sufficient directed energy to melt or vaporize rocks, which Quaise claims their gyrotron source is an efficient device for the job. There are also significant transmission losses of energy when high-frequency waves are sent over distance, with the high temperatures 10-20 kilometers (6.2-12.4 miles) into the crust also affecting the transmission efficiency.
It remains to be seen whether Quaise can deliver on their promises – they aim to build functional drilling machines by 2024 – but if they can, it would be a geothermal breakthrough that would send ripples through the world of clean energy.
A series of major floods in Australia has made global headlines in recent years. People around the world were shocked to see Sydney, the city known for the 2000 Olympics, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, sunshine and Bondi beach culture inundated with flash floods this year. But were these floods a freak occurrence or a sign of things to come?
Recent research has found an alarming increase of at least 40% in the rate at which rain falls in the most intense rapid rain bursts in Sydney over the past two decades. This rapid increase in peak rainfall intensity has never been reported elsewhere, but may be happening in other parts of the world.
The findings of a recent study, published in Science, have major implications for the city’s preparedness for flash flooding. More intense downpours are likely to overwhelm stormwater systems that were designed for past conditions.
The study demonstrated the increases in the rate of rainfall of rapid rain bursts for each of three weather radars (at Newcastle, Terrey Hills and Wollongong). All radars showed a rate of change of at least 20% per decade. To increase the climate scientists' confidence, they also calculated the change for rapid rain bursts observed by two radars (Wollongong and Terrey Hills) at the same time. The rates of change in these storms are much higher (80-90% per decade) than for storms detected only by a single radar station.
One possible explanation could be these are more extreme storms that are well developed and can be seen by two radars simultaneously. So, it is possible that the change in rainfall rates for well-developed rapid rain bursts is even greater. A dangerous situation.
The annual Antarctic ozone hole reached an average area of 8.9 million square miles (23.2 million square kilometers) between Sept. 7 and Oct. 13, 2022. This depleted area of the ozone layer over the South Pole was slightly smaller than last year and generally continued the overall shrinking trend of recent years.
“Over time, steady progress is being made, and the hole is getting smaller,” said Paul Newman, chief scientist for Earth sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We see some wavering as weather changes and other factors make the numbers wiggle slightly from day to day and week to week. But overall, we see it decreasing through the past two decades. The elimination of ozone-depleting substances through the Montreal Protocol is shrinking the hole.”
The ozone layer – the portion of the stratosphere that protects our planet from the Sun’s ultraviolet rays – thins to form an “ozone hole” above the South Pole every September. Chemically active forms of chlorine and bromine in the atmosphere, derived from human-produced compounds, attach to high-altitude polar clouds each southern winter. The reactive chlorine and bromine then initiate ozone-destroying reactions as the Sun rises at the end of Antarctica’s winter.
Researchers at NASA and NOAA detect and measure the growth and breakup of the ozone hole with instruments aboard the Aura, Suomi NPP, and NOAA-20 satellites. On Oct. 5, 2022, those satellites observed a single-day maximum ozone hole of 10.2 million square miles (26.4 million square kilometers), slightly larger than last year.
Built to help scientists understand how dust affects climate, the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation can also pinpoint emissions of the potent greenhouse gas.
NASA’s Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) mission is mapping the prevalence of key minerals in the planet’s dust-producing deserts – information that will advance our understanding of airborne dust’s effects on climate. But EMIT has demonstrated another crucial capability: detecting the presence of methane, a potent greenhouse gas.
In the data EMIT has collected since being installed on the International Space Station in July, the science team has identified more than 50 “super-emitters” in Central Asia, the Middle East, and the Southwestern United States. Super-emitters are facilities, equipment, and other infrastructure, typically in the fossil-fuel, waste, or agriculture sectors, that emit methane at high rates.
“Reining in methane emissions is key to limiting global warming.
This exciting new development will not only help researchers better pinpoint where methane leaks are coming from, but also provide insight on how they can be addressed – quickly,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “The International Space Station and NASA’s more than two dozen satellites and instruments in space have long been invaluable in determining changes to the Earth’s climate. EMIT is proving to be a critical tool in our toolbox to measure this potent greenhouse gas – and stop it at the source.”
Methane absorbs infrared light in a unique pattern – called a spectral fingerprint – that EMIT’s imaging spectrometer can discern with high accuracy and precision. The instrument can also measure carbon dioxide. The new observations stem from the broad coverage of the planet afforded by the space station’s orbit, as well as from EMIT’s ability to scan swaths of Earth’s surface dozens of miles wide while resolving areas as small as a soccer field.
“These results are exceptional, and they demonstrate the value of pairing global-scale perspective with the resolution required to identify methane point sources, down to the facility scale,” said David Thompson, EMIT’s instrument scientist and a senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the mission. “It’s a unique capability that will raise the bar on efforts to attribute methane sources and mitigate emissions from human activities.”
Relative to carbon dioxide, methane makes up a fraction of human-caused greenhouse-gas emissions, but it’s estimated to be 80 times more effective, ton for ton, at trapping heat in the atmosphere in the 20 years after release. Moreover, where carbon dioxide lingers for centuries, methane persists for about a decade, meaning that if emissions are reduced, the atmosphere will respond in a similar timeframe, leading to slower near-term warming.
Identifying methane point sources can be a key step in the process. With knowledge of the locations of big emitters, operators of facilities, equipment, and infrastructure giving off the gas can quickly act to limit emissions.
The Nord Stream pipeline blasts have raised tensions in northern Europe — as well as concerns over the environmental impact of the leaks.
The two explosions in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea resulted in what could amount to the largest-ever single release of methane gas into the atmosphere, but it may not be enough to have a major effect on climate change, experts say.
While sudden influxes of methane from underwater pipelines are unusual and scientists have little precedent to fall back on, the consensus is that with so much methane spewing into the atmosphere from all around the globe, the several hundred thousand tons from the pipelines will not make a dramatic difference.
“It’s not trivial, but it’s a modest-sized U.S. city, something like that,” said Drew Shindell, a professor of earth science at Duke University. “There are so many sources all around the world. Any single event tends to be small. I think this tends to fall in that category.”
New data released Wednesday by the Danish Energy Agency allowed scientists to produce preliminary estimates of the amount of methane released. If all that gas reaches the atmosphere, it would be equivalent to about 0.1 percent of the estimated annual global methane emissions, according to scientists with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Gas Hydrates Project.
From an emissions perspective, the breach is “an important one to watch,” said Carolyn Ruppel, chief of the project, who made the estimate with a colleague, Bill Waite. A worst-case calculation by Thomas Lauvaux, a researcher with the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences in France, equated it to what comes from about 1 million cars in a year — compared with the about 250 million cars operating in the European Union alone.
Other scientists cautioned against underestimating methane’s power. Paul Balcombe, a senior lecturer in chemical engineering and renewable energy at London’s Queen Mary University, called it a “really potent greenhouse gas” and said that “even a little leak has quite a climate impact.”
Swedish monitoring stations that measure local atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have reported spikes since the pipeline burst, with the methane concentration 20 to 25 percent higher than usual, “which is quite remarkable compared with our long-term data series,” Thomas Holst, a researcher at Lund University in Sweden, told The Washington Post in an email, while maintaining it was not enough to pose a health risk.
Monitoring stations in Finland and Norway reported similar spikes. Ruppel noted that “methane is generally well-mixed in the atmosphere, so these local spikes would dissipate over the globe.” Despite the size of the leak, it isn’t likely to affect marine life in the way an oil leak might, said Jasmin Cooper, a research associate at the Sustainable Gas Institute. “The environmental impact will be toward global warming.” Images released Thursday by the Swedish coast guard still show a large mass of methane bubbles on the sea surface emanating from the four leaks across the pipelines — not three, as authorities initially said.
Scientists say that further imaging and access to the site are both necessary to get a clearer picture of the leaks and to calculate how much methane might be released into the atmosphere. “We know it’s leaking badly because we see the pictures and video of the gas bubbling at the water surface, but we don’t know anything about the leaks,” Cooper said. “We don’t know how big they are or where they are in the pipeline, and so it’s difficult to figure out the flow rate.”
Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming.
An international research team synthesized evidence for tipping points, their temperature thresholds, timescales, and impacts from a comprehensive review of over 200 papers published since 2008, when climate tipping points were first rigorously defined. They have increased the list of potential tipping points from nine to sixteen.
The research, published in advance of a major conference “Tipping Points: from climate crisis to positive transformation” at the University of Exeter (12-14th September), concludes human emissions have already pushed Earth into the tipping points danger zone. Five of the sixteen may be triggered at today’s temperatures: the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, widespread abrupt permafrost thaw, collapse of convection in the Labrador Sea, and massive die-off of tropical coral reefs. Four of these move from possible events to likely at 1.5°C global warming, with five more becoming possible around this level of heating.
Lead author David Armstrong McKay from Stockholm Resilience Centre, University of Exeter, and the Earth Commission says, “We can see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well.”
“The world is already at risk of some tipping points. As global temperatures rise further, more tipping points become possible.” he adds. “The chance of crossing tipping points can be reduced by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, starting immediately.
The Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), stated that risks of triggering climate tipping points become high by around 2°C above preindustrial temperatures and very high by 2.5-4°C.
This new analysis indicates that Earth may have already left a ‘safe’ climate state when temperatures exceeded approximately 1°C warming. A conclusion of the research is therefore that even the United Nations’ Paris Agreement goal to limit warming to well-below 2°C and preferably 1.5°C is not enough to fully avoid dangerous climate change. According to the assessment, tipping point likelihood increases markedly in the ‘Paris range’ of 1.5-2°C warming, with even higher risks beyond 2°C.
The study provides strong scientific support for the Paris Agreement and associated efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C, because it shows that the risk of tipping points escalates beyond this level. To have a 50% chance of achieving 1.5°C and thus limiting tipping point risks, global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by half by 2030, reaching net-zero by 2050.
Can attacks at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant cause another Chernobyl explosion? The tragedy would be 10 times larger than Chernobyl and Hiroshima!!! While the actions of Russian occupiers are predictable, the radioactive cloud they could cause is not. And that cloud could go anywhere, hitting any part of Europe and even far beyond it.
From the Loire to the Danube, dried-out rivers are jeopardizing Europe's trade, transport, energy and wildlife.
Europe’s major rivers are shrinking under the most severe climate-driven drought in decades. It’s distressing enough to see mighty waterways like the Loire, Po and Rhine reduced to a trickle in places. But the ongoing drought is also revealing how much we depend on them for trade, energy and transport. The Rhine’s evaporation is especially concerning. At the chokepoint of Kaub, near Frankfurt, it is expected to fall below 40cm on Friday. This would make it impassable for some larger ships carrying supplies of oil, coal and gas.
German power plants are particularly dependent on the deliveries as Russia restricts gas flow, and the drought could compound the country’s energy crisis. France, which uses the most nuclear energy in the EU, has also recently run into hot water on the Rhône and Garonne rivers. This week, electricity utility company EDF had to reduce output at some of its power stations as temperatures were too high to use river water to cool the plants down.
Meanwhile shocking photos of the Loire near its mouth at Nantes yesterday show far more river bed than water, with an essentially redundant bridge to the Loireauxence commune. Across Europe, here’s how photographers have been documenting the devastating impact of heatwaves and drought on most waterways.
Flowing from the Swiss Alps, carving much of the Franco-German border, defining the German Rhineland and careering into the Netherlands before reaching the North Sea, the Rhine is a formative part of Europe. As well as threatening shipping routes in Germany, its current low levels are causing problems for house boat owners on distributary branches, such as on the Netherlands' Waal River.
Italy's longest river, the Po, has been struggling to retain its width during the northern region's worst drought in 70 years. Water has already completely disappeared from some tributaries - upstream of Turin for example. The river provides irrigation for nearly a third of Italy's agricultural production. "The future of the harvest is uncertain," Giovanni Daghetta, who owns a 325-hectare rice farm in the province of Pavia, told Euronews last month. "What is certain is that if this drought persists it will do enormous damage."
Drought has not been formally declared in England yet - that decision rests with the Environment Agency - but the country has just experienced its driest July since 1935. The source of the Thames has dried up for the first time, experts confirmed last week, moving more than five miles downstream from its original starting point in Gloucestershire. Thames Water, which provides water to large parts of southeast England, is the latest utility company to announce a hosepipe ban.
The water level of the Danube near Budapest has dropped by 1.5 meters in the last three weeks, and rain isn't expected any time soon. Rising water temperatures in Europe's second-longest river have also been worrying experts. It reached more than 25C for seven days in the Upper Palatinate region of Bavaria. River heating can cause oxygen to drop beyond survivable levels for fish, and concerns have been raised for the Danube's trout.
A prolonged dry spell and heatwave made last July the hottest month in Spain since records started in 1961. These extreme conditions left Spanish reservoirs at just 40 per cent of capacity on average in early August, well below the ten-year average of around 60 per cent, official data shows. Some rural villages in the northeast of the country were left with drinking water for just 4 hours a day.
With an early heatwave in June and an unusually hot and dry month of May, the bed of the Loire has reached a lower level than usual. Water levels are so low that the river can be crossed on foot in certain places. Two-thirds of the country is at a crisis level for drought. Four recent heatwaves have triggered weeks of wildfires and reduced the mighty Loire to a stream in some stretches. Last week, the government said 100 villages across France were without safe tap water. The Loire river is so low it can be crossed by foot where it used to meet the Allier River at le Bec d’Allier, Cuffy, 9 August, 2022.
The Surface Water and Ocean Topography mission will make measurements of over 95% of Earth’s lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.
Water is life, but for all its importance, humanity has a surprisingly limited view of Earth’s freshwater bodies. Researchers have reliable water level measurements for only a few thousand lakes around the world, and little to no data on some of the planet’s important river systems. The upcoming Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite will fill that enormous gap. By helping to provide a better understanding of Earth’s water cycle, it will both aid in better management of water resources and expand knowledge of how climate change affects lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.
A collaboration between NASA and the French space agency Centre National d’Études Spatial (CNES), with contributions from the Canadian Space Agency and the United Kingdom Space Agency, SWOT is scheduled to launch in November from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Engineers and technicians are finishing up work on the satellite in a facility run by Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France.
SWOT has several key tasks, including measuring the height of water bodies on Earth’s surface. Over the ocean, the satellite will be able to “see” features like eddies less than 60 miles (100 kilometers) across – smaller than those that previous sea level satellites could observe. SWOT will also measure more than 95% of Earth’s lakes larger than 15 acres (6 hectares) and rivers wider than 330 feet (100 meters) across.
“Current databases maybe have information on a couple thousand lakes around the world,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, the NASA freshwater science lead for SWOT, based at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “SWOT will push that number to between 2 million and 6 million.”
Important ocean currents that redistribute heat, cold and precipitation between the tropics and the northernmost parts of the Atlantic region will shut down around the year 2060 if current greenhouse gas emissions persist. This is the conclusion based on new calculations from the University of Copenhagen that contradict the latest report from the IPCC.
Contrary to what we may imagine about the impact of climate change in Europe, a colder future may be in store. In a new study, researchers from the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute and Department of Mathematical Sciences predict that the system of ocean currents which currently distributes cold and heat between the North Atlantic region and tropics will completely stop if we continue to emit the same levels of greenhouse gases as we do today.
Using advanced statistical tools and ocean temperature data from the last 150 years, the researchers calculated that the ocean current, known as the Thermohaline Circulation or the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), will collapse -- with 95 percent certainty -- between 2025 and 2095. This will most likely occur in 34 years, in 2057, and could result in major challenges, particularly warming in the tropics and increased storminess in the North Atlantic region.
"Shutting down the AMOC can have very serious consequences for Earth's climate, for example, by changing how heat and precipitation are distributed globally. While a cooling of Europe may seem less severe as the globe as a whole becomes warmer and heat waves occur more frequently, this shutdown will contribute to an increased warming of the tropics, where rising temperatures have already given rise to challenging living conditions," says Professor Peter Ditlevsen from the Niels Bohr Institute.
"Our result underscores the importance of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible," says the researcher. The calculations, just published in the scientific journal, Nature Communications, contradict the message of the latest IPCC report, which, based on climate model simulations, considers an abrupt change in the thermohaline circulation very unlikely during this century.
Early warning signals already present
The researchers' prediction is based on observations of early warning signals that ocean currents exhibit as they become unstable. These Early Warning Signals for the Thermohaline Circulation have been reported previously, but only now has the development of advanced statistical methods made it possible to predict just when a collapse will occur.
The atlantic ocean is predicted to face immense changes within the next few decades. The article claims the Atlantic ocean current is likely to collapse due to our current trend of greenhouse gas emissions. In my opinion, the support for the argument does not seem quite developed enough to come to this conclusion. The evidence was a bit vague and quite short but they did have some worrying and interesting ideas about how this might come to be.
While conducting a study of Petermann Glacier in northwest Greenland, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory uncovered a previously unseen way in which the ice and ocean interact. The glaciologists said their findings could mean that the climate community has been vastly underestimating the magnitude of future sea level rise caused by polar ice deterioration.
Using satellite radar data from three European missions, the UCI/NASA team learned that Petermann Glacier's grounding line -- where ice detaches from the land bed and begins floating in the ocean -- shifts substantially during tidal cycles, allowing warm seawater to intrude and melt ice at an accelerated rate. The group's results are the subject of a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"Petermann's grounding line could be more accurately described as a grounding zone, because it migrates between 2 and 6 kilometers as tides come in and out," said lead author Enrico Ciraci, UCI assistant specialist in Earth system science and NASA postdoctoral fellow. "This is an order of magnitude larger than expected for grounding lines on a rigid bed."
He said the traditional view of grounding lines beneath ocean-reaching glaciers was that they did not migrate during tidal cycles, nor did they experience ice melt. But the new study replaces that thinking with knowledge that warm ocean water intrudes beneath the ice through preexisting subglacial channels, with the highest melt rates occurring at the grounding zone.
The researchers found that as Petermann Glacier's grounding line retreated nearly 4 kilometers -- 2½ miles -- between 2016 and 2022, warm water carved a 670-foot-tall cavity in the underside of the glacier, and that abscess remained there for all of 2022. "These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming," said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist.
"These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent -- not just for Petermann but for all glaciers ending in the ocean, which is most of northern Greenland and all of Antarctica."
The Greenland ice sheet has lost billions of tons of ice to the ocean in the past few decades, the PNAS paper stresses, with most of the loss caused by warming of subsurface ocean waters, a product of Earth's changing climate. Exposure to ocean water melts the ice vigorously at the glacier front and erodes resistance to the movement of glaciers over the ground, causing the ice to slide more quickly to the sea, according to Rignot.
Researchers have developed a cheaper and more energy-efficient way to make hydrogen directly from seawater.
The new method from RMIT University researchers splits the seawater directly into hydrogen and oxygen – skipping the need for desalination and its associated cost, energy consumption and carbon emissions.
Hydrogen has long been touted as a clean future fuel and a potential solution to critical energy challenges, especially for industries that are harder to decarbonise like manufacturing, aviation and shipping.
Almost all the world’s hydrogen currently comes from fossil fuels and its production is responsible for around 830 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year*, equivalent to the annual emissions of the United Kingdom and Indonesia combined. But emissions-free ‘green’ hydrogen, made by splitting water, is so expensive that it is largely commercially unviable and accounts for just 1% of total hydrogen production globally.
Lead researcher Dr Nasir Mahmood, a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT, said green hydrogen production processes were both costly and relied on fresh or desalinated water. “We know hydrogen has immense potential as a clean energy source, particularly for the many industries that can’t easily switch over to be powered by renewables,” Mahmood said. “But to be truly sustainable, the hydrogen we use must be 100% carbon-free across the entire production life cycle and must not cut into the world’s precious freshwater reserves. Our method to produce hydrogen straight from seawater is simple, scaleable and far more cost-effective than any green hydrogen approach currently in the market. With further development, we hope this could advance the establishment of a thriving green hydrogen industry in Australia.”
A provisional patent application has been filed for the new method, detailed in a lab-scale study published in Wiley journal, Small.
Metformin is a medicine that is used to treat type 2 diabetes by helping to bring your blood sugar levels under control. Metformin is prescribed when lifestyle changes like diet and exercise plans have not been effective in controlling your blood sugars.
Mifepristone (also known as RU 486) is used to cause an abortion during the early part of pregnancy. It is used up to week 10 of pregnancy (up to 70 days after the first day of your last menstrual period).$519.00$360.00
Mounjaro Mounjaro is a new medication that has been shown to be effective in promoting.weight. Mounjaro contains the drug Tirzepatide which works by targeting a protein named glucose-dependent insulinotropic polypeptide receptor (GIP receptor), which helps to regulate blood sugar levels and also plays a role in appetite and weight regulation
While Mounjaro (Tirzepatide) has received initial approval for use
the process is also termed as ending an undesired pregnancy using abortion pills. It is the safest alternative to surgical abortion. Women who do not wish to go for surgery can go for medical abortion with MTP Kit if the gestation week is within 8 weeks.$590.00$250.00
Myrbetriq is a brand-name drug of Mirabegron. This medicine is used to treat the symptoms of overactive bladder such as frequent urination or sudden need to urinate. Tell your doctor about all your medical conditions before starting Myrbetriq.$320.00$200.00
Our online pharmacy is well known among our customers for being the best one available. Naltrexone to make you can charge to know where those who drive, etc. Where those patients feel funny.$300.00$200.00
Opana ER, also available as Numorphan or Opana, is an opioid medication. It helps treat moderate to severe pain. The extended-release form of oxymorphone is for around-the-clock treatment of pain or should not use-as-needed basis for pain.$540.00$220.00
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One quarter of the Northern hemisphere is on permanently frozen ground, referred to as permafrost. Due to climate warming, irreversibly thawing permafrost is releasing organic matter frozen for up to a million years, most of which decomposes into carbon dioxide and methane, further enhancing the greenhouse effect. Part of this organic matter also consists of revived cellular microbes (prokaryotes, unicellular eukaryotes) as well as viruses that remained dormant since prehistorical times. While the literature abounds on descriptions of the rich and diverse prokaryotic microbiomes found in permafrost, no additional report about “live” viruses have been published since the two original studies describing pithovirus (in 2014) and mollivirus (in 2015). This wrongly suggests that such occurrences are rare and that “zombie viruses” are not a public health threat. To restore an appreciation closer to reality, we report the preliminary characterizations of 13 new viruses isolated from 7 different ancient Siberian permafrost samples, 1 from the Lena river and 1 from Kamchatka cryosol. As expected from the host specificity imposed by our protocol, these viruses belong to 5 different clades infecting Acanthamoeba spp. but not previously revived from permafrost: pandoravirus, cedratvirus, megavirus, and pacmanvirus, in addition to a new pithovirus strain.
Humans do a poor job of recycling, with less than 10% of our global resources recycled, and tossing 1 of every 5 items (~17%) in a recycling bin that shouldn’t be there. That’s bad news for everyone -- recycling facilities catch fire, we lose billions of dollars in recyclable material every year -- and at an existential level, we miss an opportunity to leverage recycling as an impactful tool to combat climate change. With this in mind, we may ask ourselves - how might we use the power of technology to ensure that we recycle more and recycle right?
As the world population grows and urbanizes, waste production is estimated to reach 2.6 billion tons a year in 2030, an increase from its current level of around 2.1 billion tons. Efficient recycling strategies are critical to foster a sustainable future. The facilities where our waste and recyclables are processed are called “Material Recovery Facilities” (MRFs). Each MRF processes tens of thousands of pounds of our societal “waste” every day, separating valuable recyclable materials like metals and plastics from non-recyclable materials. A key inefficiency within the current waste capture and sorting process is the inability to identify and segregate waste into high quality material streams. The accuracy of the sorting directly determines the quality of the recycled material; for high-quality, commercially viable recycling, the contamination levels need to be low. Even though the MRFs use various technologies alongside manual labor to separate materials into distinct and clean streams, the exceptionally cluttered and contaminated nature of the waste stream makes automated waste detection challenging to achieve, and the recycling rates and the profit margins stay at undesirably low levels.
Enter what we call “CircularNet”, a set of models that lowers barriers to AI/ML tech for waste identification and all the benefits this new level of transparency can offer. The main goal with CircularNet is to develop a robust and data-efficient model for waste/recyclables detection, which can support the way we identify, sort, manage, and recycle materials across the waste management ecosystem. Models such as this could potentially help with:
Better understanding and capturing more value from recycling value chains
Increasing landfill diversion of materials
Identifying and reducing contamination in inbound and outbound material streams
Challenges
Processing tens of thousands of pounds of material every day, Material Recovery Facility waste streams present a unique and ever-changing challenge:a complex, cluttered, and diverse flow of materials at any given moment. Additionally, there is a lack of comprehensive and readily accessible waste imagery datasets to train and evaluate ML models. The models should be able to accurately identify different types of waste in “real world” conditions of a MRF - meaning identifying items despitesevere clutter and occlusions, high variability of foreground object shapes and textures, and severe object deformation. In addition to these challenges, others that need to be addressed are visual diversity of foreground and background objects that are often severely deformed, and fine-grained differences between the object classes(e.g. brown paper vs. cardboard; or soft vs. rigid plastic). There also needs to be consistency while tracking recyclables through the recycling value chain e.g. at point of disposal, within recycling bins and hauling trucks, and within material recovery facilities.
Solution
The CircularNet model is built to perform Instance Segmentation by training on thousands of images with the Mask R-CNN algorithm. Mask R-CNN was implemented from the TensorFlow Model Garden, which is a repository consisting of multiple models and modeling solutions for Tensorflow users. By collaborating with experts in the recycling industry, we developed a customized and globally-applicable taxonomy of material types (e.g. “paper” “metal”,”plastic”, etc.) and material forms (e.g. “bag”, “bottle”, “can”, etc.), which is used to annotate training data for the model. Models were developed to identify material types, material forms and plastic types (HDPE, PETE, etc). Unique models were trained for different purposes, thus helping achieve better accuracy (when harmonized and flexibility to cater to different applications). The models are trained with various backbones such as ResNet, MobileNet and, SpineNet.
The technology could allow scientists to both capture CO2 and transform it into useful chemicals such as carbon monoxide and synthetic natural gas in one circular process.
Dr Melis Duyar, Senior Lecturer of Chemical Engineering at the University of Surrey commented: “Capturing CO2 from the surrounding air and directly converting it into useful products is exactly what we need to approach carbon neutrality in the chemicals sector. This could very well be a milestone in the steps needed for the UK to reach its 2050 net-zero goals. We need to get away from our current thinking on how we produce chemicals, as current practices rely on fossil fuels which are not sustainable. With this technology we can supply chemicals with a much lower carbon footprint and look at replacing fossil fuels with carbon dioxide and renewable hydrogen as the building blocks of other important chemicals.”
The technology uses patent-pending switchable Dual Function Materials (DFMs), that capture carbon dioxide on their surface and catalyse the conversion of captured CO2 directly into chemicals. The “switchable” nature of the DFMs comes from their ability to produce multiple chemicals depending on the operating conditions or the composition of the added reactant. This makes the technology responsive to variations in demand for chemicals as well as availability of renewable hydrogen as a reactant.
Dr Duyar continued: “These outcomes are a testament to the research excellence at Surrey, with continuously improving facilities, internal funding schemes and a collaborative culture.”
Loukia-Pantzechroula Merkouri, Postgraduate student leading this research at the University of Surrey added: “Not only does this research demonstrate a viable solution to the production of carbon neutral fuels and chemicals, but it also offers an innovative approach to combat the ever-increasing CO2 emissions contributing to global warming.”
A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Canada and Denmark has found evidence that narwhals have been altering their seasonal migration patterns in response to global warming. In their paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the group describes how they compared satellite data showing narwhal movements, with ice and temperature data in the Arctic over a 21-year period and what they learned by doing so.
Animals migrate in response to seasonal environments, to reproduce, to benefit from resource pulses, or to avoid fluctuating hazards. Although climate change is predicted to modify migration, only a few studies to date have demonstrated phenological shifts in marine mammals. In the Arctic, marine mammals are considered among the most sensitive to ongoing climate change due to their narrow habitat preferences and long life spans. Longevity may prove an obstacle for species to evolutionarily respond. For species that exhibit high site fidelity and strong associations with migration routes, adjusting the timing of migration is one of the few recourses available to respond to a changing climate. Now, scientists demonstrate evidence of significant delays in the timing of narwhal autumn migrations with satellite tracking data spanning 21 y from the Canadian Arctic. Measures of migration phenology varied annually and were explained by sex and climate drivers associated with ice conditions, suggesting that narwhals are adopting strategic migration tactics. Male narwhals were found to lead the migration out of the summering areas, while females, potentially with dependent young, departed later. Narwhals are remaining longer in their summer areas at a rate of 10 d per decade, a similar rate to that observed for climate-driven sea ice loss across the region. The consequences of altered space use and timing have yet to be evaluated but will expose individuals to increasing natural changes and anthropogenic activities on the summering areas.
Methane traps 30 times more heat than carbon dioxide and is estimated to account for about 30 percent of human-driven global warming. The gas is emitted naturally through geological processes and by methane-generating archaea; however, industrial processes are releasing stored methane back into the atmosphere in worrying quantities.
Last year, a team led by Jill Banfield discovered DNA structures within a methane-consuming microbe called Methanoperedens that appear to supercharge the organism’s metabolic rate. They named the genetic elements “Borgs” because the DNA within them contains genes assimilated from many organisms. In a study published today in Nature, the researchers describe the curious collection of genes within Borgs and begin to investigate the role these DNA packages play in environmental processes, such as carbon cycling.
Methanoperedens are a type of archaea (unicellular organisms that resemble bacteria but represent a distinct branch of life) that break down methane (CH4) in soils, groundwater, and the atmosphere to support cellular metabolism. Methanoperedens and other methane-consuming microbes live in diverse ecosystems around the world but are believed to be less common than microbes that use photosynthesis, oxygen, or fermentation for energy. Yet they play an outsized role in Earth system processes by removing methane – the most potent greenhouse gas – from the atmosphere.
Banfield, a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and professor of Earth & Planetary Science and Environmental Science, Policy & Management at UC Berkeley, studies how microbial activities shape large-scale environmental processes and how, in turn, environmental fluctuations alter the planet’s microbiomes. As part of this work, she and her colleagues regularly sample microbes in different habitats to see what interesting genes microbes are using for survival, and how these genes might affect global cycles of key elements, such as carbon, nitrogen, and sulfur. The team looks at the genomes within cells as well as the portable packets of DNA known as extra-chromosomal elements (ECEs) that transfer genes between bacteria, archaea, and viruses. These elements allow microbes to quickly gain beneficial genes from their neighbors, including those that are only distantly related.
While studying Methanoperedens sampled from seasonal wetland pool soil in California, the scientists found evidence of an entirely new type of ECE. Unlike the circular strands of DNA that make up most plasmids, the most well-known type of extra-chromosomal element, the new ECEs are linear and very long – up to one-third the length of the entire Methanoperedens genome. After analyzing additional samples from underground soil, aquifers, and riverbeds in California and Colorado that contain methane-consuming archaea, the team uncovered a total of 19 distinct ECEs they dubbed Borgs. Using advanced genome analysis tools, the scientists determined that many of the sequences within the Borgs are similar to the methane-metabolizing genes within the actual Methanoperedens genome. Some of the Borgs even encode all the necessary cellular machinery to eat methane on their own, so long as they are inside a cell that can express the genes.
The global population is projected to reach 8 billion on 15 November 2022, and India is projected to surpass China as the world’s most populous country in 2023, according to World Population Prospects 2022, released today on World Population Day.
“This year’s World Population Day falls during a milestone year, when we anticipate the birth of the Earth’s eight billionth inhabitant. This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognize our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates,” said UN Secretary-General António Guterres. “At the same time, it is a reminder of our shared responsibility to care for our planet and a moment to reflect on where we still fall short of our commitments to one another,” he added.
The global population is growing at its slowest rate since 1950, having fallen under 1 per cent in 2020. The latest projections by the United Nations suggest that the world’s population could grow to around 8.5 billion in 2030 and 9.7 billion in 2050. It is projected to reach a peak of around 10.4 billion people during the 2080s and to remain at that level until 2100.
World Population Prospects 2022 also states that fertility has fallen markedly in recent decades for many countries. Today, two-thirds of the global population lives in a country or area where lifetime fertility is below 2.1 births per woman, roughly the level required for zero growth in the long run for a population with low mortality. The populations of 61 countries or areas are projected to decrease by 1 per cent or more between 2022 and 2050, owing to sustained low levels of fertility and, in some cases, elevated rates of emigration.
More than half of the projected increase in the global population up to 2050 will be concentrated in eight countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, India, Nigeria, Pakistan, the Philippines and the United Republic of Tanzania. Countries of sub-Saharan Africa are expected to contribute more than half of the increase anticipated through 2050.
“The relationship between population growth and sustainable development is complex and multidimensional” said Liu Zhenmin, UN Under-Secretary-General for Economic and Social Affairs. “Rapid population growth makes eradicating poverty, combatting hunger and malnutrition, and increasing the coverage of health and education systems more difficult. Conversely, achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, especially those related to health, education and gender equality, will contribute to reducing fertility levels and slowing global population growth.”
A massive Quebec geothermal spa and adjacent village is slated to begin construction in Petite-Rivière-Saint-François in the winter of 2023.
The small Quebec town of Petite-Rivière-Saint-François is about to get a very comfortable $300 million makeover. Plans for geoLAGON were announced on Tuesday by local developer Louis Massicotte, who will turn the small town into a 120,000 sqft tourism destination, drawing heavy inspiration from Iceland’s Blue Lagoon, one of the 25 wonders of the world.
GeoLAGON has plans to become the largest geothermal lagoon in the world and will become an “essential destination” for Quebecers and tourists alike, says Massicotte. The northeast destination will function as three separate projects, all forming one massive relaxing getaway:
“Soleils Village”: a solar-powered condominium village of 150 Airbnb-type residences for both long-term and short-term rentals.
“GeoLAGON”: a massive open-air geothermal lagoon that will be heated year-round to 38ºC. The lagoon will use a renewable energy ecosystem including geothermal, solar-air, and biomass. Massicotte says the Quebec creation will “rely on an ingenious model of self-sufficient energy” aimed at net-zero cost for heating both the lagoon and the chalets.
“LagonVillage”: the third stage of the project is the construction of more than 100 solar-power chalets on the edge of the lagoon.
In total, Massicotte says the site will host a total of 600 rentable and purchasable chalets (functioning year-round), the giant spa, and a restaurant. “We are very pleased to see the reaction of Quebecers to our patented geoLAGON concept,” says Massicotte — the former president of Village Vacances Valcartier, Ice Hotel, and Calypso Park. “The choice of Petite-Rivière is a home run for us because it is the place of choice for investors in the vacation market in eastern Quebec.”
Construction on the entire site, which will be located four hours outside of Montreal, is slated to begin in the winter of 2023.
Droughts are intensifying around the world due to climate change. The UN says solutions such as land restoration must be stepped up to combat the crisis.
Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C (2.7°F) is beyond reach. In the scenarios assessed, limiting warming to around 1.5°C requires global greenhouse gas emissions to peak before 2025 at the latest, and be reduced by 43% by 2030; at the same time, methane would also need to be reduced by about a third.
There is increasing evidence that immediate climate action is needed. In 2010-2019, average annual global greenhouse gas emissions were at their highest levels in human history, but the rate of growth has slowed. An increasing range of policies and laws have enhanced energy efficiency, reduced rates of deforestation and accelerated the deployment of renewable energy.
Lack of water has been a huge problem for Germany, with the continent’s misery deepening on news Wednesday that the Rhine river’s falling water levels could reach a critical level by the end of the week. A marker just west of Frankfurt was set to drop to just under 16 inches, meaning barges can’t carry vital transports of coal and diesel up the ancient river.
Germany's most-important river is running dry as Europe suffers through a drought that is on course to become its worst in 500 years, with terrifying wildfires burning once again in France.
Water levels in the Rhine - which carries 80 per cent of all goods transported by water in Germany, from its industrial heartlands to Dutch ports - are now so low that it could become impassable to barges later this week, threatening vital supplies of oil and coal that the country is relying upon as Russia turns off the gas tap.
The Rhine is already lower now than it was at the same point in 2018, when Europe suffered its last major drought. That year, the river ended up closing to goods vessels for 132 days, almost triggering a recession. Costs to transport goods by river this year have already risen five-fold as barges limit their capacity to stay afloat.
Economists estimate the disruption could knock as much as half a percentage point off Germany's overall economic growth this year, with experts warning the country was facing recession due to an energy crisis even before the drought hit. Andrea Toreti, senior researcher at the European Commission's Joint Research Centre, said: 'We haven't analysed fully [this] event, but based on my experience I think that this is perhaps even more extreme than in 2018.
'2018 was so extreme that looking back at this list of the last 500 years, there were no other events similar.' Meanwhile wildfires are once again ripping their way across France, torching an area that was already badly-hit as temperatures soared to record levels last month.
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