Browsing: climate change

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After a Strong Start, This Years’s Atlantic Hurricane Season May Be Less Severe than Average

This year’s Atlantic hurricane season started early and it started strong, but it may end up as something of a fizzle. That’s according to the latest report from the experts at Colorado State University, who now are predicting that we’ll have fewer named storms than average for the remainder of this hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30. Now the Colorado State forecast calls for 12 named storms this year, way under last year’s 17. Three have already formed in the Atlantic, and two – Beryl and Chris – became hurricanes. The new forecast calls for only nine more for the…

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Sea Levels Rising Faster than Expected, Scientists Report, and Acceleration Will Continue. See Video

Sea levels have been rising around the world faster than scientists had predicted, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The increase has not been steady; instead, it has accelerated in recent years, and probably will continue to increase the rest of this century. The study, based on data from NASA and European satellites over the past 25 years, shows that ice has been melting in Greenland and the Antarctic at an increasingly fast rate, and could result in the sea level rising by twice the amount scientists had predicted by 2100. Indeed,…

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New Shipping Lanes Opening Up in Arctic as More Ice Melts

New shipping routes are opening up in the Arctic, even directly over the North Pole, as the ice there keeps melting. Scientists report that sea ice covering the Arctic has declined each decade since the 1980s, with older, thicker ice disappearing due to global warming. This won’t happen tomorrow, but by the middle of this century they predict that the warming will “open up vast swaths of the Arctic Ocean,” and even direct over-the-pole routes could be navigable during summer and fall. The Arctic, of course, offers faster, more direct routes between ports in Asia and Europe. Commercial shipping there…

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