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Category: climatology – Page 70

REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) — A volcano in southwest Iceland began erupting Wednesday, the country’s meteorological authorities said — just eight months after its last eruption officially ended.

The Icelandic Meteorological Office urged people not to go near the Fagradalsfjall volcano, which is located some 32 kilometers (20 miles) southwest of the capital, Reykjavik.

The eruption in an uninhabited valley is not far from Keflavik Airport, Iceland’s international air traffic hub. The airport remained open and no flights were disrupted.

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‘May the forest be with you.’The GEDI system aboard the ISS shoots laser beams down at Earth to fight deforestation.

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is building new digital tools to help fight deforestation and climate change. One of these is the FAO’s Framework for Ecosystem Monitoring (FERM) website, which uses satellite images to highlight the negative impact on forests worldwide.

The technology certainly lives up to its sci-fi namesake. The GEDI system is perched aboard the International Space Station (ISS), and it shoots laser beams at trees from the orbital laboratory.

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You’re in for a surprise.

Picture the ocean, impacted by climate change.

Rising sea levels, ocean acidification, melting of ice sheets, flooded coastlines, and shrinking fish stocks — the image is largely negative. For the longest time, the ocean has been portrayed as a victim of climate change, and rightly so. Ulf Riebesell, Professor of Biological Oceanography at the Geomar Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel, has studied the effects of global warming on the ocean for nearly 15 years, warning the scientific community about the impacts of climate change on ocean life and biochemical cycles. countries aiming to achieve a climate-neutral world by mid-century, experts have decided to include the ocean to tackle climate change.

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This graph shows the worldwide economic losses from weather-related events, from 1970 through to the present day, with a future trend projected out to 2060.

The data here is from Swiss Re, the world’s largest reinsurer, and is adjusted for inflation at 2021 prices. It excludes non-weather disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic eruptions.

A significant gap exists between the total economic damages and the losses protected by insurance. For example, the worldwide figure for weather-related disasters in 2021 amounted to $233.27 billion, of which insurance covered “only” $101.12 billion.

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A new study finds that decarbonization pathways need to incorporate more efficient electric heating technologies and more renewable energy sources to minimize strain on the U.S. electric grid during increased electricity usage from heating in December and January. Otherwise, harmful fossil fuels will continue to power these seasonal spikes in energy demand.

Buildings’ direct fossil fuel consumption, burned in water heaters, furnaces, and other heating sources, accounts for nearly 10 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Switching to an electric system that powers heating through , rather than coal, oil, and natural gas—the process known as building electrification or building decarbonization—is a crucial step towards achieving global net-zero climate goals.

However, most building decarbonization models have not accounted for seasonal fluctuations in energy demand for heating or cooling. This makes it difficult to predict what an eventual switch to cleaner, all-electric heating in buildings could mean for the nation’s electrical grid, especially during peaks in energy use.

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A volcano on Japan’s western major island of Kyushu, called Sakurajima, erupted at about 8:05 p.m. (1105 GMT) on Sunday, the Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) said, but media said there were no immediate reports of damage.

There were reports of volcanic stones raining down at a distance of 2.5 km (1.5 miles) from the volcano, NHK public television said. The eruption alert level has been raised to 5, the highest, with some areas advised to evacuate, NHK said. Sakurajima is one of Japan’s most active volcanoes and eruptions of varying levels are frequent. In 2019 it spewed ash 5.5 km (3.4 miles) high.

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