Climate of the Present

Atmospheric Rivers: the water tap of extreme precipitation

Ana C. Pires, Alexandre M. Ramos and Ricardo N. Santos October 7, 2021

Figure 1. The atmospheric river over the North Atlantic that delivered record-breaking rainfall to Norway in September 2005. No-data areas are colored in gray (Source: NOAA, 2016).

Extreme precipitation events, i.e., heavy rain episodes of short duration, can lead to severe or even catastrophic social and economic impacts, as seen recently in different flooding and landslide incidents throughout the world. One of the drivers behind these events is the occurrence of atmospheric rivers (ARs), a mechanism that transports great amounts of water vapour across the globe, and signi ...[Read More]

HighPasm project: Understanding the climate & social vulnerability in the Island of Cyprus for the last millennium

Dr. Carole Nehme September 9, 2021

What is this project all about? This project investigates the social responses of the society to environmental stress in the context of climate variability for the last millennium in Cyprus. Human societies had a variable response to changes in climate either due to differences in socioeconomic systems, land use, and health systems. Many health issues in societies are sensitive to both social and ...[Read More]

Feeling the Heat: The Grilled Earth

Francisco José Cuesta-Valero, Almudena García-García, Hugo Beltrami and Joel Finnis July 1, 2021

Figure 1: Permafrost wall in Herschel Island. Permafrost thawing is a potential contributor to climate change and a risk for northern communities. Source: Wikimedia Commons. Photo: Boris Radosavljevic.

Nowadays, there are plenty of media reports about the impacts of climate change around the world. Glaciers are disappearing, gigantic craters form in Siberia as the previously frozen ground thaws, the sea is threatening to swallow entire islands, floods cause large damages to people and economy, heat waves periodically destroy crops and can reach dangerous levels for people’s health. And this is o ...[Read More]

How humans are influencing climate change and its significance in defining a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene

Colin Waters, Colin Summerhayes and Simon Turner April 26, 2021

Modern atmospheric CO2 increases, driven mainly by human activities, have led to a marked increase in global mean temperatures and rates of sea-level rise in part through melting of ice-sheets. (© C N Waters).

The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) is the body tasked to propose a formal definition for the Anthropocene as a geological time unit. Join us at the EGU2021 General Assembly on Wednesday 28th April at 14:15-15:00 CEST for a series of presentations on the Anthropocene in session SSP2.6. The Anthropocene concept Geologists cope with the enormity of 4.5 billion years of Earth history by divid ...[Read More]