NASA's Aqua satellite analyzed Tropical Storm Cindy in infrared light to identify areas of strongest storms and the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM satellite found locations of heaviest rainfall as Cindy was making landfall along the U.S. Gulf Coast states.

The Atmospheric Infrared Sounder or AIRS instrument aboard NASA's Aqua satellite looked at Tropical Depression Cindy in infrared light. The AIRS image was taken on June 21 at 19:53 UTC (3:53 p.m. EST) and showed some cloud top temperatures of thunderstorms near the center of circulation as cold as minus 63 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 53 degrees Celsius). NASA research has shown the storms with cloud tops that cold have the potential to generate heavy rainfall. 

The infrared data was false-colored at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where AIRS data is managed.

Cindy made landfall around 3 a.m. CDT in southwestern Louisiana. At that time, the National Hurricane Center or NHC said that Cindy was centered about 30 miles (45 km) west-southwest of Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Almost 25 percent of the world’s malnourished population lives in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), where more than 300 million people depend on maize (corn) for much of their diet. The most widely-produced crop by harvested area in SSA, maize is also highly sensitive to drought. Because maize in this region is grown largely on rainfed rather than irrigated land, any future changes in precipitation patterns due to climate change could significantly impact crop yields. Assessing the likely magnitude and locations of such yield changes in the coming decades will be critical for decision makers seeking to help their nations and regions adapt to climate change and minimize threats to food security and to rural economies that are heavily dependent on agriculture.

Are there similarities between the tobacco industry and the fossil fuel industry when it comes to legal liability? Could, for example, energy companies that rely on fossil fuels and emit greenhouse gases be held accountable for the damage caused by climate change? Two researchers in the Faculty of Law have set out to answer these important questions.

Federal scientists forecast that this summer’s Gulf of Mexico dead zone – an area of low to no oxygen that can kill fish and other marine life – will be approximately 8,185 square miles, or about the size of New Jersey.

This would be the third largest dead zone recorded since monitoring began 32 years ago – the average Gulf dead zone since then has been 5,309 square miles.

NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of Tropical Storm Cindy after it formed and was already affecting the U.S. Gulf Coast states. Cindy continues to crawl toward land and Tropical Storm warnings are in effect for June 21.

On June 21 at 11 a.m. EDT, a Tropical Storm Warning is in effect for San Luis Pass, Texas to the mouth of the Mississippi River.

When NASA’s Aqua satellite passed over the Gulf of Mexico on June 20 at 19:15 UTC (3:15 p.m. EDT), Tropical Depression 3 was already upgraded to Tropical Storm status and named Cindy. The storm was classified as a tropical storm at 2 p.m. EDT. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument aboard Aqua showed Cindy’s center of circulation in the central Gulf of Mexico with a large area of thunderstorms sweeping from northwest to southeast of the center, stretching from eastern Texas to Florida.

The study by Dr Jacques-Olivier Laloë of the University’s College of Science and published in the Global Change Biology journal, argues that warmer temperatures associated with climate change could lead to higher numbers of female sea turtles and increased nest failure, and could impact negatively on the turtle population in some areas of the world.

The effects of rising temperatures

Rising temperatures were first identified as a concern for sea turtle populations in the early 1980s as the temperature at which sea turtle embryos incubate determines the sex of an individual, which is known as Temperature-Dependent Sex Determination (TSD).

A new study in the journal Nature Communications by researchers from Geophysical Institute, University of Bergen and Bjerknes Centre for Climate Research, Norway, and University of Oxford, UK, demonstrates that there is a clear potential for practical and useful predictions of northwestern European and Arctic climate based on the state of the ocean.

"We particularly predict that Norwegian air temperature will decrease over the coming years, although staying above the long-term (1981–2010) average. Winter Arctic sea ice extent will remain low but with a general increase toward 2020", lead author Marius Årthun says.

In the past three decades, temperatures have risen by 2.5 °C in Spain, surpassing the European average of 0.95°C. Mountain ranges such as the Pyrenees are also subject to climate variations, however climate change does not affect all regions equally, hence the need for in-depth, long-term observation of these changes. 

In order to analyse this climate change in the Pyrenees, a team from Rovira i Virgili University’s Centre for Climate Change collected hundreds of climate series from meteorological observatories on the southern side of the Central Pyrenees and analysed the most complete and representative series from the area for the period 1910–2013. 

On the heels of President Donald Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris climate agreement, a new Cornell University study finds that labels matter when it comes to acceptance of climate science.

The U.S. public doubts the existence of “global warming” more than it doubts “climate change” – and Republicans are driving the effect, the research shows.

After the mid-1990s, the global surface temperature presents a significant warming trend. According to the World Meteorological Organization, the global mean surface temperature of the period 2011–2015 has increased by 0.57? than that of 1961–1990. This warming trend provides favorable background for occurrence of hot summers, and inflames the hot extreme events. Based on statistics, the casualties caused by hot events during 2001–2010 have increased by twenty-three times relative to those during 1991–2000.