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HotSpots H2O: As Famine Looms in East Africa, Humanitarian Groups Call for Urgent Action

Circle of Blue

The landscape of Kulaley Village in northern Kenya lays barren after a drought in 2011. In 2011, two failed rainy seasons thrust the Horn of Africa into the worst famine of the twenty-first century. The La Niña weather pattern, driven by normal cooling cycles in the eastern Pacific, has always caused dry spells in East Africa.

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Can the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Plant Avoid a Major Disaster?

Union of Concerned Scientists

Depending on the nature and extent of the damage, the plant could experience one or more core meltdowns or spent nuclear fuel pool fires, which could trigger a radiological release rivaling that of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi accident or even the larger release from the 1986 Chernobyl accident.

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2022 updates to the temperature records

Real Climate

and La Niña events (2011, 2018, 2021, 2022 etc.) impart a slight cooling. Consequently, a line drawn from an El Niño year to a subsequent La Niña year will almost always show a cooling – a fact well known to the climate disinformers (though they are not so quick to show the uncertainties in such cherry picks!).

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Five Things the “Nuclear Bros” Don’t Want You to Know About Small Modular Reactors

Union of Concerned Scientists

Some SMR designs, such as NuScale, are modified versions of operating water-cooled reactors, while others are radically different designs that use coolants other than water, such as liquid sodium, helium gas, or even molten salts. To date, however, theoretical interest in SMRs has not translated into many actual reactor orders.

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US Fish And Wildlife & Service Seeks Public Comment On Proposed Listing Of Eastern Hellbender As Endangered

PA Environment Daily

The other subspecies, the Ozark hellbender, occurs in Missouri and Arkansas and was listed as an endangered species in 2011. Cool and clear water is important because hellbenders breathe through their skin, which contains numerous folds to increase oxygen absorption. Hellbenders hide under large, flat rocks on the streambed.

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Climate Change Threatens Already Poor Air Quality in California’s Central Valley

Union of Concerned Scientists

For example, they may need to choose between cooling down with their windows open at night or breathing polluted air, as residents often don’t have air conditioners or the economic capacity to pay for higher electricity bills.

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Tornadoes and More: What Spring Can Bring to the Power Grid 

Union of Concerned Scientists

The rail infrastructure to transport coal from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming–the country’s primary coal source –was proven to be vulnerable to extreme floods in the spring of 2011 , and even more extreme floods in the spring of 2019.