East Coast Shatters Temperature Records, Offering Preview to a Warming World

There are records—like Wednesday being the earliest 80-degree day in Washington, D.C., history—and then there are the eye-popping effects of those records, like seeing people wearing T-shirts on the streets of Portland, Maine, in February.

Thermometers registered record highs across the eastern
U.S. in mid-February. The map shows temperatures in
 degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 21, 2018, at 1 p.m. EST.

However you measure it, Feb. 20-21, 2018, were days for the books—days when the records fell as quickly as the thermometer rose, days that gave a glimpse into the wacky weather that the new era of climate change brings.

"What we have is a large-scale pattern that wouldn't be too uncommon in the spring," said meteorologist Patrick Burke of the National Weather Service. "But it's a little bit unusual to see it set up this way in February—and set up with such persistence.”

Read the Inside Climate News story by Sabrina Shankman - “East Coast Shatters Temperature Records, Offering Preview to a Warming World.”

More solar beer as Melbourne boutique brewer installs 100kW rooftop PV

An inner Melbourne craft brewery will soon be powered by rooftop solar, with the installation of just under 100kW of PV panels set for competition at the end of February.

Local business Beon Energy Solutions said on Thursday that it was installing a 96.3kW solar system at Collingwood brewery, Stomping Ground Brewing Co, that – once completed – would generate enough power to supply 20 homes, covering the small business’s sizeable energy needs.

The project was guided by the Yarra Energy Foundation (YEF), an independent Melbourne organisation that helps households, businesses, community groups and governments make the transition to solar.

Renewable powered beer is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon, both in Australia and overseas, both for major international brewers and small, local, boutique concerns.

Read the One Step Off the Grid story by Sophie Vorrath - “More solar beer as Melbourne boutique brewer installs 100kW rooftop PV.”

Losing respect for our food.

British consumers were put out in February this year when supermarkets temporarily began rationing lettuce and zucchini after flash flooding and snow wiped out crops in Spain.

One crisis such as Cyclone Debbie
is sufficient to empty our
supermarket shelves.

It was a minor inconvenience but one which should fill us with unease. Such breakdowns in the food supply may be a harbinger of things to come and should be shaking the rich world out of its complacency when it comes to food.

A staggering 30 per cent of global food production is wasted, much of it in the well-fed Western world. Yet rising populations and shifting preferences towards more meat consumption internationally, mean farmers need to virtually double food calorie production from 2005 levels if we are to feed the world come 2050.

Read the Pursuit piece by the University of Melbourne’s Professor Timothy Reeves - “Losing respect for our food.”

(Our attitude to wood is clearly wasteful and remarkably casual until we sense there may be a shortage - that was clearly evident post Cyclone Debbie when a niece who lives in Brisbane went to her local supermarket to buy some food and at almost entirely all gone, the shelves were near empty. It appears we have little or no personal or community sense of rationing food - Robert McLean)

NASA bombshell sees February global records tumble

On Saturday, NASA dropped a bombshell of a climate report. February 2016 has soared past all rivals as the warmest seasonally adjusted month in more than a century of global recordkeeping.

NASA’s analysis showed that February ran 1.35°C (2.43°F) above the 1951-1980 global average for the month, as can be seen in the list of monthly anomalies going back to 1880.

The previous record was set just last month, as January 2016 came in 1.14°C above the 1951-1980 average for the month. In other words, February has dispensed with this one-month-old record by a full 0.21°C (0.38°F)--an extraordinary margin to beat a monthly world temperature record by. Perhaps even more remarkable is that February 2015 crushed the previous February record--set in 1998 during the peak atmospheric influence of the 1997-98 “super” El Niño that’s comparable in strength to the current one--by a massive 0.47°C (0.85°F).

Read the WunderBlog story - “February Smashes Earth's All-Time Global Heat Record by a Jaw-Dropping Margin.”