This Is What Climate Change Looks Like in VR

As I look down from space on our spinning blue and green planet, I understand why astronauts so often describe the experience of “Earth-gazing” as life-changing. I’m seeing our tiny planet highlighted against the infinite black expanse of the universe as I have never seen it before. It really does evoke a visceral sense of vastness and wonder.

Looking at climate change through virtual reality.

It would be intimidating were I not able to anchor myself with familiar landmarks. That dry patch over there is the Sahara Desert. There’s the North Pole. And that’s North America! Below is the verdant Brazilian rainforest. Here comes Australia, with its vast expanse of parched Outback — and that long, lush green chain of islands must be Indonesia. I feel a profound sense of pride. Earth may be a tiny, insignificant speck in the universe, but this amazing speck is our home.

My reverie is broken by a somber female voice. “Climate change has begun.”

I’m not actually in outer space, of course. I’m standing in a bare Columbia University classroom on Manhattan’s West Side. I’m wearing virtual reality goggles tethered to a computer, headphones swallow up my ears, and I’m holding controllers that allow me to reach out and “touch” the world around me. It’s so immersive that a researcher trails behind me to make sure I don’t accidentally walk into a wall or out a window.

Read the story from Medium by Adam Piore - “This Is What Climate Change Looks Like in VR."

‘Really extreme' global weather event leaves scientists aghast

Climate scientists are used to seeing the range of weather extremes stretched by global warming but few episodes appear as remarkable as this week's unusual heat over the Arctic.

Zack Labe, a researcher at the University of California at Irvine, said average daily temperatures above the northern latitude of 80 degrees have broken away from any previous recordings in the past 60 years.

"To have zero degrees at the North Pole in February - it's just wrong," said Amelie Meyer, a researcher of ice-ocean interactions with the Norwegian Polar Institute. "It's quite worrying.”

The so-called Polar Vortex - a zone of persistient low-pressure that typically keeps high-latitude cold air separate from regions further south - has been weakening for decades.

In this instance, "a massive jet of warm air" is penetrating north, sending a cold burst southwards, said Dr Meyer, who has relocated to Hobart to research on the southern hemisphere, and is hosted by Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System.

Read Peter Hannam’s story in The Age - “‘Really extreme' global weather event leaves scientists aghast.”

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.”