Warming app, weather phobias, and sea ice data
Climate and energy news:
Cuadrilla names two Lancashire fracking
sites
Timed to coincide with the announcement of new shale gas
fracking sites in Lancashire, Cuadrilla has promised £100,000 to
the local community for each well fracked in the area. “Payments to
individual households have not been ruled out, although the cash
could also be spent on wider community projects”, the Telegraph
reports. Why would Cuadrilla be so keen to stress payments could go
to invidivual households? The Telegraph also reportsthat the company “it
was yet to secure access agreement from potentially dozens of
homeowners under whose land fracking could take place.”
U.S. to launch ‘climate hubs’ to help farmers face
climate change
“President Barack Obama’s administration will announce on
Wednesday the formation of seven “climate hubs” to help farmers and
rural communities adapt to extreme weather conditions and other
effects of climate change… The hubs … aim to help farmers and
ranchers handle risks, including fires, pests, floods and droughts,
that are exacerbated by global warming.”
Shell opens its first post-Macondo platform in
U.S. Gulf
Oil major Shell is “ramping up production” at the first
deepwater oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico it has built since the 2010
Deepwater Horizon disaster. The rig “is the first of seven new
state-of-the-art platforms slated to start pumping Gulf crude to
shore through 2016, reversing a decline in output and supplementing
the U.S. onshore shale oil boom”, Reuters reports.
Climate and energy comment:
The seasonal cycle of Antarctic Sea Ice
extent
A scientist examines the data on seasonal changes in
Antarctic sea ice extent.
New climate science:
Weathering the Storm: Revisiting Severe Weather
Phobia
Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society
Phobias can be triggered by something in the natural
landscape, scientists say. Now, a new study reviews some of the
most common weather-related phobias – including fear of
thunderstorms (astrophobia), clouds (nephophobia), hurricanes
(lilapsophobia), snow (chionophobia), cold (cryophobia), wind
(ancraophobia) and rain (ombrophobia).
Coastal flood damage and adaptation costs under
21st century sea-level rise
Proceedings for the National Academy of
Sciences
Global damages from storm surges could increase from about
$10 to 40 billion per year to up to $100,000 billion per year by
the end of century if no adaptation action is taken, according to
new estimates. The damages are expected due to both rising sea
levels and population and economic growth in the coastal
zone.