Breaking Waves: Ocean News

I feel like I am safe in saying that we are not thriving on our changing planet – and we will not in the coming decades My house in Altadena burned down in the wildfires on Wednesday. It all happened quickly. On Tuesday around 7pm, my wife and daughters went to a hotel as a precaution. I left the house with the dogs when the mandatory evacuation order came in around 3am. As best as I can put the timeline together, our home burned down around the same time that the sun came up, and I was able to drive in and see the damage around 2pm. Neighbors that went in after said it looked like a “war zone”. I have never been in a war zone thankfully, but I didn’t think so. There was nothing violent or chaotic about it. No one stopped me from driving in. There were no sirens. I stood alone – no one else around – in front of my house that was at that point just a fireplace and chimney. The house across the street was about halfway done with burning down, and the house behind ours had just started to burn. Benjamin Hamlington is a research scientist at Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory and a team lead at Nasa Sea Level Change team Continue reading...

Forecasters warn of ‘particularly dangerous weather situation’, while Gavin Newsom hits out at House speaker for ‘politicizing’ tragedy Full story: Californians urged to prioritize safety as extreme winds loom ‘Running to danger’: 1,000 incarcerated firefighters on LA frontlines Tell us about financial consequences you are facing LA mayor, Karen Bass, has shared a phone number for residents who have evacuated to get assistance in finding and retrieving pets in evacuation areas. Posting on X, Bass wrote: Pets are family. The City is making help available to find and retrieve pets in evacuation areas. Continue reading...

Experts believe H5N1 bird flu belongs in a growing category of infectious diseases that can cause pandemics across many species. But there are ways to reduce the risks Bird flu poses a threat that is “unique and new in our lifetime” because it has become a “‘panzootic” that can kill huge numbers across multiple species, experts warn. For months, highly pathogenic bird flu, or H5N1, has been circulating in dairy farms, with dozens of human infections reported among farm workers. It has now jumped into more than 48 species of mammals, from bears to dairy cows, causing mass die-offs in sea lions and elephant seal pups. Last week, the first person in the US died of the infection. This ability to infect, spread between, and kill such a wide range of creatures has prompted some scientists to call H5N1 a “panzootic”: an epidemic that leaps species barriers and can devastate diverse animal populations, posing a threat to humans too. As shrinking habitats, biodiversity loss and intensified farming create perfect incubators for infectious diseases to jump from one species to another, some scientists say panzootics could become one of the era’s defining threats to human health and security. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Sampling results show ‘extremely concerning’ concentrations of PFOS and PFOA at sites across UK Where are the UK’s ‘forever chemical’ hotspots? RAF bases are hotspots of toxic “forever chemical” pollution in water, analysis of Ministry of Defence documents has revealed. Moreover, some of the highest concentrations of these chemicals in British drinking water sources are near RAF bases, official sampling results obtained by the Guardian and Watershed Investigations show. Continue reading...