Breaking Waves: Ocean News

This year’s harvest expected to be down 2% on mediocre yield in 2025, when production was lowest in nearly 70 years France’s wine industry is facing a historic low harvest after the country was hit by a series of summer heatwaves. At about 35m hectolitres, the total harvest would be down 2% on a mediocre 2025 yield and 14% below the 2021-2025 average, according to estimates published on Wednesday by the ministry of agriculture. Continue reading...

A mix of natural disasters could all befall the state at once as it finds itself in the crosshairs of the climate phenomenon On a cloudless autumn afternoon, sunlight sparkled on the water that had quietly swallowed a busy intersection to the north of San Francisco, as the surrounding rush-hour traffic slowed to a painful crawl. There were no crashing waves or storm surges to blame for the flood. Marin county was one of many areas up and down the California coast affected by high tides last week, as parts of the Pacific swelled with excess warmth. Continue reading...

It isn’t hard to see a contradiction between the PM’s message in Fiji and his opposition to legal action to stop a NSW coalmine Get our new political email, free app or daily news podcast There are unlikely to be many bigger moments in Australian community action on the climate crisis this year than a judgment by the high court on Wednesday. In what may prove a historic victory, the court sided with a handful of community members in the Hunter Valley to overturn a state regulator’s approval of a coalmine expansion that allowed it to operate until 2048. This doesn’t happen every day, and the judgment could have ramifications for other coal developments in New South Wales. Sign up for Guardian Australia’s Politics, really newsletter here Continue reading...

Guardian reporters Jonathan Watts and Gabrielle Canon answered your question climate and extreme weather, from what to expect this winter in the UK to the increasing risk of natural disasters funkymentalist asks: Unrelated to El Niño, what is the likelihood of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) shutting down? Jon says: I don’t think these two things are unrelated. Everything is affected by climate breakdown. And both El Niño and the slowdown of AMOC are related to the staggeringly huge amounts (see this article on zettajoules which I also referred to above) of extra energy that the oceans are being forced to absorb as a result of greenhouse gas burning. Quick refresher for any readers who are unfamiliar with this topic: “Amoc, or the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, is a system of ocean currents that brings heat into the northern Atlantic. Warm surface water from the tropics flows north and releases its heat in the subpolar Atlantic, south of Greenland and west of Britain and Ireland. Then it cools and sinks to a depth of between 2,000m to 3,000 metres before returning south as a cold current. Amoc is one of our planet’s largest heat transport systems, moving the equivalent of 50 times the human energy use, and it has a particularly strong impact on the climate in Europe, affects the ocean’s CO2 uptake and oxygen supply, as well as rainfall patterns in the tropics.” Gaby says: The name “El Niño” actually harkens back to long before forecasters used the phenomenon to track global weather patterns. Fishermen off the coast of South America began to track unusually warm water that would show up every few years right around Christmas - thus “The Little Boy” referring to the Christ child in Spanish. Scientists adopted the name, and added “La Niña” as its counterpart (when sea surface temperatures cool), and together they became ENSO - the El Niño Southern Oscillation. This year, though, feel free to call it “El Monstruo Gordo!” It’s going to be a big one. Continue reading...