CA H2O

California has been in drought for some time now, visible in California data for the Palmer Drought Severity Index, or PDSI. It’s a measure of, well, drought severity. On the PDSI scale negative numbers mean drought (i.e. unusually dry conditions) while positive numbers mean unusually wet conditions, so it’s the most extreme negative PDSI values that mark the most extreme drought. Anyway, here are 12-month moving averages of the data through April

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Killer Heat

With the death toll from a recent killer heat wave in India up over 2,500, making it India’s 2nd-deadliest heat wave on record and the world’s 7th-deadliest, I can’t help but think how much more common this is becoming. Russia 2010 with over 55,000 casualties, the 2003 European heat wave killing over 70,000, are still fresh in our memories. One wonders how many more such “memories” lie ahead.

Desperate for a “Pause”

When it comes to temperature at Earth’s surface, with 2014 the hottest year on record and 2015 on pace to exceed even that, things are getting hot for those who deny that global warming is a danger to us all.

In their scramble to find something that looks like global warming has somehow “paused,” they seem to have settled on one particular data set with which, if you wait until just the right moment to start looking, it looks like they want it to look.

Time to take out the trash

Pope Francis is taking man-made climate change seriously. With a papal encyclical due soon, the trailer is Epic