#dust-specter

#dust-specter

Heavy rain and thunderstorms affected much of Greece, with southeastern areas experiencing the most severe conditions, including flooding and stranded vehicles.

We created Earth in Action to provide a lens into what's happening on our planet, as it happens. Whether it's something typical, like the current air temperature, or an extreme event like a major dust storm, we wanted to provide an opportunity for people to see them.

Not only will temperatures break March monthly records, but this heatwave will even break April records. Over the next week, around 800 high temperature records are forecast to be neared, tied or broken at 165 locations in Western and Central states - some by more than 10 degrees - with unusual warmth set to linger into late March.

In late January, Toronto was hit with what many experts said was the heaviest single day of snowfall in the city's history. In some spots, nearly 23in fell, driven in part by a collision of weather systems. The city had already removed 264,000 tonnes of snow from 1,100 km (680 miles) of roads, sidewalks and bike lanes by mid-February.

That does make the plants begin to pollinate. The warm weather definitely gets them going and at higher levels in the air, absolutely. When we're seeing a bit more windy days, that can also increase that amount of pollen that's in the air.

Israeli jets targeted three Iranian oil depots, the Iranian semi-official Fars news agency said on Saturday. Israel's Energy Minister Eli Cohen confirmed the attacks, claiming the facilities are used by Iran's military. He also warned that oil refineries and power stations could be targeted in the coming days, in an interview with Israel's 103fm radio.

Microplastics are pervasive, found everywhere on Earth, from the Sahara Desert to patches of Arctic sea ice. Yet despite these plastic particles' ubiquity, scientists have struggled to determine exactly how many of them are in our atmosphere. Now a new estimate published in Nature suggests that land sources release about 600 quadrillion (600,000,000,000,000,000) microplastic particles into the atmosphere every year, about 20 times more than the number of particles contributed by oceans (about 26 quadrillion).

I was that person who only changed their HVAC filter when it looked like it had grown its own ecosystem. Richie Drew, Vice President of Operations at One Hour Heating & Air Conditioning, puts it bluntly: "Dirty filters can reduce airflow, increase dust in your home and strain your heating system." Think about it this way: your HVAC filter is like the bouncer at an exclusive club, except instead of keeping out people without the right shoes, it's blocking dust particles from circulating through your home.

Yes, I would say it is, That's a fair thing to say.

"So whenever people think about hot weather, they always talk about the temperature," he says. "There's two issues with that. First of all, most people don't realise that the temperature is measured in the shade. So if you're in direct solar radiation, the amount of heat stress you're exposed to is much greater as it will stress your body out a lot more."

In a high-growth scenario for the space industry, there could be as many as 2,000 launches per year, which her modeling shows could result in about 3 percent ozone loss, equal to the atmospheric impacts of a bad wildfire season in Australia. She said most of the damage comes from chlorine-rich solid rocket fuels and black carbon in the plumes. The black carbon could also warm parts of the stratosphere by about half-a-degree Celsius as it absorbs sunlight.

When I spoke with emergency management officials last year, they all mentioned the same frustrating scenario. People ignore storm warnings until the precipitation starts falling, then suddenly everyone rushes out at once. The roads become congested with anxious drivers, accidents spike, and stores run out of essentials just when people need them most. But here's what really gets meteorologists worked up about this pattern. Modern weather forecasting has become incredibly accurate, especially for major winter storms.

Many human activities - from improper disposal of waste to the degradation of car tyres - release small plastic particles, which have infiltrated the atmosphere, oceans and other ecosystems. These include nanoplastics - particles measuring less than 1 micrometre across - and microplastics, which range from 1 micrometre to around 5 millimetres. They've entered our bodies and brains, and scientists are still working to understand their effects on people's health.

If you are reading this on the East Coast, congratulations on the warmer weather you're finally getting this week. It was cold and snowy for a while there. Here in the West, we wish we'd been in your shoes. Spare a thought for the tens of millions of us who live on the other side of the continent, where a catastrophe is unfolding.

The remaining question, though, was where all this methane was coming from in the first place. Throughout the pandemic, there was speculation that the surge might be caused by super-emitter events in the oil and gas sector, or perhaps a lack of maintenance on leaky infrastructure during lockdowns. But the new research suggests that the source of these emissions was not what many expected. The microbial surge

An extraordinarily warm and mostly sunny January has left the snowpack across California's Sierra Nevada far smaller than usual - 59% of average for this time of year, state water officials announced Friday as they held the season's second snow survey. "We are now about halfway through the typically wettest part of the year," said Andy Reising, manager of snow surveys for the California Department of Water Resources.