Global

Image: ‘We’re going into very new territory’: James Butler, of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, says the amount of carbon dioxide is locking in future warming. Photograph: John Giles/PA

theguardian.com - May 11th 2016 -  Michael Slezak

The world is hurtling towards an era when global concentrations of carbon dioxide never again dip below the 400 parts per million (ppm) milestone, as two important measuring stations sit on the point of no return.

The news comes as one important atmospheric measuring station at Cape Grim in Australia is poised on the verge of 400ppm for the first time. Sitting in a region with stable CO2 concentrations, once that happens, it will never get a reading below 400ppm.

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Anne Deborah Atai-Omoruto, who died on May 5, was a doctor instrumental in curbing the 2014 Ebola epidemic in Liberia.
Credit Zoom Dosso/Getty Images

submitted by Carrie La Jeunesse

nytimes.com - by CLAIR MacDOUGALL - MAY 10, 2016

Anne Deborah Atai-Omoruto, a Ugandan doctor who went to Liberia at the height of the Ebola epidemic in 2014 and helped turn the tide in the battle against the disease, died on May 5 in Kampala, Uganda. She was 59.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, her daughter Acom Victoria said.

Dr. Atai-Omoruto, at the request of the World Health Organization, arrived in Liberia in July 2014 with a team of 14 Ugandan health workers she had gathered.

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The boreal region stretches across the Northern Hemisphere through Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia. Boreal forests are increasingly affected by fire and climate change.

Sources: Natural Resources Canada; Alberta Agriculture and Forestry; U.S. Geological Survey; University of Maryland - By The New York Times

Scientists say the near-destruction of Fort McMurray last week by a wildfire is the latest indication that the vital boreal forest is at risk from climate change.

nytimes.com - by JUSTIN GILLIS and HENRY FOUNTAIN - May 10, 2016

Scientists have been warning for decades that climate change is a threat to the immense tracts of forest that ring the Northern Hemisphere, with rising temperatures, drying trees and earlier melting of snow contributing to a growing number of wildfires.

The near-destruction of a Canadian city last week by a fire that sent almost 90,000 people fleeing for their lives is grim proof that the threat to these vast stands of spruce and other resinous trees, collectively known as the boreal forest, is real. And scientists say a large-scale loss of the forest could have profound consequences for efforts to limit the damage from climate change.