https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/climate/heat-temperatures-climate-change.html Source:  By Henry Fountain, The New York Times. Excerpt: As the climate continues to warm over the next half-century, up to one-third of the world’s population is likely to live in areas that are considered unsuitably hot for humans, scientists said Monday. Currently fewer than 25 million people live in the world’s hottest areas, which are mostly in the Sahara region in Africa with mean annual temperatures above about 84 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 Celsius. But the researchers said that by 2070 such extreme heat could encompass a much larger part of Africa, as well as parts of India, the Middle East, South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. ...The parts of the world that could become unsuitably hot “are precisely the areas that are growing the fastest,” said Timothy A. Kohler, an archaeologist at Washington State University and an author of the study [ https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/2...

https://eos.org/articles/toxic-algal-blooms-are-worsening-with-climate-change Source:    By Kate Wheeling, Eos/AGU. Excerpt: Every summer, vast blooms of harmful algae erupt in freshwater lakes across the United States. This year, blue-green mats of algae blanketed more than 1,500 square kilometers of Lake Erie’s surface by August; toxic algae forced officials to close New Jersey’s largest lake to recreational activities, and officials in North Carolina and Georgia warned dog owners to keep their pets out of the water after at least four dogs died after swimming in contaminated water. Although these harmful algal blooms are not new to freshwater lakes, they do appear to be getting worse. But researchers weren’t certain whether freshwater blooms are actually intensifying or scientists are just paying closer attention. ...A new study that looked back at 3 decades of satellite data finds that these summertime algal blooms are indeed worsening in large freshwater lakes around ...

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/10/climate-change-prompts-rethink-everglades-management Source:   By Richard Blaustein, Science Magazine. Excerpt: Efforts to restore the rich ecology of the Florida Everglades have so far focused on fighting damage from pollutant runoff and reestablishing the natural flow of water. But now, an expert panel is calling for federal and state agencies to reassess their plans in light of threats from climate change and sea-level rise. A congressionally mandated report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, released on 16 October, asks the managers of the 18-year-old Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan (CERP) to conduct a “midcourse assessment.” The new evaluation should account for likely conditions in the wetlands in “2050 and beyond” and model how existing restoration projects would fare under various sea-level rise scenarios.... 

https://eos.org/opinions/climate-changes-pulse-is-in-central-america-and-the-caribbean Source:   By J. E. González, M. Georgescu, M. C. Lemos, N. Hosannah, and D. Niyogi, Earth & Space News (EOS; AGU) For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Nations that border the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Sea are ideally placed for tracking the effects of global climate change and testing innovative ways to adapt to future changes. ...The global trend of increasing sea surface temperatures, for example, may work with or against natural modes of climate variability in the region, highlighting the physical system’s complexity and nonlinear nature. Hand in hand with these physical changes are the hazards they pose to people. More than 120 million people live in the area. Despite steady, albeit inequitable, economic growth during recent decades, the region has become increasingly exposed to climate-related pressures that threaten its social and economic well-being. The region’s extensive c...

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/10/10/climate-refuges-identified-for-endangered-snow-leopards/ Source:   By Brett Israel, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 2016-10-10. Climate refuges identified for endangered snow leopards. . For GSS Losing Biodiversity chapter 8 and Climate Change chapter 8. Excerpt: A new study of snow leopards’ habitat has found that just one-third of their current range will be a refuge from climate change by 2070, as habitat loss and fragmentation in the Himalaya and Hengduan mountains threaten not just snow leopards, but other species in the region. Snow leopards live in remote, high-elevation area on and surrounding the Tibetan Plateau, known as “the roof of the world.” The region is warming more than twice as fast as the Northern Hemisphere on average, threatening endangered species that call it home. Among these species, snow leopards are critically important to the Tibetan Plateau ecosystem because they are apex predators, which keep the...

http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/10/07/climate-change-could-be-a-greater-threat-to-tropical-frogs-than-deforestation/ Source:   By Brett Israel, UC Berkeley News For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: Changes in climate and land use are expected to reduce the livable area for tropical frogs because these species will increasingly encounter temperatures hot enough to harm their behavior, reproduction and physiology. Climate change, however, may be the most destructive force, according to a recent study involving a researcher from UC Berkeley. The researchers found that declines in frogs’ thermally suitable habitat area from climate change alone could be up to 4.5 times greater than declines attributable to land-cover change only, such as converting a forest to agriculture. Unlike humans, frogs rely on external sources to regulate their body temperature, so habitats in which frogs are unable to keep their body temperature below their maximum temperature limit are unlikely to suppo...

https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Bees/bees.php Source:   By Rebecca Lindsey, NASA Earth Observatory For Investigation:   10.3 Excerpt: ...Will Plants and Pollinators Get Out of Sync? ...the changes aren’t just dramatic, they’re also kind of scary. The fertility of most flowering plants, including nearly all fruits and vegetables, depends on animal-mediated pollination. As the pollinators move from flower to flower for nectar--a high-energy, sugary enticement—the plants dust them with pollen, which the animals transfer from flower to flower. “Flowering plants and pollinators co-evolved. Pollination is the key event for a plant and for the pollinators in the year. That’s where pollinators get their food, and that’s what determines whether the plant will set fruit. Some species of pollinators have co-evolved with one species of plant, and the two species time their cycles to coincide, for example, insects maturing from larva to adult precisely when nectar flows beg...