Situation Report

FBI searches Florida mail center in hunt for sender of package bombs | Reuters

reuters.com - by Zachary Fagenson - October 25, 2018

Authorities found two more suspicious packages on Friday addressed to U.S. Senator Cory Booker and James Clapper, the former U.S. director of national intelligence, amid a manhunt for the person who sent bombs to prominent Democrats and critics of U.S. President Donald Trump . . .

 . . . Meanwhile, a local police bomb squad and canine units joined federal investigators on Thursday to examine a sprawling U.S. mail distribution center at Opa-Locka, northwest of Miami, Miami-Dade County police said.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said that Florida appeared to be the starting point for at least some of the bomb shipments.

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CLICK HERE - REPORT - Global Warming of 1.5°C, an IPCC special report on the impacts of global warming of 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels and related global greenhouse gas emission pathways, in the context of strengthening the global response to the threat of climate change, sustainable development, and efforts to eradicate poverty

Urgent changes needed to cut risk of extreme heat, drought, floods and poverty, says IPCC

the guardian.com - by Jonathan Watts - October 8, 2018

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target, which they say is affordable and feasible although it lies at the most ambitious end of the Paris agreement pledge to keep temperatures between 1.5C and 2C.

A Sept. 7, 2017, satellite image from NOAA shows the eye of Hurricane Irma, left, just north of the island of Hispaniola, with Hurricane Jose, right, in the Atlantic Ocean. Six major hurricanes formed in the Atlantic in 2017, including Harvey, Irma and Maria.  (Photo: AP)

CLICK HERE - STUDY - Dominant effect of relative tropical Atlantic warming on major hurricane occurrence

usatoday.com - by Doyle Rice - September 27, 2018

The catastrophic 2017 hurricane season – which included such monsters as Harvey, Irma and Maria – was fueled in part by unusually warm ocean water, a new study suggests.

And because of human-caused global warming, the study said similar favorable conditions for fierce hurricanes will be present in the years and decades to come . . .

 . . . "We show that the increase in 2017 major hurricanes was not primarily caused by La Niña conditions in the Pacific Ocean, but mainly by pronounced warm sea surface conditions in the tropical North Atlantic," the study said.