Tiempo Climate Newswatch

Namibia has reported the threat of absolute water scarcity by 2020 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

As global warming develops, "the additional stress on the water sector could be severe" and "the impact on... human development in Namibia would be extreme," according to the latest report to the UNFCCC launched recently by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism. The productivity of agriculture and marine fisheries and household food security would all suffer.

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• allAfrica
• First National Communication (2002)

A new satellite, Aura, will study ozone and other greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere. "This is going to be relevant to every man and woman on the street," claimed Richard Holloway of the UK's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.

The satellite's instruments will study conditions on the boundary between the Earth's lower atmosphere, where the weather occurs, and the upper atmosphere, home to the ozone layer that protects life below from harmful ultraviolet radiation. Monitoring the atmosphere is critical to understanding the mechanisms that underlie the climate problem.

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• ENN
• New Scientist
• NASA

Dramatic warming 55 million years ago has been linked to a massive release of methane from hydrothermal vents beneath the Nordic Seas.

According to Professor Born Jamtveit of the University of Oslo, the release was "enormous. It corresponds to the amount of gas in the petroleum resources in the whole Earth today." Other scientists are sceptical, claiming that the release would not have been sufficient to trigger a five degrees Celsius warming that lasted 100,000 years.

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• BBC
• NASA