NASA has released this map showing the world's major carbon dioxide emitters (in brown, with 3D shading) and absorbers (in green) from 2015-2020. Because this map is based on data collected by satellite, it includes measures for countries that have not reported emissions data in years. The major carbon-absorbing countries have large swaths of forest, particularly the taiga (or boreal forest) of Canada and Russia. news.yahoo.com/nasa-map-shows-which-countries-are-releasing-and-absorbing-co2-123341959.html

This map from Geographical (UK) is a reminder that the Eurasian plate, from Italy through Iran, is intensely seismically active: geographical.co.uk/science-environment/danger-zones-mapping-earthquakes-in-europe

Although some locations in the U.S. have gotten massive amounts of snow this winter -- 9.7 feet in Buffalo, New York, for example, and nearly 43 feet on Mammoth Mountain in California's Sierra Nevadas -- other traditionally snowy places like Boston and Chicago have received below-average snowfall. https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2023/02/03/us-snowfall-extremes-map

Scientists continue to try to draw attention to Utah's Great Salt Lake, which is rapidly disappearing due to drought and water use policy. Without intervention, the Great Salt Lake may be entirely gone within 5 years! The issues are similar to Central Asia's Aral Sea: the diversion of water from the rivers that feed the lake leaving behind an expanse of toxic dust, threatening both wildlife and human health. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/06/great-salt-lake-utah-drying-up/

It's been about 70 years since gold was actively mined in Virginia, but with industrial gold use rising -- including in computer chips, printed circuit boards, medical applications, and as a catalyst -- Virginia is exploring the health and environmental impacts of a resumption of mining. This map shows former and potential mining locations in the state: tinyurl.com/546ndhps (Map from www.bayjournal.com/news/pollution/report-virginia-ill-equipped-to-deal-with-the-revival-of-gold-mine-industry/article_fcff4ae4-69da-11ed-8cfb-e7dbe084e37c.html.)

What is a "dunkelflaute" and why does it matter?  Without access to Russian gas, European consumers are at the mercy of Mother Nature: specifically, a particularly cold winter this year will spell trouble for energy supplies for the next 12 months and possibly beyond. A dunkelflaute is a German word that refers to cloudy, cold, windless weather -- the kind that increases heating demands while shutting down solar and wind production. The UK, for example, experienced a multi-day dunkelflaute earlier this month, with snow falling in London and wind energy dropping from 20% of the UK's electricity mix to 4%. qz.com/can-europe-survive-the-dreaded-dunkelflaute-1849886529

Students in some of my geography classes learn about one of our most unusual biomes, a tepui. Found almost exclusively in Venezuela -- Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, cascades down a tepui -- these distinctive tabletop mountains host a range of plants and animals found nowhere else in the world. This article highlights the use of satellite imagery to document the extent of illegal gold mining destroying a tepui in Venezuela's Yapacana National Park considered sacred to the indigenous people and home to several critically endangered species.  www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/12/06/venezuela-yapacana-gold-mining/

Hurricanes have become costlier in the U.S., not just because of the storms themselves but because of an increasing number of expensive structures built in their paths. A case in point: these maps compare housing density on Florida's southern Gulf coast in 1980 and in 2020.  (Map from  www.nytimes.com/2022/12/02/briefing/why-hurricanes-cost-more.html. The article includes similar maps for the Houston metro area.)

Negotiations over a "cap" on the price paid for Russian oil has been in the news recently. This geo-graphic from Al Jazeera highlights Russia's role in global oil markets: bucket.mlcdn.com/a/2764/2764870/images/e37fb5d7fa9398245e8017714bc383775d23a256.png

A large high-pressure zone over Greenland is expected to create a phenomenon known as the "Greenland block," so named because it blocks the usual path of the Northern Hemisphere's jet stream, later this month. A Greenland block redirects the jet stream southward, often creating colder (and often wetter) conditions on the East Coast of the U.S.  Most of the Washington, DC area's biggest snowstorms, including the 2009 "Snowpocalypse" storm that dumped about two feet of snow in 24 hours, resulted from a Greenland block. www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2022/11/29/greenland-block-snow-dc-midatlantic/

The world's tropical glaciers -- in Asia, in Africa, and in South America -- are essential sources of water for billions of people. This article looks at the looming disappearance of Africa's glaciers, due not just to warming but to drought and changing rainfall patterns across East Africa: www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2022/kenya-glaciers-africa-climate-change/

Electric vehicles are dependent on a variety of minerals. This article from The Wall Street Journal includes maps that show where cobalt and manganese, as well as lithium and nickel, are mined and refined: www.wsj.com/articles/electric-vehicles-scarce-parts-supply-chain-11668206037

This topological map from Visual Capitalist shows the number and percentage of each country's population deemed to be at high risk from once-in-a-century flooding, like the floods that inundated more than one-third of Pakistan earlier this fall, killing more than 1,700 people, destroying buildings and crops, and creating lasting crises in food security, education, and waterborne disease. www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/ 

NASA instrumentation aboard the International Space Station has pinpointed more than 50 methane super-emitters since it was installed in July, including an oilfield in New Mexico, a waste-processing complex in Iran, and massive, previously unidentified plumes associated with oil and gas facilities in Turkmenistan.  The instrumentation will be in service for a year and will be tracking airborne dust to help scientists model the potential for airborne dust in different parts of the world "to trap or deflect heat from the sun, thus contributing to warming or cooling of the planet."  Identifying methane sources from space, including those in locations that would otherwise be difficult to monitor, was an unexpected side benefit.  www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/nasa-instrument-detects-dozens-methane-super-emitters-space-2022-10-26/

The Darién Gap is the southernmost section of Panama that is part Panamanian rainforest and national park, part indigenous land, and part ungoverned space in which a variety of gangs and smugglers have long held sway. The "gap" refers to a gap in the Pan-American Highway: there is no road through the Darién Gap to connect Panama with Colombia. Over the last few years, the Darién Gap has become a route for Venezuelan and other migrants heading to the U.S. (many of whom fly into Ecuador from around the world to take advantage of Ecuador's liberal visa policy). This article from The New York Times chronicles the hazards of the Darién Gap: www.nytimes.com/2022/10/07/world/americas/venezuelan-migrants-us-border.html

Chad's capital of N'Djamena sits at the confluence of the two major rivers that feed Lake Chad, to the north of the capital.  A rainy season that came early and has produced unusually heavy rains, after years of drought, resulted in massive flooding in N'Djamena over the weekend, with many streets in the capital navigable only by boat. www.nationsonline.org/maps/Chad-political-map.jpg

Fog is a vital characteristic of biomes ranging from temperate rainforests to cloud forests and may even become a source of water commercially harvested for drinking. Yet scientists around the world are finding that fog, particularly along the coasts, seems to be in decline for complex reasons, including warming oceans.  "Fog may be the most difficult meteorological phenomenon to capture, calculate and predict. Unlike temperature, precipitation, humidity or wind, there is no reliable gauge for it. There is not even a practical definition of it. Most will say that fog is a cloud that touches the ground, which sounds simple enough. But fog is movement in three dimensions, dipping and rising, forming and disappearing. Sometimes a thin layer hugs the water below the Golden Gate Bridge, blinding mariners. Sometimes it settles about 200 feet higher, blinding drivers. Sometimes it shrouds the top of the bridge’s towers and the airspace above, blinding pilots. Sometimes it does it all. Which of those things is fog? ... Fog from the ocean is a dependable feature in several places around the globe, mostly on the west coasts of major continents. Villages in places like Peru and Chile, sometimes with almost no rain throughout the year, have for centuries sustained themselves largely on fog water. ... Using observational data at airports in the coastal redwood region — from central California to its northern border, including the Bay Area — they found that the frequency of fog, measured by fog hours per day, had dropped 33 percent since the middle of the 20th century." www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/14/climate/san-francisco-fog.html

The second major named storm of the Atlantic hurricane season has just made its way across Cuba and Florida.  This map, based on the INFORM Risk Index, looks at the risk of hurricane-related humanitarian crises in Latin America and the Caribbean: cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/28317.jpeg

Using data from a recent study published in Nature, this map from VisualCapitalist shows country-by-country population vulnerability to 1-in-100-year coastal and inland flooding events: www.visualcapitalist.com/countries-highest-flood-risk/

Persistent drought has exacerbated wildfire damage in the American Southwest, but more housing continues to be built in areas vulnerable to wildfires. The maps in this article from The New York Times compare housing developments in 1990 and 2020 in the areas around Sacramento, CA, Denver, CO, and San Antonio/Austin, TX. www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/09/09/climate/growing-wildfire-risk-homes.html

Americans often confuse the terms "monsoon" and "typhoon."  A monsoon is an annual rainy season; it is usually critical for life in the region.  A typhoon is a wind storm, like a hurricane, in the Pacific Ocean. The extreme flooding in the news in Pakistan is being caused by monsoon rains. Agriculture would be all but impossible in Pakistan without monsoon rains, but, unfortunately, this year's arrived earlier than normal and are falling more heavily than normal.  As of the last official U.N. count, nearly half a million homes in Pakistan have been damaged by the recent flooding and more than 1,000 people have died. This map, from the U.N., shows the damage is concentrated along the lower reaches of the Indus River. By the way, despite was you might read elsewhere, Pakistan cannot experience a typhoon: hurricane-like wind storms in the Indian Ocean are cyclones.  (Map from reliefweb.int/report/pakistan/pakistan-2022-monsoon-floods-situation-report-no-03-26-august-2022.)

This has been China's hottest, driest summer since record keeping began 61 years ago, and the impact on the Yangtze River has been severe, with tributaries dried up and water flow in the main branch running 50% below normal. The Yangtze is the longest river in the world that runs through only one country, and five of China's megacities -- cities with a population of at least 10 million -- are in the Yangtze River basin.  The Yangtze is not only a key source of water for drinking and irrigation, it is also a major source of hydroelectric power. In Sichuan Province, which gets 80% of its electricity from hydropower, factories have been shut recently to save power for home air conditioning. The next few days may also determine the impact on China's main rice crop. www.euronews.com/2022/08/21/china-declares-first-ever-drought-emergency-amid-intense-heatwave

With drought impacting many of the major river systems of the Northern Hemisphere this summer, this map from Statista looks at hydropower as a percentage of each country's electrical supply: www.statista.com/chart/28032/share-of-electricity-generated-through-hydropower-per-country

California's Central Valley is one of the world's most productive agricultural regions. But it is also periodically, at least measured in geologic time, a long, thin lake. Massive flooding inundates the Central Valley when moisture-rich atmospheric rivers, like the Pineapple Express, stall over California, dumping rain and melting snow in the Sierras. Recent research shows this happens, on average, every 100-200 years. Because this happened most recently between Dec. 1861 and Jan. 1862, scientists are increasingly concerned that the region is ripe for a megaflood event. www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/08/12/megaflood-california-flood-rain-climate/