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A ferocious heat wave is scorching the Middle East. A high pressure system has stalled over Iran and Iraq and is resulting in some of the highest temperatures ever recorded in populate areas. If the system should move north, it will affect Europe in coming weeks. Temperatures in Baghdad have reached up to 126F, and are predicted to remain above 115F for the next 10 days. The entire region is suffering exceptional heat, and the poor and displaced in conflict countries are having problems getting water. In many places, electricity is sporadic, and there is little air conditioning except in the wealthier countries such as Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States.read more

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Extreme levels of pollution across China are becoming catastrophic, and now Beijing has begun taking radical steps toward developing clean energy by beginning construction on a 10 square mile solar power station that will generate a massive 200 megawats of solar thermal energy.

Announced by the Qinghai development and reform commission, the plant is expected to cover 10 square miles (25.9 km²), with enough capacity to power one million households. It is also designed to store 15 hours of heat, which will enable continuous power generation. This move is expected to cut the region’s coal usage by 4.26 million tons annually, and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 896,000 tons.
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The month of June has broken temperature records in terms of the global average temperature, and so fare there has been a series of 4 record-breaking months this year, with multiple parts of the world seeing above average temperatures.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the world’s average temperature for June was 16.33ºC (61.48ºF), breaking the record set in June 2014 by 0.12ºC, or 0.22ºF. "Usually temperature records are broken by one or two one-hundredths of a degree, not nearly a quarter of a degree [Fahrenheit]", remarks NOAA climate scientist Jessica Blunden.
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As Greenland’s glaciers melt, gigantic chunks of ice are breaking off. They are so large that they are causing powerful earthquakes as they tumble into the ocean.

A team of researchers from Swansea University in the UK, the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University, and a number of other institutions, studied GPS data from Greenland’s fast-moving Helheim Glacier, and the glacier’s calving front, where icebergs break off into the ocean, and correlated this with seismic data for earthquake timings. They found that large earthquakes, in the 4.6 to 5.2 range, are generated when billion-ton ice sheets break off from the glacier’s forward face.
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