Europeans are suffering with unprecedented heat during the day and are stressed by uncomfortable warmth at night. The death rate from hot weather has risen 30% in Europe in…Continue readingEurope baked in ‘extreme heat stress’ pushing temperatures to record highs
Tag: impact
In past bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef, the southern region has sometimes been spared worst of the bleaching. Not this time. This year’s intense underwater heat has…Continue readingMore than coral: The unseen casualties of record-breaking heat on the Great Barrier Reef
From April 1 to April 5, temperatures in Mali exceeded 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) and peaked at a record 48.5˚C in the western city of Kayes. Ranked…Continue readingMalians struggle to cope after deadly heat wave
Trees more than a century old are barely alive. Some of these giant jarrahs might survive, but some won’t. It’s a scene that’s being replicated in forests and coastal…Continue readingWestern Australia’s eucalypt forests fade to brown as century-old giant jarrahs die in heat and drought
The UK faces food shortages and price rises as extreme weather linked to climate breakdown causes low yields on farms locally and abroad. Record rainfall has meant farmers in…Continue readingUK facing food shortages and price rises after extreme weather
The deadly protracted heatwave that filled hospitals and mortuaries in the Sahel region of Africa earlier this month would have been impossible without human-caused climate disruption, a new analysis…Continue readingLethal heatwave in Sahel worsened by fossil fuel burning
At least 65 people have died in storm-related incidents including lightning in Pakistan, officials said, with rain so far in April falling at nearly twice the historical average rate.…Continue readingLightning, downpours kill 65 in Pakistan, as April rain doubles historical average
Huge tailbacks snaked along six-lane expressways after up to 254 millimeters of rain—about two years’ worth—fell on the desert United Arab Emirates on Tuesday. The storms hit the UAE…Continue readingDubai reels from floods chaos after record rains
Global heating has pushed the world’s coral reefs to a fourth planet-wide mass bleaching event that is on track to be the most extensive on record, US government scientists…Continue readingGlobal heating pushes coral reefs towards worst planet-wide mass bleaching on record
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which stretches for some 2,300km (1,429 miles) off the country’s northeastern coast, is suffering its worst bleaching event on record. The extent of the bleaching…Continue readingAustralia’s Great Barrier Reef suffers worst bleaching on record
Thousands of schools in the Philippines have stopped in-person classes due to unbearable heat. In Indonesia, prolonged dry weather has caused rice prices to soar. In Thailand’s waters, temperatures…Continue readingSchools close and crops wither as ‘historic’ heatwave hits south-east Asia
The destruction of the world’s most pristine rainforests continued at a relentless rate in 2023, despite dramatic falls in forest loss in the Brazilian and Colombian Amazon, new figures…Continue readingGlobal rainforest loss continues at rate of 10 football pitches a minute
On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at…Continue reading‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe
A searing heatwave that struck west Africa in February was made 4˚C hotter and 10x more likely by human-caused global heating, a study has found. The heat affected millions…Continue readingWest Africa heatwave was supercharged by climate crisis
Experts realised there was a problem: frogs, toads, salamanders and newts were disappearing in their thousands around the world and nobody understood why. A master’s student was looking into…Continue readingI discovered why seemingly healthy amphibians were being wiped out
In recent years, Antarctica has experienced a series of unprecedented heat waves. On 6 February 2020, temperatures of 18.3°C were recorded, the highest ever seen on the continent, beating…Continue readingClimate change is speeding up in Antarctica
The annual State of the Climate report by the UN weather and climate agency confirmed preliminary data showing 2023 was by far the hottest year ever recorded. And last…Continue readingPlanet ‘on the brink’, with new heat records likely in 2024: UN
England has experienced its wettest 18 months since records began in 1836, leaving farmers struggling to plant crops in waterlogged fields and transport networks disrupted by flooding. Climate change…Continue readingEngland drenched after the wettest 18 months since records began in 1836
The polar regions of the Arctic and Antarctica are increasingly experiencing the impacts of plastic reaching floating ice and land, not solely as larger macroplastics (>5 cm), but as…Continue reading97% of sampled Antarctic seabirds found to have ingested microplastics
Six leading international datasets used for monitoring global temperatures and consolidated by WMO show that the annual average global temperature was 1.45 ± 0.12 °C above pre-industrial levels (1850-1900)…Continue readingWMO confirms that 2023 smashes global temperature record
Hundreds of Thai children strain to sing the national anthem, reedy voices and fragile lungs competing against eight lanes of belching traffic next to their school’s open atrium in…Continue readingSmog and sick kids: Thai pupils endure air pollution
Geologists on an international subcommission recently voted down a proposal to formally recognize that we have entered the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch representing the time when massive, unrelenting…Continue readingViewpoint: What the Anthropocene’s critics overlook, and why it really should be a new geological epoch
A skeleton lies exposed to the elements as turquoise Caribbean waters lap the shores near a shattered tomb—a grisly reminder that the Colombian city of Cartagena is slowly being…Continue readingColombia’s Caribbean jewel slowly sinking as sea waters rise
Rain used to be rare in most parts of the Arctic: the polar regions were, and still are, usually too cold and dry for clouds to form and absorb…Continue readingRain Comes to the Arctic, With a Cascade of Troubling Changes
The temperature was minus 45 degrees F when Uuganaa, a 27-year-old nomad with a wife and two children, woke to the howling winds outside his “ger,” a felt-covered traditional…Continue readingIn Mongolia, a Killer Winter Is Ravaging Herds and a Way of Life
Months of record breaking temperatures and the El Niño weather phenomenon pushed the heating up of the world’s oceans to a new peak in February, scientists said. Oceans cover…Continue readingCarbon emissions and El Nino push oceans to record temperatures
The Great Barrier Reef is in the grip of a mass coral bleaching event driven by global heating – the fifth in only eight years – the marine park’s…Continue readingFifth mass coral bleaching event in eight years hits Great Barrier Reef, marine park authority confirms
The quest to declare the Anthropocene an official geological epoch has descended into an epic row, after the validity of a leaked vote that apparently killed the proposal was…Continue readingQuest to declare Anthropocene an epoch descends into epic row
Many traditional Malaysian fishermen have found themselves increasingly affected by the climate crisis, which is changing weather patterns that have long governed when and where they can fish. Such…Continue readingClimate change pushes Malaysia’s coastal fishermen away from the sea
In January, the average temperature hit a record, “exceeding 3.8C (38.8F) above normal for the period 1991-2020,” said Houcine Youaabed, the head of communications for the meteorological department. It…Continue readingMorocco winter breaks heat records
Dozens of koalas have been killed or injured and left for dead during logging of blue gum plantations in South Australia, according to former employees of the harvesting company…Continue readingDozens of koalas allegedly killed or injured during plantation logging on Kangaroo Island
More than 2 million hectares (4.94 million acres) of bushland in Queensland that included large swathes of possible koala habitat has been cleared over a five-year period, new analysis…Continue readingLand clearing: 2 million hectares of Queensland forest destroyed in 5 years
Vietnamese capital Hanoi was blanketed by a thick haze of pollution on Tuesday that obscured high-rise buildings and left the city’s nearly nine million people breathing toxic air. The…Continue readingHanoi chokes as Vietnam capital tops most polluted cities list
There’s enough water frozen in Greenland and Antarctic glaciers that if they melted, global seas would rise by many feet. What will happen to these glaciers over the coming…Continue readingAn 80-mph (129kph) speed record for glacier fracture helps reveal the physics of ice sheet collapse
The world generated 2.3 billion tonnes of municipal waste last year and the pile of trash is set to grow another two-thirds by 2050, the UN said Wednesday, warning…Continue readingWorld must act to stem surge of polluting trash, UN warns
While ice cover across the Great Lakes – a network of five freshwater lakes about the size of the United Kingdom – has been declining since the early 1970s,…Continue readingVanishing ice and snow: record warm winter wreaks havoc across US midwest
Dr Stuart Rowland, a retired principal research scientist who worked for NSW Fisheries for 36 years and remains a mentor to scientists in the agency, says there is a…Continue reading‘The river has been destroyed’: expert says agriculture has overshadowed science in the Murray-Darling Basin
A blanket of smog covers Milan, empty reservoirs bake in Sicily and wine production is down in Piedmont as a lack of rain across Italy exacerbates pollution and sparks…Continue readingLack of rain leaves Italy gasping
Ocean currents are driven by winds, tides and water density differences. In the Atlantic Ocean circulation, the relatively warm and salty surface water near the equator flows toward Greenland.…Continue readingOnce melting glaciers shut down the Gulf Stream, we will see extreme climate change within decades
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Bangkok city employees have been told to work from home to avoid harmful air pollution, as a layer of noxious haze blanketed the Thai capital on Thursday. City authorities…Continue readingBangkok says work from home as pollution blankets city
The European Drought Observatory’s map of current droughts in Europe shows the entire Spanish Mediterranean coast in bad shape, with red areas indicating an alert similar to those in…Continue readingWhat will Spain look like when it runs out of water? Barcelona is giving us a glimpse
Greenland is part of the Arctic region. It is the world’s biggest island, around 836,330 sq miles in size (2.1 million sq km). Most of the land is covered…Continue readingGreenland’s ice sheet is melting and being replaced by vegetation
The Amazon rainforest could approach a tipping point, which could lead to a large-scale collapse with serious implications for the global climate system. A new Nature study by an…Continue readingAmazon rainforest at a critical threshold: Loss of forest worsens climate change
The devastating drought in the Amazon River Basin that reported in October has continued into Northern Hemisphere winter, which is the heart of the wet season in the southern…Continue readingWhat’s causing the Amazon’s ongoing record drought?
AMOC, which encompasses part of the Gulf Stream and other powerful currents, is a marine conveyer belt that carries heat, carbon and nutrients from the tropics towards the Arctic…Continue readingAtlantic Ocean circulation nearing ‘devastating’ tipping point
Researchers from the University of Cambridge and the British Antarctic Survey have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the…Continue readingIce cores provide first documentation of rapid Antarctic ice loss in the past
The new chief of the World Meteorological Organization said it looks to her that the rate of human-caused climate change is accelerating and that warming has triggered more Arctic…Continue readingNew UN weather agency chief says rate of global warming is speeding up
There’s no precedent in at least five centuries for how hot and dry the West has been in the last two decades, new research asserts using analysis of tree…Continue readingUS West’s ‘hot drought’ is unprecedented in more than 500 years
Chile began two days of national mourning Monday for at least 122 victims of a raging wildfire, as the search continued for the missing and survivors picked through the…Continue readingChile mourns 122 killed in wildfire inferno, searches for missing
In a warming climate, meltwater from Antarctica is expected to contribute significantly to rising seas. For the most part, though, research has been focused on West Antarctica, in places…Continue readingCurrently stable parts of East Antarctica may be closer to melting than anyone has realized
Fipronil and imidacloprid are highly toxic pesticides that are no longer approved for use in outdoor agriculture, but continue to be widely used in pet flea treatments, typically applied…Continue readingHandwashing is a major source of pet pesticide pollution in UK rivers
The global mean temperature in September 2023 was 0.93° C warmer than the 1991–2020 average, breaking the previous record set in 2020 by a margin of 0.5° C. This…Continue readingThe jump in global temperatures in September 2023 is difficult to explain by natural climate variability alone
The EPA told stakeholders it was ditching specific search requirements for glider den trees, which must currently be retained with a 50-metre logging exclusion zone around each one. Instead,…Continue readingGreater glider put on path to extinction by NSW environmental watchdog
The Queensland government approved the Vulcan South coalmine in the Bowen Basin earlier this month without requiring an environmental impact statement (EIS). But the project still needs approval from…Continue readingTanya Plibersek urged to block ‘climate-wrecking’ Queensland coalmine that would raze koala habitat
Through the process of photosynthesis, trees remove CO2 from the atmosphere to produce new growth. Yet, under stressful conditions, trees release CO2 back to the atmosphere, a process called…Continue readingTrees struggle to ‘breathe’ as climate warms
The world’s main system for warning about heat stress on the planet’s coral reefs has been forced to add three new alert categories to represent ever-increasing temperature extremes. Underlying…Continue reading‘Literally off the charts’: global coral reef heat stress monitor forced to add new alerts as temperatures rise
The World Meteorological Organisation confirmed on Tuesday that continental Europe recorded in 2021 its highest ever temperature of 48.8 degrees Celsius (119.8 Fahrenheit), and warned that new extremes were…Continue readingUN confirms Europe hit record high temperature in 2021
Plastic microparticles released into the environment from common road tires should be treated as a “high concern” pollutant that may exceed chronic safety limits in some heavily contaminated environments,…Continue readingMicroparticles from road tires are ‘high concern’
Located in West Bengal state in eastern India and neighbouring Bangladesh, the Sundarbans forest system is a cluster of low-lying islands and represents the largest mangrove ecosystem in the…Continue readingThe Sundarbans dilemma: Islands swallowed by water, and nowhere else to go