Higher high tides, supercharged by rising sea levels, could flood all or parts of an estimated $34 billion worth of real estate along the nation’s…
Tag: impact
The latest assessment by risk company Verisk Maplecroft brings those two threats together to calculate that heat stress already poses an “extreme risk” to agriculture…
Smoke from hundreds of wildfires has darkened skies over the Alaskan interior this summer with the state experiencing its fastest start to the fire season…
The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study. It shows five dangerous tipping…
Amid blistering heat waves, brutal drought and widespread wildfires, Europe just notched its hottest summer in recorded history, new data from the Copernicus Climate Change…
The heat wave that’s been gripping California and other parts of the West for 10 days and counting is the most severe ever recorded in…
China recorded its highest temperatures and one of its lowest levels of rainfall in 61 years during a two-month summer heatwave. The average national temperature…
Unprecedented and societally disruptive extreme weather events, including heat waves, droughts, dust storms and torrential rains, will soon become a reality unless immediate, ambitious, and…
The UN describes Iraq as the fifth-most-vulnerable country to climate change. Temperatures have increased by 1.8˚C (3.2˚F) in three decades, well above the global average,…
Chad’s heaviest seasonal rainfall in more than 30 years has left parts of the capital N’Djamena navigable only by boat and forced thousands to flee…
The rice fields are washed away. The coconut trees and chilli plants, flooded with salt water, are all dead. The farmers’ fish ponds fail, the…
Pakistan is experiencing its worst floods this century. At least one-third of the country is under water. Scientists say several factors have contributed to the…
Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is…
Avian flu is a highly pathogenic strain of the H5N1 virus. Since its early detections in poultry and wild birds in the spring of 2021,…
Flash floods, which have intensified in recent days, have swept away villages, roads, bridges, people, livestock and crops across all four provinces. Pakistan has appealed…
One argument against deep seabed mining is the existence of previously unknown species in the deep sea, including the recently discovered pom-pom-like Biremis spaghetti worm…
The number of forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon hit a nearly 15-year high this week, according to official figures that provided the latest warning…
Iraq is known in Arabic as the Land of the Two Rivers, but it has seen water levels on the once mighty Tigris and Euphrates…
A giant, gentle sea creature that belongs to the manatee family is now “functionally extinct” in China with no sightings recorded since 2008, a new…
Researchers found that a typical forest fire season now burns 3 million more hectares (7.4 million more acres) than in 2001. Forest fires accounted for…
An international team of researchers looked specifically at 25,000 species, including fish, bacteria, plants and protozoans living in the top 100 meters of the world’s…
47% of Europe is undergoing warning conditions, as moisture in the soil dries out and 17% of the region is on a state of alert…
Bumblebee populations have dropped throughout the United States and Europe as Earth has heated up. Research from 2020 found that the number of areas populated…
People in large parts of China have been experiencing two months of extreme heat. Hundreds of places have reported temperatures of more than 40°C (104°F),…
Forest fires supercharged by climate change are burning twice as much global tree cover as 20 years ago. The equivalent of 16 football pitches are…
Despite enviable earnings, shares of Three Gorges Renewables are down 15% this year and trade at 20 times forward earnings, half the level of a…
The reputed home of the biblical Garden of Eden, Iraq’s swamplands have been battered by 3 years of drought and low rainfall, as well as…
The world’s biggest ice sheet could cause “several meters” of sea-level rise over centuries if the global temperature rises more than 2°C, according to a…
Blazes that have torched tens of thousands of hectares of forest in France, Spain and Portugal have made 2022 a record year for wildfire activity…
No longer having access to potable running water, the villagers of Ouled Essi Masseoud rely solely on sporadic supplies in public fountains and from private…
As Antarctica’s slow rivers of ice hit the sea, they float, forming ice shelves. These shelves extend the glaciers into the ocean until they calve…
Forests from the Arctic to the Amazon are transforming at a “shocking” rate due to the climate crisis, with trees advancing into previously barren tundra…
Europe’s most severe drought in decades is hitting homes, factories, farmers and freight across the continent, as experts warn drier winters and searing summers fuelled…
Wildfires have depleted almost all of the carbon credits set aside in reserve by forestry projects in the US to protect against the risk of…
Nearly every sea turtle born on the beaches of Florida in the past four years has been female. The spike in female baby turtles comes…
The eastern two thirds of Antarctica is covered by an ice sheet so large that if it melted the sea would rise by 52 meters…
Rainwater everywhere on the planet is unsafe to drink due to levels of toxic chemicals known as PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances). PFAS were initially…
The hippopotamus is one of the world’s heaviest land animals; males can weigh as much as 1,800kg, and they are often found in large groups.…
Extreme weather events linked to climate change caused about $65 billion in total losses in the first half of 2022, roughly half of which hit…
At least nine people have died and seven were missing in and around the South Korean capital, Seoul, after the city was lashed by the…
Trends – At one weather station in Fairbanks, Alaska, each hour of rainfall is about 50% more intense, on average, than it was a half-century…
Heavy rains in Iran have set off flash floods and landslides in 21 of the country’s 31 provinces, killing at least 53 people, heavily damaging…
A team of researchers have found that the global forest area has declined by 81.7 million hectares from 1960 to 2019, equivalent to an area…
Mangroves are enormously valuable coastal ecosystems. Healthy mangrove ecosystems not only buffer shorelines against rising sea levels, but they also provide valuable protection against erosion,…
In the last two years, fires have consumed nearly 20% of them, according to the Forest Service. In Kings Canyon, hundreds of giant sequoias have…
The 127-gram hatchling was found lying on its back in a rockpool near Sydney’s Tamarama beach. It was missing one of its four flippers, had…
Illegal ivory poaching once posed a significant threat to Kenya’s elephants. But now the giants of the animal kingdom are facing an even bigger risk:…
The health of Australia’s environment is poor and has deteriorated over the past five years due to pressures of climate change, habitat loss, invasive species,…
In its State of the Climate report for Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) for 2021, the WMO said ecosystems, food and water, human health…
At a sprawling landfill near Madrid, hundreds of white storks dodge garbage trucks as they look for scraps of food among the mountains of multicoloured…
Italy faced the hottest day of the current heatwave Friday with red extreme heat warnings issued for 16 cities across the country, as firefighters battled…
Wildfires and heatwaves wreaking havoc across swathes of the globe show humanity facing “collective suicide”, the UN secretary general has warned. António Guterres told ministers…
As dawn breaks over Javed Rahi’s mountain village, a loud boom shatters the silence and a torrent of water comes cascading down from the melting…
Kenya’s remote Marsabit County, in the far north near the border with Ethiopia, is the land of pastoralists. The region has been dubbed the “Cradle…
In 2015, French oil giant TotalEnergies and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with the governments of Uganda…
The migratory monarch butterfly, a North American icon with a continent-spanning annual journey, now faces the threat of extinction. Thursday’s decision by the International Union…
In the years ahead, sea level rise, more intense storm surge and jacked-up tropical storms will be visiting many of the world’s roughly 3,800 ports.…
No organism on Earth is known to live as long as the Great Basin bristlecone pine. The oldest documented tree, a well-hidden specimen nicknamed “Methuselah,”…
France, Portugal and Spain are among the European countries particularly affected, with temperatures of more than 45˚C (113˚F) recorded during a heatwave that is also…
While 425 square kilometres of land lie within the probable maximum flood in the Hawkesbury-Nepean valley, it has also long been identified as fertile for…
Salmon famously travel hundreds of miles upstream to reach their home waters to spawn, but climate change is shrinking their destination. A new study offers…
From ocean depths to mountain peaks, humans have littered the planet with tiny shards of plastic. We have even absorbed these microplastics into our bodies—with…
A potent weather system near Australia’s east coast has unloaded tremendous rainfall in the state of New South Wales for days, putting Sydney on track…
Italy is facing an unusually early heatwave and a lack of rainfall, particularly in the northern agricultural Po valley, which has been hit by its…
Almost a quarter of the world’s population are exposed to significant flood risks, according to new research published Tuesday, which warned those in poorer countries…
Millions of native animals, including wallabies, green rosellas, cockatoos and wombats have been killed in Tasmania, Australia, under property protection permits. In Tasmania, landowners can…
One of the world’s biggest gliding mammals – the once common greater glider – has been pushed closer to extinction and is now officially endangered.…
Unless urgent action is taken, emissions are expected to cause the planet to continue heating rapidly over the next few decades, prompting the global average…
Millions in Assam have been affected by the floods since heavy pre-monsoon rains first hit the region last month, inundating large parts of the valley.…
Most rain on the Iberian peninsula (most of Spain and Portugal, as well as a small area of Southern France, Andorra, and Gibraltar) falls in…
Scientists have been able quickly to prove that record-breaking temperatures are no natural occurrence. A study published last month showed that the south Asian heatwave…
Scientists estimate that Australia’s east coast estuaries are warming four times faster than anywhere else in the world. Prof Maria Byrne from the Sydney Institute…
Land clearing in New South Wales (NSW), Australia continues to exceed the long-term average. 51,400 hectares (127,012 acres) of woody vegetation was cleared across the…
When the U.S. Forest Service started an intentional fire in the Santa Fe National Forest in early April, the aim was to reduce the risk…
In a study just released in the journal Communications Earth and Environment, Dr. Armineh Barkhordarian confirms that this systematic warming pool is not the result…
Hundreds of thousands of people have been evacuated from their homes in southern China, according to state media, amid floods and landslides triggered by the…
Experts say the catastrophic rain-triggered floods, which submerged large part of the country’s northern and northeastern areas, are an outcome of climate change. Saiful Islam,…
Floodwaters have inundated more of Bangladesh and northeast India, officials say, as authorities struggle to reach more than 9.5 million people stranded with little food…
Niger is on the frontline of the climate crisis. Increasingly erratic rainfall and longer dry seasons mean that many parts of the country have not…
Firefighters in Spain and Germany are struggling to contain wildfires amid a heatwave in Western Europe, unusual for this time of year. The worst damage…
In just more than two decades, the continent has experienced its five hottest summers since 1500. 2021: Hottest ever Last year was Europe’s hottest summer…
In the shallow waters and seagrass meadow of Spain’s Ebro delta, there are almost no solid surfaces for creatures to latch on to. That’s where…
The historic drought in the western United States is about to get worse. Much of the West is already experiencing severe to exceptional drought, but…
Antarctic ice sheets are melting, the continent’s climate is changing, and the Southern Ocean is warming, becoming more acidic and losing oxygen. Locally, changing climates…
Most people see Antarctica as a pristine, relatively untouched place, but a new study published today has revealed the presence of microplastics – plastic pieces…
Sea level rise will force the abandonment of about 200,000 coastal properties in England within 30 years, new data suggests, as the climate crisis takes…
Iraq temporarily closed Baghdad airport Monday as choking clouds of dust blanketed the capital, the latest crippling sandstorm in a country that has warned climate…
Climate change is slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents that brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic. Our research,…
Almost the whole of Portugal was in severe drought at the end of May. The month of May was the hottest in the southern European…
A world severely blighted by plastic pollution is on track to see the use of plastics nearly triple in less than four decades. Even with…
Fueled by abnormally dry, warm conditions and spread by strong winds, wildfires have burned more than 600,000 acres across New Mexico this spring — making…
Muhammad Akbar, 40, sells dried chickpeas on a wheelbarrow in Jacobabad, and has suffered heatstroke three times in his life. But now, he says, the…
Basra, Iraq – Southern Iraq was once known as the “black land” – the vast swaths of palm trees blocking out everything else, and providing…
The summer monsoon, which typically arrives in June and continues till September, is life and livelihood. More than 75% of India’s annual rainfall occurs during…
In their effort to provide decision makers with insight into the consequences of climate change, climate researchers are bringing order to the large number of…
Iraq closed public buildings and temporarily shut airports Monday as another sandstorm—the ninth since mid-April—hit the country. More than 1,000 people were hospitalised across the…
After two years of delays, governments had been scheduled to meet in Kunming, China, for COP15 in late April to negotiate this decade’s targets to…
Australia’s tropical rainforest trees have being dying at double the previous rate since the 1980s, seemingly because of global heating, according to new research that…
Sandstorms across the Middle East have delayed flights, closed schools and hospitalised thousands—a phenomenon experts say could worsen as climate change warps regional weather patterns.…
Jacobabad in Pakistan’s arid Sindh province is in the grip of the latest heatwave to hit South Asia—peaking at 51˚C (124˚F). Canals in the city—a…
Pakistan is in the grip of a blistering heatwave, with parts of the nation already scorched by temperatures of nearly 50˚C (122˚F) as officials warn…
Humanity is “at a crossroads” when it comes to managing drought and accelerating mitigation must be done “urgently, using every tool we can,” says a…
Microplastics are being transported to some of the most remote places on Earth by the wind, according to new research involving the University of East…
Since 2000, more than 71 million hectares of dry forest have been destroyed, an area about twice the size of Germany. Many hotspots of deforestation…
Spanning more than 179,000 km2 (69,000 square miles) in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia, the Pantanal boasts one of the highest concentration of flora and fauna…
The Reef snapshot: summer 2021-22, quietly published by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on Tuesday night after weeks of delay, said above-average water…
The relentless dry spell that is withering the American West is steadily warping normal life. Major reservoirs have baked down to record lows and are…
Satellite images show a total area of destroyed forest cover of 1,012.5 square kilometres (391 square miles) from April 1 to 29, with the last…
The world’s birds, described as the planet’s “canaries in the coalmine”, are disappearing in large numbers as the colossal impact of humanity on the Earth…
The number of flying insects in Great Britain has plunged by almost 60% since 2004, according to a survey that counted splats on car registration…
Oyster fisheries in Australia and North America survived for up to 10,000 years prior to colonisation, sustaining First Nations communities even under intense harvest. Oyster…
In the Horn of Africa as a whole, in an area stretching from northern Kenya to Somalia and swaths of Ethiopia, up to 20 million…
Just 9% of all plastic waste ever created has been recycled. Last year, the U.S. exported 74,000 shipping containers of plastic waste to low-income countries.…
21% of reptile species are threatened with extinction, including more than half of turtles and crocodiles. More than 40% of amphibians, 25% of mammals and…
Pristine rainforests were once again destroyed at a relentless rate in 2021, according to new figures, prompting concerns governments will not meet a COP26 deal…
Coral reefs are rapidly declining due to local environmental degradation and global climate change. In particular, corals are vulnerable to ocean heating. Hotter oceans can…
Half of all river basins across the world are now “severely affected” by water diversion projects, which can exacerbate drought conditions and lead to human…
In this mysterious woodland the cloud drapes over mountain ridges and “the trees are dwarfed and wind-sculpted, gnarled and heavily laden with mosses,” said J…
As a punishing, record-breaking drought enters its 13th year, Chile has announced an unprecedented plan to ration water for the capital of Santiago, a city…
As one of the world’s most famous game reserves, Murchison Falls National Park is home to some of the largest populations of elephants, giraffes, lions…
Scientists from the University of Illinois tracked species of birds in a protected forest reserve in central Panama to determine if and how populations had…
Large quantities of plastic—transported by rivers, the air and shipping–can now be found in the Arctic Ocean. High concentrations of microplastic can be found in…
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing its sixth massive bleaching event as climate change has warmed the ocean, raising concerns over whether one of the…
Transocean Ltd. announced today that it has purchased a minority interest in Ocean Minerals Ltd., a company engaged in the exploration of seabed resources containing metals critical…
15 years after its was first discovered in a New York cave, white-nose syndrome has decimated the nation’s population of northern long-eared bats, reducing their…
Work published in Science Advances shows that large fires have not only become more common, they are also spreading into new areas, impacting land that…
The study examined four possible scenarios for future carbon emissions, and found increased risk of El Niño events in all four. This means El Niño…
The Amazon is approaching a tipping point, data shows, after which the rainforest would be lost with “profound” implications for the global climate and biodiversity.…
Hundreds of residents in the US state of Florida were evacuated from their homes after a rash of wildfires that ignited dead vegetation swept through…
Although Africa has contributed relatively little to the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions, the continent has suffered some of the world’s heaviest impacts of climate change.…
Carbon emissions from tropical deforestation this century are far higher than previously thought, doubling in just two decades and continuing to accelerate, according to a…
The gang-gang cockatoo, the animal emblem of the Australian Capital Territory, will be officially listed as a threatened species after a large decline in its…
The Mekong dolphin population has long been IUCN red-listed as Critically Endangered. The last known river dolphin in the transboundary pool on the Cambodia-Laos border…
The remote continent is becoming increasingly accessible—during the 2019-20 season, the number of sightseeing visitors reached 74,000, with the vast majority travelling by ship. All…
The area is known for its leafy streets, stately homes, imperial palace – today a museum – and the natural beauty of the surrounding mountains.…
Research prompts warnings humanity is ‘financing its own extinction’ through subsidies damaging to the climate and wildlife. From tax breaks for beef production in the…
The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate…
The Australian government has officially listed thekoala as endangered after a decline in its numbers due to land clearing and catastrophic bushfires shrinking its habitat.…
The ubiquitous dams around the world are built to guard against extreme flooding, meet steadily increasing water demands and provide hydroelectric power. They also alter…
Container ship accidents at sea should be considered the “oil spills of our time”, warned environmental organisations that found a toxic mix of metals, carcinogenic…
Plastic pollution at sea is reaching worrying levels and will continue to grow even if significant action is taken now to stop such waste from…
Plastic has infiltrated all parts of the ocean and is now found “in the smallest plankton up to the largest whale” wildlife group WWF said.…
Healthy-looking ochre sea stars have minimal genetic difference from those displaying symptoms of sea star wasting syndrome, say Oregon State University researchers who examined whether…
Just 15.5% of the world’s coastal regions remain ecologically intact, according to new research that calls for urgent conservation measures to protect what remains and…
By 2080, around 70% of the world’s oceans could be suffocating from a lack of oxygen as a result of climate change, potentially impacting marine…
Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine life, including more than 4,000 species of fish. They also provide a source of income or food to half…
The Pope, Smith and Kohler glaciers, in the Amundsen Sea Embayment of West Antarctica, have experienced enhanced ocean-induced ice-shelf melt, glacier acceleration, ice thinning and…
The research published in Nature Communications is the first of its kind and combines analysis of previous forest fire sites with eight drivers of fire…
In 2009, an international team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that demarcate the remarkably stable state Earth has remained within for 10,000 years—since the…
Deforestation last year rose to the highest level since 2015 in Brazil’s Cerrado, prompting scientists on Monday to raise alarm over the state of the…
Queensland landholders are clearing the equivalent of about 1,000 Melbourne Cricket Grounds a day, including endangered ecological regions, according to state government data that raises…
A few days before Christmas, Super-typhoon Rai – known locally as Odette – ravaged the Philippines. Lost lives continue to climb two weeks on. Vast…
The last time carbon dioxide levels were where they are today, at more than 415 parts per million, was 4 million years ago, and the…
Land-clearing for crops in the Murray-Darling basin, the main winter breeding ground for the moths, Severe drought in the breeding grounds, Increased use of pesticides…
While driving an electric car has fewer environmental impacts than gasoline-powered cars, the production of the parts necessary for these green technologies can have dire…
Concurrent heatwaves the size of Mongolia or Iran were 7x more frequent in 2010s than 1980s. And their intensity rose 17%, and geographic extent increased…
Scientists estimate that 16.9 million vertebrates were killed by fires in the Pantanal wetlands, Brazil, between Jan & Nov 2020. Sampling likely excluded species incl.…
The Arctic continues to warm more than twice as fast as the rest of the globe. Summer 2021 saw the second-lowest amount of older, multi-year…
Scientists have discovered a series of worrying weaknesses in the ice shelf holding back one of Antarctica’s most dangerous glaciers, suggesting that this important buttress…
Almost two-thirds of the hundreds of mollusc species that live in the deep sea are at risk of extinction, according to a new study that…
Among the species listed is the bogong moth. Scientists have detected steady declines in numbers of bogong moths since the 1980s. But in 2017 and…
A record manatee die-off in Florida this year has become so dire that federal officials are taking a once unthinkable step — feeding the wild…
While southern Australia experienced a wet winter and a soggy spring, northern Australia has seen the opposite. Extreme fire weather in October and November led…
The warming of the planet is taking a deadly toll on seabirds that are suffering population declines from starvation, inability to reproduce, heat waves and…
The drought and heatwaves that seared eastern Australia in the lead-up to the 2019-20 black summer bushfires killed as much as 60% of the trees…
Climate scientists say the floods in 2019 and 2020 were driven in part by global warming-linked changes in a weather pattern called the Indian Ocean Dipole. In…
The red list of Britain’s most endangered birds has increased to 70 species. Birds are placed on the red list either because their populations have…
216 out of 1,299 species are threatened – up from 195 in 2011 – with the climate crisis pushing more birds on to the list or increasing…
The Black Summer forest fires of 2019–2020 in Australia burned more than 24 million hectares (59 million acres), directly causing 33 deaths and almost 450 more from…
Climate change and warming waters are pushing black-browed albatross break-up rates higher. Typically after choosing a partner, only 1-3% would separate in search of greener…
After the natural warming that followed the last Ice Age, there were repeated periods when masses of icebergs broke off from Antarctica into the Southern…
The 13,235 square kilometers (5,110 square miles) of forest lost from August 2020 to July 2021 was the largest swath since 14,286 square kilometers were…
Sequoias are the largest trees by volume and are native in only about 70 groves scattered along the western side of the Sierra Nevada range.…
Three of British Columbia’s worst wildfire years have taken place in the last four years, and the widespread floods and mudslides last week took place…
From a study published in 2019: Biodiversity of insects is threatened worldwide. Our work reveals dramatic rates of decline that may lead to the extinction…
Las Tablas de Daimiel is a unique wetland in the vast, almost treeless plains of Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain, but the park has had…
One of every six birds – a net loss of 600 million breeding birds in total – have disappeared over less than four decades. The…
The US and Canada have lost more than one in four birds – a total of three billion – between 1970 and 2019, culminating in…
If global warming is kept to 1.5˚C, the mix of corals on the Barrier Reef will change but it could still thrive, said the study’s…
Where civilization emerged between the Tigris and Euphrates, climate change is poisoning the land and emptying the villages.
Global warming has pushed what would’ve been a moderate drought in southwestern North America into megadrought territory. 2000–2018 was the driest 19 year period since…