Climate News
Want to know why so many superstorms hit so many countries so fast last year? The climate crisis heated the world’s oceans to their hottest temperatures ever.
According to data just released from the Copernicus climate monitoring service and other experts, the year 2021 closed with temperature records blown through on over 400 separate weather station reports.
As proof that the climate crisis is continuing its steady march forward, a new report just announced that as of the end of 2021 Greenland ice sheet will have been melting more than it recovers from snow – for a quarter century.
A combination of factors is driving temperatures off the New South Wales coast to 3° C (5.5° F) higher than normal even before the hottest months of the year approach.
With the EU scrambling to find a way to achieve net zero carbon emissions by mid-century, the European Commission just released a proposal to allow counting methane in the form of natural gas and nuclear power as its sustainable energy plan for the rest of the century.
Rolls-Royce’s Power Systems Division will soon begin construction on two major hydrogen-powered electrical supply facilities at the Port of Duisburg, Germany. It represents one of the biggest transitions of an entire port solutions ecosystem away from fossil fuels in history.
Studies by team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggest that past mass extinction events on the planet have been linked to runaway ecological change. Could that be what is happening now with the climate crisis?
A $14 million grant from the Adaptation Fund, an international capital source focusing on helping the world adapt to the climate crisis, is about to help a major part of Africa adapt some of its key food crops for the much hotter world of the future and its weather extremes of drought and floodiung.
Researchers have discovered the Arctic Ocean began heating due to greenhouse gas emissions many decades earlier than previously realized. The findings suggest current models may grossly underestimate how fast the climate crisis could kill the planet.
Hurricane Sandy was a slow-moving megastorm which caused extensive damage to the east coast of the United States, with powerful winds that lingered longer than most storms. Scientists predict that will be the new normal by the end of the century.
A scientific team at Moscow State University revealed that global heating effects in the Russian Arctic are causing losses of 1 to 3 meters (approximately 3 to 10 feet) every year. Thanks to the toxic waste embedded in the eroding coastline, the danger to the entire planet is potentially catastrophic.
After record-setting rainfall, flooding, and landslides, the latest climate crisis related extreme weather event to hit the region has forced British Columbia Premier John Horgan to declare a state of emergency to deal with the deluge.
A new study projects the worsening climate crisis will soon exhaust water supplies for agricultural needs around the Mediterranean Sea.
In a breakthrough moment at the UN climate summit yesterday, over 40 countries pledged to eliminate using coal for electrical power generation. Only problem is the top three coal-burning nations in the world -- China, India, and the U.S. -- did not sign and will just keep polluting.
The UK, Norway, Germany, the US, and the Netherlands, in partnership with 17 funders, pledged to invest US$1.7 billion to help Indigenous and local communities protect the biodiverse tropical forests that are vital to protecting the planet from climate change, biodiversity loss, and pandemic risk, according to an announcement made at a high-level World Leaders Summit at COP26.
As global heating melts down the world’s snowpacks faster and lower rainfall conditions worsen in many areas of the world, the old process of managing water deficits by leveraging those snowpacks is going to require some major changes. A new study by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) suggests investments needed now to prevent catastrophic consequences later.
The state of New York announced $9.5 million to establish the Empire Technology Prize program, an ambitious new corporate challenge aimed at advancing building decarbonization across the state.
A report just released by the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization shows countries in Asia in 2020 recorded the highest overall temperatures ever for the region. It also demonstrates with surgical precision the human and financial cost there due to continued inaction to address the climate crisis.
In just-issued intelligence reports released yesterday by the White House, the Department of Defense and U.S. intel organizations finally made public what has been clear in private quarters for some time: the climate crisis is already undermining long-term global security.
It has been predicted for some time that as the major ocean current which runs along the North American East Coast slows down because of ocean global heating, the European west coast and the UK will experience much colder winter weather. A new study says the same effect on the same current will cause more extreme winter weather as well.
A new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals Africa's "disproportionate vulnerability" to the climate crisis. It will impact over 100 million of the poorest Africans while completely melting the continent’s three glaciers in less than 20 years.
New research spells new problems for the future of ice in the Arctic, where in a region referred to as the Arctic’s “Last Ice Area” a hole covering an area roughly the size of Rhode Island opened in 2020.
Sanergy, a U.S.-owned company based in Nairobi, Kenya, just received a $2.5 million investment from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for a unique “circular economy” sanitation operation.
With the increasing death rates of marine species especially in regions super-heated thanks to climate crisis, researchers have been searching for a means to anticipate how those species may respond to increasing numbers and intensity of habitat heat stresses. An international team of researchers may have just figured out a way to do that – and to help mitigate for what could happen.
The UN Meteorological Organization (WMO) just released a report showing the climate crisis will cause the number of people without enough potable water will rise to 5 billion by 2050. That will be over half the world's population.
The United Kingdom’s second-largest metropolitan area has hatched a plan to eliminate conventional car traffic, replace it with a modern carbon-free mass transit system, and more, to transform it into a more people-friendly city of the future.
Warming oceans cause fewer bright clouds to reflect sunlight into space, trapping even more energy in Earth's climate system, according to the new study in the AGU journal Geophysical Research Letters, which publishes high-impact, short-format reports with immediate implications spanning all Earth and space sciences.
Japan-based Mitsubishi Corporation announced it will be a major backer for a new 600 MW wind power facility to be constructed in southern Laos. It will be the biggest such project ever brought online within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries.
With dramatic action being all that is left to save even part of humanity from the accelerating effects of the climate crisis, millions marched across the world yesterday to send a very different kind of message to world leaders.
As part of our interconnected natural world, seagrass meadows have long been recognized for their importance in absorbing nutrients, and by doing so preventing algal blooms and over-fertilization. A new study now shows how they are also doing double-duty as a marine-based carbon sink for the planet.
China’s President Xi Jinping announced on September 21 that his country will stop funding coal projects of all kinds, including coal-fired power plants, anywhere outside of the country. If only they would stop funding their own coal projects.
While much of the world’s governments are playing positioning games arguing about the precise temperature of the planet and making empty promises about cutting carbon emissions, a new report reveals wildfires are making things even worse.
Gypsum, the main ingredient in plasterboard, alternately known as sheetrock or wallboard, contributes a surprisingly large amount of carbon emissions everywhere it is used. Scientists at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom have just received a grant to co-develop an alternative which can be manufactured with low carbon emissions and is biodegradable as well.
On September 14, leaders from nations across Africa came together in a virtual event to discuss how to plan for the increasingly serious dangers global heating poses for their continent.
The government of Chile received ten credible bids from a variety of well-respected international companies in its just-closed tender offer for companies willing to invest in clean hydrogen production in the country.
As the world grows hotter, the way we enjoy ourselves outdoors is also going to change. A new university study shows how dramatically it might evolve, driving implications for those managing public lands and facilities in the future.
A new 761 apartment complex rising on a 17-acre lot in Tempe, Arizona, just outside Phoenix, bills itself as the first community designed from the ground up as a place with no cars allowed – and access to discounted public transport built into the rent.
Sorghum is already attracting attention as an important food of the future because of its high nutritional content, plus resilience in the presence of high heat and increased drought. A new research program is about to add to its value by creating sorghum varieties which more effectively capture and store atmospheric carbon during the growth process.
As builders throughout the world have begun to face the reality that concrete, the dominant construction material in many countries, is also responsible for 7% and more of global carbon emissions, biomechanical engineers have sought other ways to “architect” the construction industry of the future. To do that, they have increasingly turned to wood as the starting point for this new approach.
On September 13, in-water construction began on a unique solution to provide more efficient climate resiliency for the South Shore of Staten Island. Its innovation could change the way extreme weather adaptation and mitigation is managed all over the world.
While most everyone else is focusing on ever bigger wind, solar, and tidal energy farms to provide clean power for the future, a tiny startup in Sierra Leone has figured out how to capture the vibrational energy that is always around us – and bring light into the darkness.
A report released yesterday by the World Bank revealed that over 216 million people throughout the world will be forced to move by 2050 because of the climate crisis.
A group of chemical engineering scientists have developed a clean and efficient way to transform toxic untreated sewer water into a source of clean hydrogen fuel.
Especially after this summer’s catastrophic heavy rains and flooding in Germany, Belgium and more, some might imagine Europe is far from in danger from catastrophic drought due to the climate crisis just a few years from now. A just-published new study shows how past occasional droughts in the region are about to become the norm.
A senior Russian official declared on September 2 that the country will be banning the use of disposable plastic items in the country by just a little over three years from now.
A new study by researchers at Portland State University has taken a tough look at how global heating will impact the important Hood River valley region over the next decades, and how to make it more resilient to those changes in the future.
The hurricane tied as the most intense ever to hit Louisiana, made landfall at 12:55 pm local time Sunday.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation just released a timely study which provides options and guidelines to handle increased water demand in the Missouri River Basin. The release is especially important at a time when there will soon be significant decreases in snowmelt runoff above Fort Peck Reservoir.
Researchers have discovered tropical forests in Africa have been sequestering far more carbon than previously known. As they are also rapidly now being cleared for multiple uses, their days in helping save the planet may be numbered.
Scientists at the University of Southampton have discovered that extensive chains of volcanoes have been responsible for both emitting and then removing atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) over geological time. This may have stabilized temperatures at the Earth’s surface over hundreds of thousands of years.