2016 is set to be the world’s hottest year on record. According to the World Meteorological Organization’s preliminary statement on the global climate for 2016
More than a dozen authors from different universities and nongovernmental organizations around the world have concluded, based on an analysis of hundreds of studies, that almost every aspect of life on Earth has been affected by climate change.
Climate-related catastrophes are expensive, whether they come on suddenly, like the thousand-year flood in Louisiana in August 2016, or move slowly and inexorably, like desertification in Turkey.
A report based on fossilised evidence reveals that plant biodiversity in Europe and North America is changing profoundly as the world heats up.
The new president will take office at a singular time in the history of our planet. The year 2016 is the first in well over a million in which the concentration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere did not fall below 400 parts per million.
Since the 1980s, air pollution has increased worldwide, but it has increased at a much faster pace in regions close to the equator.
Hurricane and tropical storm development from three million years ago might give today’s forecasters a good blueprint for 21st-century storms.
Scientists now agree: warmer weather in the Arctic and a wavy jet stream are influencing winter weather in the UK and US.
Iceland is about to tap into water as hot as lava. Several kilometres below ground, a drilling rig named Thor will soon penetrate the area around a magma chamber, where molten rock from the inner Earth heats up water that has seeped through the seafloor.
The bulk of methane emissions in the United States can be traced to a small number of “super-emitting” natural gas wells.
Ice ages on Earth used to occur at intervals of every 40,000 years. But at a point about a million years ago, ice age intervals switched to every 100,000 years.
NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (and several other institutions) reported April 2016 to be the warmest April on record for the planet. All of the previous twelve months now hold the “Warmest [INSERT MONTH HERE] on Record” title. That’s twelve months in a row, and that’s never happened.
Bolivia’s glaciers have shrunk by more than 40% in the past few decades. This puts further pressure on an already stressed water supply, while the meltwater lakes left behind risk collapsing in sudden and catastrophic outburst floods.
Educating rural communities can help them prevent permanent damage to the environment. There is a common misconception that you can’t talk about climate change in rural communities because the issue is considered too polarizing...
The destructive nature of Hurricane Matthew—which resulted in hundreds of deaths in Haiti, dozens more in the US, and extensive damage still being assessed—was a test of strength in communications systems, infrastructure, and ultimately the resilience of communities.
Solar power in India will be cheaper than imported coal by 2020, but replacing the subcontinent’s fossil fuels with renewable energy is an enormous task.
People depend on grass crops for food, but new research raises concerns that if climate changes too fast, grasses won’t adapt fast enough to keep pace.
Scientists show how humans can improve poor people’s lives by reversing practices that destroy the environment and fuel climate change.
New York City can expect nine-foot floods, as intense as the one produced by 2012’s Superstorm Sandy, at least three times more frequently over the next century—and possibly as much as 17 times more frequently, say researchers.
The pre-industrial atmosphere contained more particles, and so brighter clouds, than we previously thought. This is the latest finding of the CLOUD experiment, a collaboration between around 80 scientists at the CERN particle physics lab near Geneva.
New study finds that man-made global warming is the root cause of a relentless increase in forest fires in the US.
Ever since the 1973 oil embargo, U.S. energy policy has sought to replace petroleum-based transportation fuels with alternatives. One prominent option is using biofuels, such as ethanol in place of gasoline and biodiesel instead of ordinary diesel.
In this presidential election year we have heard much about some issues, such as immigration and trade, and less about others.