We’re all going to die. This is the repeated warning about climate change in some media: if we don’t change our ways we face an existential threat. So why haven’t we got a policy solution in place?
The destruction of tropical forest is a major contributor to biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. In response, conservationists and scientists like us are debating how to best catalyse recovery of these forests. How do you take a patch of earth littered with tree stumps, or even a grassy pasture or palm oil plantation, and turn it back into a thriving forest filled with its original species?
Ocean pollution is widespread and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now.
- By Robert Wilby
Another year, another climate record broken. Globally, 2020 tied with 2016 as the warmest year ever recorded. This was all the more remarkable given that cool conditions in the Pacific Ocean – known as La Niña – began to emerge in the second half of the year.
Ask people to name the world’s largest river, and most will probably guess that it’s the Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi. In fact, some of Earth’s largest rivers are in the sky – and they can produce powerful storms, like the one now soaking California.
Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
- By Brice Rea
The end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, was characterised by a final cold phase called the Younger Dryas. Scandinavia was still mostly covered in ice, and across Europe the mountains had many more, and larger, glaciers than today.
The catastrophic fires in Australia in early 2020 were actually a holdover from 2019, but they were soon followed by flooding in Indonesia, a super-cyclone hitting the coast of India and Bangladesh and then more flooding, this time in Kenya and wide swaths of Central and West Africa.
Imagine you are on the coast, looking out to sea. In front of you lies 100 metres of barren sand that looks like a beach at low tide with gentle waves beyond. And yet there are no tides.
The year 2020 will no doubt go down in history for other reasons, but it is also on target to be one of the warmest on record. And as the climate warms, natural hazards will happen more frequently – and be ever more lethal.
As global temperatures rise, snowy winters could become a thing of the past in much of the UK, according to a recent Met Office analysis.
The year 2020 will be remembered for many reasons, including its record-breaking wildfires that turned San Francisco’s skies an apocalyptic shade of red and blanketed large parts of the West in smoke for weeks on end.
We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450? (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s.
Salt storms are an emerging threat for millions of people in north-western Iran, thanks to the catastrophe of Lake Urmia.
We’re looking back at a trail of broken records, and the storms may still not be over even though the season officially ended on Nov. 30.
- By Philip James
Temperature and day length were traditionally accepted as the main determinants of when leaves changed colour and fell, leading some scientists to assume that warming temperatures would delay this process until later in the season.
- By Sapna Sharma
Every winter, the ice that forms on lakes, rivers and oceans, supports communities and culture. It provides transportation across winter roads, hunting and fishing, and recreational activities, such as lake ice festivals, skating, hockey and ice fishing.
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.
The Arctic Circle became unbelievably hot on June 20, 2020. In the Russian community of Verkhoyansk, temperatures topped 38C (over 100F), marking what may be the highest air temperature ever recorded within the Arctic.
Greenland is the largest island on Earth, and about 80% of it is covered by a giant sheet of ice. Slowly flowing glaciers connect this massive frozen reservoir of fresh water to the ocean, but because of climate change, these glaciers are rapidly retreating.
- By Sharon Coen
For years, scientists have been stressing the need to act quickly and effectively on climate change. And as part of my work as a media psychology academic, I’ve seen the way media outlets along with readers have discussed climate change over the past decade.
Every year, sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrinks to a low point in mid-September. This year it measures just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers) – the second-lowest value in the 42 years since satellites began taking measurements.
What is the impact of temperature increases in the tropics? How likely is it that regions along the Equator will be uninhabitable due to high wet bulb temperatures such as 35? and more in places like Singapore? Do we have models that suggest how likely this is and at what time frames?