The food we eat is responsible for an astounding one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, according to two comprehensive studies published in 2021. “When people talk…
Category: Climate
Coastal cities around the globe are sinking
Coastal cities around the globe are sinking by up to several centimeters per year, on average, satellite observations reveal. The one-two punch of subsiding land and rising seas means that…
Climate change intensified deadly storms in Africa in early 2022
Climate change amped up the rains that pounded southeastern Africa and killed hundreds of people during two powerful storms in early 2022. But a dearth of regional data made it…
50 years ago, the future of solar energy looked bright
Farming the sun’s energy – Science News, April 8, 1972 More and more scientists and engineers are beginning to believe that solar conversion will account for a significant portion of…
A UN report says stopping climate change is possible but action is needed now
It doesn’t have to be this way. The world already has the know-how and tools to dramatically reduce emissions from fossil fuels — but we need to use those tools…
A global warming pause that didn’t happen hampered climate science
It was one of the biggest climate change questions of the early 2000s: Had the planet’s rising fever stalled, even as humans pumped more heat-trapping gases into Earth’s atmosphere? By…
Wally Broecker divined how the climate could suddenly shift
It was the mid-1980s, at a meeting in Switzerland, when Wally Broecker’s ears perked up. Scientist Hans Oeschger was describing an ice core drilled at a military radar station in…
Forests help reduce global warming in more ways than one
When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick up their trees. Tropical forests help cool the average global temperature by more than 1 degree…
Smoke from Australia’s intense fires in 2019 and 2020 damaged the ozone layer
Towers of smoke that rose high into the stratosphere during Australia’s “black summer” fires in 2019 and 2020 destroyed some of Earth’s protective ozone layer, researchers report in the March…
How did we get here? The roots and impacts of the climate crisis
Even in a world increasingly battered by weather extremes, the summer 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest stood out. For several days in late June, cities such as Vancouver,…
