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Scientists have long known that climate change has a major negative impact on global agriculture, potentially even threatening global food security. But a new research shows that air pollution is actually much more threatening. Anthropogenic climate change caused 3.5% decrease in potential wheat yield on a country level in India; air pollution caused more than 32% […]
Hima Hassenruck-Gudipati graduated this year from Caltech. She majored in mechanical engineering but minored in geology and her main area of interest was seeing how green technology and engineering can help mitigate the effects of climate change. Now, she has embarked on a global quest to understand the past, the present, and the future of climate change. […]
The most complex computer simulation of its kind to date suggests that melting Arctic ice is significantly contributing to extreme cold weather in the Northern Hemisphere, with last winter’s Polar Vortex that swept the North American east coast serving as an example. Moreover, the analysis suggests that global warming has actually doubled the risk that […]
Climate change has many unexpected consequences – as a research has shown yet again. This time, a team of Montana scientists have shown that the tea flavors are changing, mainly as a result of shifting rainfall patterns. This variability can jeopardize the livelihood of tea growers and has significant effects on the end product we […]
Life on Earth has so far passed through five distinct crises that threatened to wipe it out, typically referred to as mass extinctions. The direst one was some 252 million years ago when 96 percent of marine species and 70 percent of life on land became extinct following a yet unconfirmed series of cataclysmic events known […]
Australia went through two almost unbearable consecutive summers. Of course, Australia is a naturally hot country, but the temperatures were extremely high even for them. Record temperatures were recorded and heat waves swept throughout the entire country. Now, five separate studies published today conclude that the blazing summers can be blamed on man-made climate change. Sizzling […]
In the 1950s rainforests covered 14% of the earth’s land surface; now they cover a mere 6% and experts estimate that the last remaining rainforests could be consumed in less than 40 years. It’s believed that deforestation accounts for about 20% of global emissions of CO2, because of the a reduced carbon storage capacity. Yet there […]
A new study concluded that there’s about a 1 in 100,000 chance that the global warming in the past 60 years is not caused by human-released greenhouse gas emissions. It’s much more a debate between TV shows and regular Joes than it is between scientists – you could basically call it a consensus by now, […]
A worrying report states that over 500 bubbling methane vents were found on the seafloor off the US east coast. The unexpected finding suggests that there are large volumes of the gas contained in a type of sludgy ice called methane hydrate and as global waters continue to heat up, the methane will be released in large […]
A new study shows that last an incredible 63 trillion gallons of groundwater were lost in the Western US alone – so much that it’s actually causing the ground level to rise. The Earth has lifted up about 0.16 inches over the last 18 months in the area, and up to 0.6 inches in the Californian […]
Observations of climate change often report a “missing heat” – a hiatus in the global warming, which went unaccounted for; but now, a new study concludes that the heat absent from the Earth’s surface for more than a decade is plunging deep in the north and south Atlantic Ocean, and this is part of a naturally […]
The world has reached what is called ‘World Overshoot Day‘ – the point in the year when humans have exhausted supplies such as land, trees and fish and outstripped the planet’s annual capacity to absorb waste products including carbon dioxide. But that’s not half of it – things are actually getting worse, with the planet […]
China is experiencing the worst drought in over 50 years, threatening the country's foo security for the first time in a long time.
If you look at most televisions, you’ll find that climate change deniers get half the air time – or even more. OK, that seems logical, we have to give equal time for both camps in a scientific debate to argue their claims. But the problem is that there is no scientific debate. The vast, overwhelming […]
President Obama said he will only allow the controversial Keystone XL pipeline’s construction if it doesn’t significantly increase carbon dioxide emissions. Now, a new study has concluded that it will – and by a lot. Keystone XL could cause greenhouse gas emissions four times worse than the U.S. government’s projections. In case you’re not aware […]
The "mysterious" craters in Siberia have actually been caused by methane seeping from the melting permafrost. No rockets, no meteorites, no aliens - sorry, just global warming at it again.
The Aboriginal Martu people have been hunting kangaroos and sand monitor lizards for over 2,000 years. During this time, the natives have not only lived sustainably, but also became unwilling conservationists helping kangaroo populations grow by sparking wild fires that help them catch lizards, a study by researchers at University of Utah found. In other remote areas […]
Air conditioning may make your home cooler, but it's making your city hotter - cities can be even 3 degrees hotter than the surrounding environment, and ACs play a big role in that, a new study shows.
Big oil companies invest big chunks of their profits (which are bigger than many countries’) into climate change denial. As I wrote a while ago, 9 out of 10 top climate change deniers are linked with Exxon Mobil, the biggest private oil company. Still, there are some brilliant scientists working for oil companies, and they […]
Texas Professor Katharine Hayhoe is among the American Geophysical Union’s 2014 award-winners for science communication, announced on July 3. This is only the third time AGU has given an award for science communicaton, and they hope that she could help end – or at the very least quench – the war between religion and climate change […]
The Stanford News Service recently made an interview with Jon Krosnick, a Stanford professor of communication and of political science who conducts survey research on how people view climate change. It’s a most compelling read, one I advise those of you interested in the subject of climate change and the politics behind it to go through it. Some of […]
Are you a convinced climate change denier? Wanna make a quick buck? This is the thing for you! A physics professor is so fed up with people denying climate change, that he’s willing to offer $10.000 out of his own pocket to anyone who can scientifically disprove climate change. So what if the scientific community is […]
Last month, the Niels Bugge Cartoon Award asked illustrators and cartoonists from around the world to submit drawings based on a basic theme: climate. Oceans are in our hands,” they proclaimed, and participants from all around the world put forth their best interpretations (often satyrical) of the current climate situation. You can check their website to […]
The former popular landscape was an expanse of warped shapes, out of which some were as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, and it was discovered by an ice-penetration radar loaded aboard NASA survey flights. According to the scientists who made the discovery, this could deepen the level of understanding concerning the way in which the […]
Whenever you’re eating a fish or some other marine creature, think just for a moment that it may actually be worth more as a CO2 storing machine than a food. First of all, let’s just make this clear: we’re unsustainably eating fish. If we continue current trends, we’ll soon be facing a massive fish crisis, […]
When we think of CO2 emissions, we generally tend to think of air pollution and global warming; we tend to ignore the fact that a huge part of all the CO2 emissions is absorbed by the oceans, and the oceans are becoming more and more acidic. The process is just getting started, and it’s gonna […]
A new study conducted by Dr Michael Kearney from the University of Melbourne explains that koalas actually hug trees to regulate their body temperature. This cute behaviour isn’t just a stage act, it’s quite important for koalas. In this study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters showed that when it gets really hot, the animals […]
The British summer has always been a subject of fascination and annoyance, for its fickle, rainy nature. But a new study using supercomputers has shown that climate change will cause even more intense storms and rainfall, with flash flooding becoming a common occurrence. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows the first evidence that […]
When I read this, I initially thought it was a joke – but sadly, that’s not the case. While the IPCC and virtually the entire scientific community is worried about climate change, warning about droughts and heat waves which will cause famine and water shortages, the GOP held a meeting where they decided that the IPCC is, […]
I like it when people talk about climate change. I even like it when they speak against climate change – as long as they bring arguments and act rationally. People shouldn’t be forbidden from talking about these kind of things, one way or another – everybody should be encouraged to look at the scientific facts, […]
News about glacial melting in Antarctica has been uniformly grim; the loss is likely unstoppable. News about melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been no better; Scientists had earlier believed that the losses in Greenland would eventually slow or stop, owing to the solid bedrock of the continent. Now, that view may also melt […]
We’ve already written about the damage done to the Antarctic ice sheet, and how sadly, its collapse seems irreversible. A new study has analyzed some of the consequences of that collapse – it could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop lands across the Middle East and Asia. The report urges the Obama administration […]
For 11 episodes now, the groundbreaking Fox and National Geographic Channel series Cosmos has taken a deep look at some of science’s most thorny aspects – from creationism and evolution, to industry funded science denial, giving science teachers something new and cool to show in class on Monday mornings. This coming Sunday will be the most […]
Butterflies and dragonflies with lighter colors are bettering their darker counterparts in the face of global warming. Science shows once again just how big of a fingerprint global warming has on all life on Earth – as temperatures get higher and higher, communities of butterflies and dragonflies consist of more lighter coloured species. Darker colored insects […]
Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April – the ominous threshold has been reached, and it continues to go up. Time is running out I’m sad that I was right when I wrote: The Inevitable 2014 Headline: ‘Global CO2 Level Reaches […]
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet , a massive system of glaciers, is collapsing as a result of glacier melting (global warming). The process is most likely irreversible and cause a global sea lever rise of at least 10 feet, a pair of independent studies conclude. A warmer planet gives way to rising oceans Previously, the two-mile-thick […]
If current trends continue, by 2050, the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause many crops around the world to produce a reduced amount of nutrients, especially zinc and iron. Considering that about almost 1 in 3 people in the world (2 billion people) suffer from iron or zinc deficiencies resulting in a loss of […]
Arctic sea ice has seen a sharp decline over the past four decades, as the sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. According to researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA the arctic region is experiencing longer […]
The scientists from the Australian Meteorology Bureau estimate that there’s a good chance that El Nino will form in the southern hemisphere’s winter (northern hemisphere’s summer). El Nino is a band of anomalously warm ocean water temperatures that periodically develop off the Pacific coast of South America. The results of this pattern are extreme weather […]
The already iconic global warming images with polar bears sadly floating on small chunks of ice have acted as a double edge sword – on one hand they were impacting visual representations of global warming, showing the extent of damage which has already been done, but on the other hand, they created the idea that […]
Oceanographers believe that Antarctica‘s oceanic waters, which are turning from briny to fresh in recent decades, are causing the shutdown of the Southern Ocean’s coldest, deepest currents. The cold currents, called the Antarctic Bottom Water, are basically cold, briny, underwater rivers flowing from the underwater edge of the Antarctic continent north toward the equator, very […]
I love Bill Nye, and I think the world needs more people like him. I don’t mindlessly follow him, I don’t always agree with what he does, but ultimately, his reasoning and actions speak very clearly to me. You can watch the video below and I highly recommend watching it to the very end, especially […]
A big part of the US and Canada is currently in the grip of a polar vortex – extreme colds, strong winds, cancelled flights and overall chaos in many parts of the continent – it’s big, and it’s nasty. But what is a polar vortex, and what’s causing it? What’s a polar vortex anyway? A […]
In 1959, an American geologist built a rock cairn 1.2 meters away from this glacier; he left a note, asking whoever finds it to measure the distance to the glacier. Today, that distance has grown up to 101.5 meters. Researchers who found the incredibly creative and unusual note say it’s highly unexpected for a scientist […]
By now, hopefully, most people understand the huge problems caused by global warming – but most people probably don’t understand just how bad things are. Even if all emissions would somehow magically stop right now, the Earth would continue to warm for hundreds of years, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate […]
An iceberg the size of Singapore has separated from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier This kind of detachment is not uncommon, but rarely on this magnitude Singapore is an island-city-state, about the size of Budapest or Dubai Between November 9–11, 2013, a large iceberg finally separated from the calving front of Antarctica’s Pine Island […]
The climate crisis we are facing right now (which for one reason or another many people choose to ignore) has largely been caused by only 90 companies – which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the industrial revolution, new research suggests. The study was found that almost all these […]
Global warming is real, it’s affecting us all, and it’s gonna get worse – and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. The IPPC report The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body with the purpose of providing ‘comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the […]
The past 12 months have been 0.22 degrees Celsius warmer than any other equivalent period prior to 2013, and Australia is steadily on track for the warmest year ever. Warmer and warmer A new Climate Council study, titled Off the Charts, says that the country has just had its warmest ever 12-month period, from 1 […]
Everybody was expecting it to be bad, but it’s just so incredibly bad: of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, as huge waves struck down poor villages and a developed city alike, destroying 70-80 percent of all buildings in […]
