The Southwest and central Great Plains are likely to be hit in coming decades by the most prolonged megadrought in more than 1,000 years, a new climate study predicts. Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University created a long-term climate model after analyzing historical temperature records, carbon dioxide emissions, and drought trends from tree rings.The record shows that the […]
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Global warming hits plateau. . . What does that mean for the threat of catastrophic climate change? Why has the warming trend slowed? Climatologists aren’t sure. What they do know is that the average air temperatures at the earth’s surface have risen only about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1998—the hottest year of the 20th century—even as humanity has continued to […]
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Simple statement: 13 of the 15 warmest years ever recorded have occurred within the first 15 years of this century. Complicated question: what is the probability that this happened purely by chance? The latest calculated answer: it could be one in 5000, or it could be as unlikely as one in 170,000, or it could be somewhere in between. Conclusion: […]
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Global climate envoys agreed a landmark accord on Saturday, setting the course for a “historic” transformation of the world’s fossil fuel-driven economy within decades in a bid to arrest global warming. At the tail end of the hottest year on record and after four years of fraught U.N. talks often pitting the interests of rich nations against poor, imperiled island […]
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As the planet faces the dawn of a sixth mass extinction, scientists are searching for clues about the uncertain road ahead by exploring how an ancient ecosystem collapsed and bounced back from traumatic upheavals. A new study follows the lengthy collapses and revival of South African ecosystems during one of the “big five” mass extinctions, the Permian-Triassic event, revealing unexpected […]
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Scientists have found telltale evidence that an asteroid twice as large as any previously known smashed into Earth about 300 million years ago. Previously, the largest asteroid impact was believed to have occurred 66 million years ago, when a massive space rock hit what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, causing such havoc that it led to the extinction […]
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European researchers have once again warned that the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelf means that the flow of glaciers on the frozen continent could accelerate, with a consequent rise in sea levels. They examine, in two separate studies, the increasingly precarious state of some of the ice shelf. When the shelf, consisting of ice floating on the ocean, melts, […]
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As a new generation of writers confronts global warming, a new book genre has emerged: “climate fiction”, or “cli-fi”. Russell: “In my secret heart, I hope that all these books that are now talking about climate change will help to move public opinion.” That’s Canadian novelist Craig Russell. In his recent book, Fragment, a shockwave sends a massive Antarctic ice […]
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The world’s leading economies are heading in the right direction on tackling climate change, but some still have a long way to go to make their undertakings politically credible, according to a UK research center. With the Paris Agreement barely two months old, the world now moves from talk to action − or at least that’s the theory. The Agreement […]
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Climatologists have started to drill into the oldest ice core in Antarctica to find some air that may have been there around 1 million to 900,000 years ago. The teams are from Australia, China, and Europe in a friendly type competition to find samples of air that is about 1.5 million years old. They would like to find out what […]
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