The amount of CO2 is increasing all the time – we just passed a landmark 400 parts per million concentration of atmospheric CO2, up from around 280ppm before the industrial revolution. That’s a 42.8% increase. A tiny amount of CO2 and other greenhouse gases, like methane and water vapor, keep the Earth’s surface 30°Celsius (54°F) warmer than it would be […]
Read more
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 […]
Read more
While sunning themselves on the Birling Gap Beach, some tourists noticed that there was a haze coming across the beach. As it reached them, they started coughing and choking. They told the authorities that it smelled like chlorine. The people were then taken to the hospital, vomiting and in respiratory distress. The authorities said that it was unlikely to be […]
Read more
What is hail or a hailstone? Hail is a form of precipitation that occurs when updrafts in thunderstorms carry raindrops upward into extremely cold areas of the atmosphere where they freeze into balls of ice. Hail can damage aircraft, homes and cars, and can be deadly to livestock and people. How does hail form? Hailstones grow by colliding with supercooled […]
Read more
An influential panel of climate scientists has expressed higher confidence than ever that human activity is the main cause of the rise in global temperatures since the 1950s, Reuters.com reports. A leaked draft of an upcoming report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, based on a broad analysis of published scientific studies, concludes with 95 percent certainty […]
Read more
We all know that hurricanes are very powerful and destructive. Some scientists think that we can try to control them by slowing, stopping or weakening them with pumps. The pumps would bring the colder water to the surface from deep into the ocean waters to decrease the heat that hurricanes thrive on. This system would be very costly transporting the […]
Read more
Heatwaves that used to arrive once every 20 years or so could become annual events by 2075 across almost two-thirds of the planet’s land surface – if humans go on burning ever more fossil fuels and releasing ever more greenhouse gases. Claudia Tebaldi, visiting scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research, and Michael Wehner, senior staff scientist at […]
Read more