global warming
Today we introduce a new weekly feature — the Climate Change Index — that tracks research findings and events directly attributable to global warming. Our aim is to provide a numerical, week-to-week indicator of climate change developments. Items that qualify for listing in each week’s index include new climate data published
global warming
The good news: Arctic sea ice cover appears to have reached its low for the summer, and there’s more of it than there was in the record-breaking low years of 2007 and 2008. The bad news: the extent of sea ice is still the third-lowest ever since satellite measurements
global warming
The looming health threats posed by climate change should drive doctors around the world to demand that leaders enact strong and immediate against global warming, argue 18 physicians from across the globe. A letter making that argument was signed by the doctors and published simultaneously this week in both The
global warming
Scientists have long warned that climate change is not a linear process: global patterns can chug along looking quite normal for long periods of time even as we continue to pump increasing amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and then … bam, a tipping point is reached, pushing us into
global warming
British and German scientists have used fossilised shark teeth to determine that the North Sea became fresher and less biodiverse during the changing climate some 4o to 60 million years ago. The team used the fossils to reconstruct the climate of the North Sea during the Palaeogene period, and concluded
global warming
As climate change melts ice sheets in the Arctic, it will also cause the Earth’s axis to tilt and make the planet spin faster, according to new research. Both effects are also likely to accelerate as climate change speeds up. Writing in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, researchers Felix
global warming
Most electric utility companies believe climate change could bring more power outages, higher costs and usage changes, but many aren’t taking across-the-board action to prepare for such possibilities, according to a new Acclimatise global report backed by IBM. Over 90 per cent of global electric utilities that report climate
global warming
The right investments in climate science could yield better long-term forecasts and thus help reduce the costs of adapting to global warming, according to new research from the UK’s National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS). The study, published in the Bulletin for the American Meteorological Society, finds that investments
global warming
While evolution tends to make creatures larger over time — because bigger animals have the edge when it comes to survival and reproduction — climate change is messing with that trend in some cases. Around the globe, scientists are finding that some species are growing smaller thanks to a warming climate, while
global warming
A researcher at the University of Southampton plans to study the effects of climate change on soil ecosystems in Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 is a 3.15-acre, 12,700-square-metre structure originally built by Space Biosphere Ventures as a man-made, materially-closed ecological system in Oracle, Arizona. The largest closed system ever
global warming
Don’t say we weren’t warned. Scientists have long cautioned about the potential danger of feedback loops in the planet’s delicately balanced climate system, and are now finding evidence that just such effects are occurring as the world warms. Researchers at the National Oceanography Centre Southampton — working in
global warming
The old Mark Twain-ism, “Everyone complains about the weather, but no one can do anything about it,” also explains a lot about why people view the threat of climate change in so many different ways. “(T)he public’s apparent apathy regarding climate change is actually paralysis at the size