2015 was the world’s hottest year on record. The US State of the Climate report has rounded up the litany of temperature and other records that were broken all over the globe.
Public funding is vital for programs like CSIRO’s research vessel RV Investigator, which is too expensive for universities to run.
CSIRO
Science Minister Greg Hunt’s call for CSIRO to do a U-turn on climate research is a welcome move after months of criticism, at home and abroad, of the agency’s previous direction.
As temperatures rise, will species have enough habitat to move to suitable ground?
bonnyboy/flickr
Animals and plants will need escape hatches to move to cooler climes as the planet warms, but few parts of the U.S. have the natural habitat available for these migrations.
Maize can be particularly sensitive to agricultural and climate conditions.
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Climate disaster films are an emerging genre that reflect people’s desire to cope with a changing planet through art. How will they affect public attitudes on climate change?
A housing complex in Thailand with air conditioners.
Chaiwat Subprasom/Reuters
Global temperatures are poised for another record-breaking year. As incomes rise around the world and global temperatures go up, the use of air conditioning is poised to increase dramatically.
Higher carbon dioxide levels will not result in faster-growing forests – just the opposite in many places, study finds.
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Study using tree ring data and climate projections shows that buildup of CO2 will not benefit most northern forests and that growth rates will actually fall.
‘Adaptation’ will help deal with the next decade or two of global warming. But what about key energy or transport links that are expected to last a century?
Do we need a new word for the feeling of guilt one gets from watering plants during a drought?
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Faith Kearns, University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
A scientist dips her toe into a new form of group-based performance art: devising new words to describe new feelings and phenomena of a rapidly changing world.
The rays of hope are there, if you look for them.
Marcelo del Pozo/Reuters
Understanding how drought is impacting on livelihoods and local governments can help in the development of longer term climate adaptation responses.
Re-analysed data shows that Australia has indeed been hotter over the past 30 years than any time in the preceding millennium.
AAP Image/Dan Himbrechts
Australasia’s warming in recent decades is unprecedented in the past millennium. But a mistake in the paper reporting this finding took four years to fix, and was viciously attacked by bloggers.
Three more years for Malcolm Turnbull and the Coalition.
AAP/David Moir
The new ‘carbon budget’ has eased fears of a post-Brexit ‘coup’ by Tory climate sceptics.
The Bramble Cay Melomys is arguably the first mammal driven extinct by climate change, rather than direct human interaction.
Ian Bell/EHP/State of Queensland
Australia’s conservation laws presume that we can preserve everything in its natural state. But in a changing world, we’ll have to be more flexible than that.
Should killing too many fish be dealt with in the same way as war crimes?
Bob Williams/Wikimedia Commons
The world has global authorities for trade and security, but not for threats to the environment. It’s time the natural world got its own version of the World Trade Organisation or UN Security Council.
We’re used to abundance, but Brexit makes it all seem more fragile.
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