Imagine a future where the yearly flow into one of the largest water reservoirs of a major Australian city could halve within 70 years. This is a scenario that Adelaide could face if the world continues…
Why is the eastern US getting so much Arctic weather this winter?
Stuart Rankin/Flickr
Everyone loves to talk about the weather, and this winter Mother Nature has served up a feast to chew on. Few parts of the US have been spared her wrath. Severe drought and abnormally warm conditions continue…
Despite adjustments to temperature data in the Arctic, the overall global warming trend remains the same.
Flickr/P J Hansen
Attacks on institutions that keep records of global temperatures, such as NASA, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the UK Met Office, and Australia’s Bureau of Meteorology, continue…
Many tropical diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease and dengue are transmitted to humans via mosquitoes and other carriers known as vectors. These vector-borne diseases continue to have a major impact…
The Uvas Reservoir near Silicon Valley in California, photographed about one year ago.
Ian Abbot/ Flickr
Let’s start with some old news. Earth’s climate is warming, human activities are causing it, and as long as we continue to dump greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, the impacts on climate and…
If we’re going to mess with the weather, better know what we’re doing first.
Bryce Bradford
The publication of a hefty two-volume report on geoengineering by the US National Research Council represents a marked shift in the global debate over how to respond to global warming. To date, the debate…
Conditions in Belize are affected by emissions thousands of miles away.
Brad Herman
Air pollution pumped out by factories and power plants in Europe and North America has led to drier spells in the tropics, thousands of miles to the south. Scientists had long suspected this was the case…
The Boston-area transit authority has had major disruptions and shut-downs this winter.
MaxVT/Flickr
Despite the Patriots winning the Super Bowl, January and February were not kind months for the people of Boston and New England. By February 10th, more than 60 inches of snow in 30 days fell on the city…
We were doing just fine before the oceans got involved.
Charles R. Knight (1916)
It’s well known that carbon in the atmosphere is causing global warming. What is less well known, outside of scientific circles at least, is the role oceans have to play in this. Our seas contain 60 times…
Concerns about art and the environment should not be so divorced.
Lucy Orta
After a three-year court battle, the Tate has been forced to disclose how much money it receives in sponsorship from BP. The stubbornness seemed to indicate a massive sum, one the galleries could not do…
South Australia already mines uranium. Could it become a nuclear state?
AAP Image/Quasar Resources
South Australian premier Jay Weatherill on Sunday announced a formal inquiry into the future role of the state in the nuclear fuel cycle, which will be tasked with considering options across the full gamut…
Kelp covered landscape in Western Australia.
Dan Smale
Thomas Wernberg, The University of Western Australia and Dan Smale, Marine Biological Association
Western Australia’s marine environment is unique. Two world heritage areas, the largest fringing coral reef in Australia, and more than a thousand kilometres of underwater forests, supporting incredible…
Carbon dioxide levels are rising at their fastest rate since the dinosaurs’ time.
iurii/Shutterstock.com
The latest climate projections released last week by the Bureau of Meteorology and CSIRO predict that Australia could potentially warm by between 2.8C and 5.1C by 2090. Meanwhile, the 2014 State of the…
Reaching consensus on climate change requires overcoming the social barriers between opposing groups.
350 .org/Flickr
It can be tempting to think that people who disagree with you are mad, bad or simply stupid. However, not only are such judgements usually wrong, but telling people that they are stupid is unlikely to…
Researchers deploy robotic Argo floats into the ocean to measure temperature.
CSIRO
The oceans are continuing to warm steadily despite an apparent slowdown in global warming at the earth’s surface, according to data collected by thousands of floating robots published today in Nature Climate…
Welcome to Boston - and two feet of snow from one storm.
Peter Eimon/Flickr
As first glance, asking whether global warming results in more snow may seem like a silly question because obviously, if it gets warm enough, there is no snow. Consequently, deniers of climate change have…
Arctic sea ice melts each summer, reaching its minimum extent sometime in September, before refreezing through the winter. Over the past 35 years, the September sea ice extent has reduced by about 35…
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
In the early morning hours of Sunday, December 14th last year, climate negotiators in Lima, Peru concluded the COP-20 talks with an agreement among 195 countries. The Lima Call for Climate Action, or Lima…
What does Paraguay have to do with the global temperature record?
dany13/Flickr
An article in The Australian today has once again raised the question of why scientists, in trying to estimate how the global and regional surface temperatures of Earth may have changed over the past century…
Scientists will be either ineffectual or counter-productive.
EPA
Western liberal democracies believe that in difficult political decisions science serves as a referee and arbiter of truth. Scientific knowledge can indeed inform and narrow the scope of policy choices…