This is not an imaginary future dystopia. It’s a scientific projection of Australia under 3°C of global warming – a future we must both strenuously try to avoid, but also prepare for.
The electricity sector is expected to play a key role in Canada’s push to net-zero emissions. Enhancing long-distance transmission can be lower the cost of providing clean and reliable electricity.
Heat waves, droughts and deep freezes can all strain the electric grid, leading utilities to impose rolling blackouts. Climate change is likely to make these events more common.
Zachary Lawrence, University of Colorado Boulder and Amy Butler, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The media often call unusually cold, snowy storms a ‘polar vortex.’ The real polar vortex isn’t coming down to visit the lower 48, but changes to the polar vortex can influence winter weather.
Extreme heatwaves aren’t systematically monitored in most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This leads to unnecessary and premature deaths which are often unrecorded.
Jeanie Chin, Northern Alberta Institute of Technology
In an era of climate change and extreme weather, a microgrid — a self-sufficient, energy-generating distribution and control system — puts communities on the path to self-reliance.
Climate change has boosted the likelihood of heavy rainfall, hailstorms, flooding and drought seen in some parts of the world. What does the future hold?
A storm-driven chlorine gas release in a vulnerable community is the type of worst-case scenario that scientists and engineers have warned about for decades.
Lauren Vargo, Te Herenga Waka — Victoria University of Wellington
For the first time, scientists have been able to quantify how much climate change contributed to glacial melt, using more than 40 years of data from New Zealand’s retreating glaciers.
Andrew Magee, University of Newcastle; Andrew Lorrey, National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research, and Anthony Kiem, University of Newcastle
Tropical cyclones account for almost four in five natural disasters across Pacific Island nations. But a new forecasting tool now gives up to four months warning for the upcoming cyclone season.
As the planet continues to warm, extreme weather events such as heatwaves and heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent, intense and longer, according to global weather data.