Even if the world somehow manages to limit future warming to the strictest international temperature goal, four Earth-changing climate “tipping points” are still likely to be triggered with a lot more looming as the planet heats more after that, a new study said. An international team of scientists looked at 16 climate tipping points — when a warming side effect is irreversible, self-perpetuating and major — and calculated rough temperature thresholds at which they are triggered. None of them are considered likely at current temperatures, though a few are possible. But with only a few more tenths of a degree of warming from now, at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) warming since pre-industrial times, four move into the likely range, according to a study in Thursday’s journal...
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Stories, news, features and articles about climate change and global warming
The Middle East's first ever soccer World Cup promises boom time for Dubai hotels this November, with thousands of fans expected to descend on the Gulf city due to limited accommodation in neighbouring host nation Qatar. But the environmental costs of transporting those visitors nearly 400 km (249 miles) for match days, overwhelmingly by plane, raises further doubts over Qatar's pledge last year to host the first ever carbon-neutral World Cup. FILE PHOTO: Flag raising ceremony for the last three teams to qualify for the 2022 World Cup - Doha, Qatar - June 16, 2022 General view during the ceremony REUTERS/Mohammed Dabbous While more than a million soccer fans are expected to attend the tournament, Qatar had just 30,000 hotel rooms as of March. More are due to be added before the t...
Read MoreThe eastern Mediterranean and Middle East are warming almost twice as fast as the global average, with temperatures projected to rise up to 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century if no action is taken to reverse the trend, a new report says. The region will experience “unprecedented” heat waves, more severe and longer-lasting droughts and dust storms and rainfall shortages that will “compromise water and food security” for the region’s 400 million people, according to a summary of the report released Tuesday. The eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East are more susceptible to warming trends because of their unique natural characteristics, like large desert expanses and lower water levels, the study said. FILE PHOTO: A couple walk at the salt lake dur...
Read MoreIn an oasis notorious as the hottest place in Africa, Tunisian farmers say they are fighting a losing battle with drought and disease that is driving many to abandon plantations where they grow some of the world's finest dates. The date palm orchards at Kebili oasis used to form green, fertile islands in an arid landscape. But now many of the trees are dying, and dry, bare and fruitless trunks stretch up into a clear blue sky. Farmer Mouhamed Bouaziz stands with environmental activist Moez Hamed at an abandoned date palm orchard, in Kebili oasis in southern Tunisia, August 29, 2022. REUTERS/Jihed Abidellaoui The southern Tunisian oasis has endured a decade of drought, and the challenge of irrigating the palms has grown as costs have risen and power cuts become more frequent, farm...
Read MoreA helicopter herds thousands of impalas into an enclosure. A crane hoists sedated upside-down elephants into trailers. Hordes of rangers drive other animals into metal cages and a convoy of trucks starts a journey of about 700 kilometers (435 miles) to take the animals to their new home. Zimbabwe has begun moving more than 2,500 wild animals from a southern reserve to one in the country’s north to rescue them from drought, as the ravages of climate change replace poaching as the biggest threat to wildlife. About 400 elephants, 2,000 impalas, 70 giraffes, 50 buffaloes, 50 wildebeest, 50 zebras, 50 elands, 10 lions and a pack of 10 wild dogs are among the animals being moved from Zimbabwe’s Save Valley Conservancy to three conservancies in the north — Sapi, Matusadonha and Chizari...
Read MoreParts of northern Texas, mired in a drought labeled as extreme and exceptional, are flooding under torrential rain. In a drought. Sound familiar? It should. The Dallas region is just the latest drought-suffering-but-flooded locale during a summer of extreme weather whiplash, likely goosed by human-caused climate change, scientists say. Parts of the world are lurching from drought to deluge. The St. Louis area and 88% of Kentucky early in July were considered abnormally dry and then the skies opened up, the rain poured in biblical proportions, inch after inch, and deadly flooding devastated communities. The same thing happened in Yellowstone in June. Earlier this month, Death Valley, in a severe drought, got a near record amount of rainfall in one day, causing floods, and is still in...
Read MoreZombie ice from the massive Greenland ice sheet will eventually raise global sea level by at least 10 inches (27 centimeters) on its own, according to a study released Monday. Zombie or doomed ice is ice that is still attached to thicker areas of ice, but is no longer getting fed by those larger glaciers. That’s because the parent glaciers are getting less replenishing snow. Meanwhile the doomed ice is melting from climate change, said study co-author William Colgan, a glaciologist at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland. “It’s dead ice. It’s just going to melt and disappear from the ice sheet,” Colgan said in an interview. “This ice has been consigned to the ocean, regardless of what climate (emissions) scenario we take now.” FILE PHOTO: A boat navigates at night next ...
Read MoreWhat’s considered officially “dangerous heat” in coming decades will likely hit much of the world at least three times more often as climate change worsens, according to a new study. In much of Earth’s wealthy mid-latitudes, spiking temperatures and humidity that feel like 103 degrees (39.4 degrees Celsius) or higher -- now an occasional summer shock — statistically should happen 20 to 50 times a year by mid-century, said a study Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. By 2100, that brutal heat index may linger for most of the summer for places like the U.S. Southeast, the study’s author said. FILE PHOTO: People rest in the shade of a tree on a hot summer afternoon in Lucknow in the central Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, April 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Rajesh Kuma...
Read MoreObservation emerges from the analysis of annual growth rings from Yamal’s subfossil trees The north of Western Siberia is recording the warmest summers of the last 7,000 years. While for several millennia the temperature of the region was following a general cooling, in the 19th century there has been an abrupt change with rapidly rising temperature that has reached its highest value in the recent decades. These findings were published in Nature Communications. Over 40 years, dendrochronologists have collected more than 5,000 samples of subfossil trees in Yamal. Photo credit: Vladimir Kukarskih Thanks to multiple field expeditions aimed at collecting subfossil wood performed over the last 40 years, dendrochronologists of the Institute of Plant and Animal Ecology, Ural Branch of t...
Read MoreChampagne grape pickers have had to start the harvest earlier this year, as climate change forces the makers of the French sparkling wine to rethink how they make the coveted bubbly. High temperatures and the worst drought on record have caused massive wildfires and led to restrictions on water usage across France. But they also boosted grape maturity. Champagne grape pickers work at the Clos des Goisses vineyard owned by Champagne Philipponnat during the traditional Champagne harvest in Mareuil-sur-Ay, France, August 24, 2022. REUTERS/Pascal Rossignol An August harvest, rather than in early September last year, used to be a once in a lifetime experience in Champagne in the past, said Charles Philipponnat, president of the family-owned Philipponnat Champagne winery that produces ...
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