climate change – Page 2 – आवारा मुसाफिर

Is climate change lighting a fuse under Iceland’s volcanoes?

October 26, 2024161 Views

Scientists are racing to find out whether the rapid retreat of glaciers could drive a surge in eruptions as magma builds under the island nation — and if so, whether the same might occur at ice-covered volcanoes around the world, putting many lives at risk. Toxic sulphurous gas, carrying the telltale reek of rotten eggs, wafted through vents in the steep walls of Iceland’s Viti crater, while carbon dioxide bubbled to the surface of the milky blue crater lake. Veils of steam wreathed the landscape of loose rock in eerie half-light. Through this forbidding terrain – “Viti” is derived from the Icelandic for “hell” – Michelle Parks, a volcanologist with the Icelandic Meteorological Office, picked her way toward the water’s edge one day last August. With a monitor strapped...

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COP16: From forests to oceans, nature in a dire state

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 20, 2024163 Views

Global destruction of nature has reached unprecedented extremes. As the United Nations two-week COP16 biodiversity summit kicks off on Monday in Cali, Colombia, here is what you need to know about nature's rapid decline - and its importance to the global economy. ANIMALS AND PLANTS Plants and animals play significant parts in keeping nature humming, from cycling nutrients throughout an ecosystem to aerating soils and engineering rivers. Without plants and animals, the world would not be habitable for humans. However, more than a quarter of the world's known species, or a total of about 45,300 species, are now threatened with extinction, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN). FILE PHOTO: Najin (front) and her daughter Pa...

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Global coral bleaching event expands, now the largest on record

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 17, 2024165 Views

The mass bleaching of coral reefs around the world since February 2023 is now the most extensive on record, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told Reuters this week. A staggering 77% of the world’s coral reef areas – from the Atlantic to the Pacific to the Indian oceans – have so far been subjected to bleaching-level heat stress, according to satellite data, as climate change fuels record and near-record ocean temperatures across the world. "This event is still increasing in spatial extent and we’ve broken the previous record by more than 11% in about half the amount of time,” said NOAA Coral Reef Watch coordinator Derek Manzello. “This could potentially have serious ramifications for the ultimate response of these reefs to these bleaching events.” FILE P...

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Vegetation is taking over snow in Antarctica

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 8, 2024184 Views

Lush landscape is spreading at an alarming rate in a place where temperatures are soaring A fast-warming region of Antarctica is getting greener with shocking speed. Satellite imagery of the region reveals that the area covered by plants increased by almost 14 times over 35 years — a trend that will spur rapid change of Antarctic ecosystems. “It's the beginning of dramatic transformation,” says Olly Bartlett, a remote-sensing specialist at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK, and an author of the study, published recently in Nature Geoscience, that reports these results. From white to green Bartlett and his colleagues analysed images taken between 1986 and 2021 of the Antarctic Peninsula — a part of the continent that juts north towards the tip of South America. Th...

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Swiss glacier melt exceeds average in 2024 after hot summer

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

October 2, 2024150 Views

Swiss glaciers melted at an above-average rate in 2024 as a blistering hot summer thawed through abundant snowfall, monitoring body GLAMOS said on Tuesday. Earlier this year, glaciologists had celebrated heavy winter and spring snow dumps in the Alps, hoping this would signal a halt to years of hefty declines or even a reversal of losses. A drone view of crevasses on Morteratsch Glacier amid climate change, in Pontresina, Switzerland, September 3, 2024. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse But with average August temperatures a few degrees above freezing even at the 3,571 meter high Jungfraujoch station perched above the Aletsch Glacier, scientists measured record ice losses across the country that month. Overall, GLAMOS said Swiss glaciers lost 2.5% of their volume this year which was abo...

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Polar bears are now half the number of 40 years ago

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

September 25, 2024203 Views

In the gateway to the Arctic, fat, ice and polar bears are crucial. All three are in trouble Searching for polar bears where the Churchill River dumps into Canada’s massive Hudson Bay, biologist Geoff York scans a region that’s on a low fat, low ice diet because of climate change. And it’s getting lower on polar bears. A polar bear cub walks along rocks toward its mother, Wednesday, Aug. 7, 2024, near Churchill, Manitoba. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel) There are now about 600 polar bears in the Western Hudson Bay, one of the most threatened of the 20 populations of the white beasts. That’s about half the number of 40 years ago, says York, senior director of research and policy at Polar Bears International. His latest study, with a team of scientists from various fields, shows tha...

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South America’s rivers hit record lows as Brazil drought impact spreads

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

September 10, 2024218 Views

South America's Paraguay River, a key thoroughfare for grains, has hit a record low in Paraguay's capital Asuncion, with water levels depleted by a severe drought upriver in Brazil that has hindered navigation along waterways in the Amazon. A powerful drought in the Amazon rainforest led on Monday to the lowest water levels on the Paraguay River in more than a century, disrupting commerce on the major waterway, creating hazards for local transport and offering a grim warning for other parts of the world. People fish, amid smoke coming from wildfires in neighbouring countries, on the shores of the Paraguay River, which has hit a record low water level due to a major drought, in Asuncion, Paraguay September 7, 2024. REUTERS/Cesar Olmedo Paraguay’s Department of Meteorology and Hydr...

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This year could be the warmest humanity has ever measured

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

September 8, 2024232 Views

Summer 2024 sweltered to Earth’s hottest on record, making it even more likely that this year will end up as the warmest humanity has measured, European climate service Copernicus reported Friday. And if this sounds familiar, that’s because the records the globe shattered were set just last year as human-caused climate change, with a temporary boost from an El Nino, keeps dialing up temperatures and extreme weather, scientists said. The northern meteorological summer — June, July and August — averaged 16.8 degrees Celsius (62.24 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Copernicus. That’s 0.03 degrees Celsius (0.05 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the old record in 2023. Copernicus records go back to 1940, but American, British and Japanese records, which start in the mid-19th century, show ...

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Scientists in Chile question if Antarctica has hit a point of no return

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

August 30, 2024263 Views

Nearly 1,500 academics, researchers and scientists specializing in Antarctica gathered in southern Chile for the 11th Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research conference this week to share the most cutting-edge research from the vast white continent. Nearly every aspect of science, from geology to biology and glaciology to arts, was covered but a major undercurrent ran through the conference. Antarctica is changing, faster than expected. Extreme weather events in the ice-covered continent were no longer hypothetical presentations, but first-hand accounts from researchers about heavy rainfall, intense heat waves and sudden Foehn (strong dry winds) events at research stations that led to mass melting, giant glacier break-offs and dangerous weather conditions with global implications...

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The worldwide catastrophe of rising seas especially imperils Pacific paradises

AWARA MUSAFIR BUREAU

August 28, 2024295 Views

Highlighting seas that are rising at an accelerating rate, especially in the far more vulnerable Pacific island nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued yet another climate SOS to the world. This time he said those initials stand for “save our seas.” The United Nations and the World Meteorological Organization Monday issued reports on worsening sea level rise, turbocharged by a warming Earth and melting ice sheets and glaciers. They highlight how the Southwestern Pacific is not only hurt by the rising oceans, but by other climate change effects of ocean acidification and marine heat waves. Guterres toured Samoa and Tonga and made his climate plea from Tonga’s capital on Tuesday at a meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum, whose member countries are among those most impe...