Indonesia's peatlands, California's forests, and, now, vast swathes of Argentine wetland have all been ravaged by extreme wildfires, heralding a fiery future and the dire need to prevent it. With climate change triggering droughts and farmers clearing forests, the number of extreme wildfires is expected to increase 30% within the next 28 years. And they are now scorching environments that were not prone to burning in the past, such as the Arctic's tundra and the Amazon rainforest. FILE PHOTO: A house is fully engulfed by flames at the Dixie Fire, a wildfire near the town of Greenville, California, U.S. August 5, 2021. REUTERS/Fred Greaves "We've seen a great increase in recent fires in northern Syria, northern Siberia, the eastern side of Australia, and India," said Australian go...
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Future land loss calculated for the first time in a scientific research Erosion is destroying the coasts of the Arctic. The warming of the soil, leading to ruptures and slumping, can endanger important infrastructures and threaten the safety of local populations. In addition, these processes release carbon stored in soils into the ocean, which could alter the role of the Arctic Ocean as an important storehouse of carbon and greenhouse gases. They could also contribute to increase climate change. Scientist investigating coastal erosion caused by thawing permafrost near Bykovsky peninsula, Laptev Sea, Siberia, Russia. Photo: AWI/Paul Overduin Until now, insights into the magnitude and speed of these changes have been lacking for the future. Using a new combination of computational ...
Read MoreDue to climate change, Arctic winters are getting warmer. An international study by UZH researchers shows that Arctic warming causes temperature anomalies and cold damage thousands of kilometers away in East Asia. This in turn leads to reduced vegetation growth, later blossoming, smaller harvests and reduced CO2 absorption by the forests in the region. The global mean temperature is increasing due to the increase in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but paradoxically, many regions in the mid-latitudes have experienced cold winters recently. During the past few days, the east coast of the United States experienced heavy snowfall and low temperatures as far south as Florida. Warmer Arctic winters are now also triggering extreme winter weather of this kind in East Asia, an intern...
Read MoreEverest glacier is losing decades worth of ice every year Melting and sublimation on Mount Everest’s highest glacier due to human-induced climate change have reached the point that several decades of accumulation are being lost annually now that ice has been exposed, according to a University of Maine-led international research team that analyzed data from the world’s highest ice core and highest automatic weather stations. The extreme sensitivity of the high-altitude Himalayan ice masses in rapid retreat forewarns of quickly emerging impacts that could range from increased incidence of avalanches and decreased capacity of the glacier stored water on which more than 1 billion people depend to provide melt for drinking water and irrigation. South Col Glacier ice core (8220 m) (red...
Read MoreStudy on UK but can be applied for all other areas if larger datasets are available Climate change is causing plants in the UK to flower a month earlier on average, which could have profound consequences for wildlife, agriculture and gardeners. Using a citizen science database with records going back to the mid-18th century, a research team led by the University of Cambridge has found that the effects of climate change are causing plants in the UK to flower one month earlier under recent global warming. The researchers based their analysis on more than 400,000 observations of 406 plant species from Nature’s Calendar, maintained by the Woodland Trust, and collated the first flowering dates with instrumental temperature measurements. FILE PHOTO: A wild flower meadow is pictured ...
Read MoreCoral reefs in every region of the world are threatened by climate change, no matter how remote or well protected. A new study predicts that climate change will result in near-total to total loss of existing locations where coral reefs are sheltered from rising ocean temperatures. Adele Dixon of the University of Leeds, U.K., and colleagues present these findings, which are at higher resolution than any previous analysis, in the open-access journal PLOS Climate on February 1, 2022. As climate change progresses, rising ocean temperatures threaten coral reefs around the world. However, in some locations, local ocean dynamics such as upwelling and strong currents were thought to buffer the effects of warming seas, providing protection to reefs. Nonetheless, it was not known if thes...
Read MoreWorld’s most famous ‘mega iceberg’ released 152 billion tonnes of fresh water into ocean
Scientists monitoring the giant A68A Antarctic iceberg from space reveal that a huge amount of fresh water was released as it melted around the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia 152 billion tonnes of fresh water – equivalent to 20 x Loch Ness or 61 million Olympic sized swimming pools, entered the seas around the sub-Antarctic island of South Georgia when the megaberg A68A melted over 3 months in 2020/2021, according to a new study. In July 2017, the A68A iceberg snapped off the Larsen-C Ice Shelf on the Antarctic Peninsula and began its epic 3.5 year, 4000 km journey across the Southern Ocean. At 5719 square kilometres in extent – quarter the size of Wales –, it was the biggest iceberg on Earth when it formed and the sixth largest on record. Around Christmas 2020, the berg rece...
Read MoreA new study led by teams of the Faculty of Biology, the Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio) of the University of Barcelona, and the Institute of Marine Sciences (ICM-CSIC) of Barcelona has revealed that marine heatwaves associated with the climate crisis are bringing down the populations of coral in the Mediterranean, the biomass of which in some cases has been reduced by 80 to 90%. According to the study, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, coral populations of the Mediterranean —essential for the functioning of the coral reefs, one of the most emblematic habitats in this sea— could be unable to recover from the recurrent impact of these extreme episodes, with water temperatures reaching high degrees for days and even weeks. This is the first study ...
Read MoreOf the 21 cities to host the Winter Olympics, only Sapporo, Japan would be able to provide fair and safe conditions to stage them again by the end of the century if greenhouse gases are not dramatically reduced, said a University of Waterloo study released on Tuesday. An international team of researchers, led by the University of Waterloo, reviewed historical climate data from the 1920s along with future climate change trends. They determined that winter playgrounds such as St. Moritz and Lillehammer could become Olympic relics by the mid to late century, with unreliable conditions ruling them out as Games hosts. A worker sets up an installation featuring Bing Dwen Dwen, the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Mascot and Shuey Rhon Rhon, the 2022 Beijing Winter Paralympic Games Mascot, i...
Read MoreGreece will forbid new road building and development in six of its mountain areas, taking a first step to protect its last remaining virgin habitats, Environment Minister Kostas Skrekas said on Tuesday. Making the transition to green energy a key priority, the conservative government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has promised to shut down nearly all its lignite-fired plants by 2025 and protect areas with native plants and animals. FILE PHOTO: A storm approaches the snow covered mountain range of Panachaiko, near Kalavryta, some 200 km (124 miles) south-west of Athens in Peloponnese district. REUTERS/Yannis Behrakis Following devastating wildfires fuelled by a protracted heatwave last summer, the government has also promised to build better climate change defences to prote...
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