Indigenous groups urged world leaders on Sunday to back a new target to protect 80% of the Amazon basin by 2025, saying bold action was needed to stop deforestation pushing the Earth's largest rainforest beyond a point of no return. Amazonian delegates launched their campaign at a nine-day conference in Marseille, where several thousand officials, scientists and campaigners are laying the groundwork for United Nations talks on biodiversity in the Chinese city of Kunming next year. FILE PHOTO: Carlos Roberto Sanquetta, a forestry engineering professor at the Federal University of Parana, botanist Edilson Consuelo de Oliveira and Rioterra plant nursery worker Juciney Pinheiro dos Santos inspect a parcel of Amazon rainforest in Itapua do Oeste, Rondonia state, Brazil, November 4, 2020....
Read MoreTag: climate change
Residents and tourists in communities near Lake Tahoe fled on Monday as a fierce, 2-week-old wildfire roared closer to the popular resort destination through drought-parched forests in northern California's Sierra Nevada mountains. Evacuations in and around the town of South Lake Tahoe came as the U.S. Forest Service said it was taking the unusual step of closing all 18 national forests in California to the public in the midst of a fire season already shaping up as one of the worst on record. The closure is due to last 17 days, starting Wednesday, and effectively extends a shutdown of nine national forests in northern California that began on Aug. 23 and was due to expire over the upcoming Labor Day holiday weekend. A view from Emerald Bay towards Lake Tahoe is obscured by smoke ...
Read MoreRain fell at the highest point on the Greenland ice sheet last week for the first time on record, another worrying sign of warming for the ice sheet already melting at an increasing rate, scientists said on Friday. "That's not a healthy sign for an ice sheet," said Indrani Das, a glaciologist with Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. "Water on ice is bad. … It makes the ice sheet more prone to surface melt." Not only is water warmer than the usual snow, it's also darker -- so it absorbs more sunlight rather than reflecting it away. A satellite image shows Nuuk Fjord, Greenland July 29, 2021. European Union, Copernicus Sentinel-2 imagery - Processed by @DEFIS_EU/Handout via REUTERS That meltwater is streaming into the ocean, causing sea levels to rise. Alread...
Read MoreRare summer flooding submerged Venice's famed Piazza San Marco in up to a metre of water overnight. The lagoon city is often hit by so-called "acqua alta" (high water) in autumn and winter, and devastating floods in November 2019 caused hundreds of millions of euros of damage. A couple dances in a flooded St. Mark's Square during an exceptional high water in Venice, Italy August 8, 2021. REUTERS/Manuel Silvestri Sunday night's event was less damaging, however, and couples in the square danced to piano music almost knee deep in the water, while children splashed and paddled and tourists waded through, shoes in hand. Venice's high water incidents are caused by a combination of factors exacerbated by climate change - from rising sea levels and unusually high tides to land subside...
Read MoreEarth has not been so warm since the Pliocene Epoch roughly 3 million years ago Among the many things that IPCC report released on Monday had said very categorically, one of utmost significance is that the world is running out of time. Climate change is already affecting every inhabited region across the globe with human influence contributing to many observed changes in weather and climate extremes. If the world drastically cuts emissions in the next decade, average temperatures could still rise 1.5C by 2040 and possibly 1.6C by 2060 before stabilizing. FILE PHOTO: Aerial view of an area affected by a bushfire on Fraser Island (K'gari), Queensland, Australia December 5, 2020 in this picture obtained from social media. Save Fraser Islands Dingoes Inc via REUTERS If the world d...
Read MoreU.N. sounds clarion call over 'irreversible' climate impacts by humans The U.N. climate panel sounded a dire warning Monday, saying the world is dangerously close to runaway warming – and that humans are "unequivocally" to blame. Extreme heat waves that previously only struck once every 50 years are now expected to happen once per decade because of global warming, while downpours and droughts have also become more frequent, a UN climate science report has said. Flames rise as a wildfire burns at the village of Afidnes, north of Athens, Greece August 6, 2021. REUTERS/Costas Baltas The report found that we are already experiencing those effects of climate change, as the planet has surpassed more than 1 degree Celsius in average warming. Heat waves, droughts and torrential rains ...
Read MoreSaving rich biodiversity and decarbonizing by 2050 are the targets Costa Rican lawmakers this week will discuss a bill to permanently ban fossil fuel exploration and extraction, a move that would prevent future governments from pivoting on the issue as the popular eco-tourism destination country aims to decarbonize by 2050. General view of the National Park Tapamti in Orosi, 80 miles (128km) of San Jose. Green trailblazer Costa Rica is drawing up plans to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions to zero before 2030, the government said on Thursday, and aims to be the first nation to offset all its carbon. REUTERS/Juan Carlos Ulate Costa Rica started efforts to ban fossil fuel exploration in 2002 under President Abel Pacheco. This ban was supposed to expire in 2014 but later extended ...
Read MoreDeadly floods that have upended life in both China and Germany have sent a stark reminder that climate change is making weather more extreme across the globe. At least 25 people in the central Chinese province of Henan died on Tuesday, including a dozen trapped in a city subway as waters tore through the regional capital of Zhengzhou after days of torrential rain. Coming after floods killed at least 160 people in Germany and another 31 in Belgium last week, the disaster has reinforced the message that significant changes will have to be made to prepare for similar events in future. A street is flooded following heavy rainfalls in Erftstadt, Germany, July 16, 2021. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen/File Photo "Governments should first realize that the infrastructure they have built in t...
Read MoreCoral reef restoration technology aims to reverse climate change damage
Marine scientist Deborah Brosnan remembers “feeling like a visitor at an amazing party” on her diving trips to a bay near the Caribbean island of Saint Barthelemy where she swam above coral reefs with nurse sharks, sea turtles and countless colorful fish. But on a return trip after Hurricane Irma ravaged the island in 2017, she dove the reef again - and was shocked by what she saw. “Everything was dead,” she recalled in an interview with Reuters. “There were no sharks, no sea turtles, no sea grass, no living coral. I felt like I lost my friends.” Marine scientist Deborah Brosnan does a research dive on a coral reef, in this undated handout in Antigua and Barbuda. Courtesy of Deborah Brosnan & Associates/Handout via REUTERS Recent research has shown that warmer atmospheric ...
Read MoreSatellite-based real-time monitoring of Himalayan glacial catchments would improve understanding of flood risk in the region and help inform an early flood warning system that could help curb disaster and save human lives, says a recent study. This should be the future strategy to reduce loss of human lives during glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF), said a study carried out by scientists from IIT Kanpur. The study carried out by Dr. Tanuj Shukla and Prof. Indra Sekhar Sen, Associate Professor from IIT Kanpur, with support from the Department of Science & Technology, Government of India, has been published in the international journal ‘Science’. FILE PHOTO: People walk past a destroyed dam after a Himalayan glacier broke and crashed into the dam at Raini Chak Lata village in Cha...
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