Anyone with even a passing interest in the global environment knows all is not well. But just how bad is the situation? Our new paper shows the outlook for life on Earth is more dire than is generally understood.
The end of the last ice age, around 12,000 years ago, was characterised by a final cold phase called the Younger Dryas. Scandinavia was still mostly covered in ice, and across Europe the mountains had many more, and larger, glaciers than today.
The catastrophic fires in Australia in early 2020 were actually a holdover from 2019, but they were soon followed by flooding in Indonesia, a super-cyclone hitting the coast of India and Bangladesh and then more flooding, this time in Kenya and wide swaths of Central and West Africa.
Imagine you are on the coast, looking out to sea. In front of you lies 100 metres of barren sand that looks like a beach at low tide with gentle waves beyond. And yet there are no tides.
The year 2020 will no doubt go down in history for other reasons, but it is also on target to be one of the warmest on record. And as the climate warms, natural hazards will happen more frequently – and be ever more lethal.
As global temperatures rise, snowy winters could become a thing of the past in much of the UK, according to a recent Met Office analysis.
The year 2020 will be remembered for many reasons, including its record-breaking wildfires that turned San Francisco’s skies an apocalyptic shade of red and blanketed large parts of the West in smoke for weeks on end.
We can learn a lot about climate change from Venus, our sister planet. Venus currently has a surface temperature of 450℃ (the temperature of an oven’s self-cleaning cycle) and an atmosphere dominated by carbon dioxide (96 per cent) with a density 90 times that of Earth’s.
Salt storms are an emerging threat for millions of people in north-western Iran, thanks to the catastrophe of Lake Urmia.
We’re looking back at a trail of broken records, and the storms may still not be over even though the season officially ended on Nov. 30.
Temperature and day length were traditionally accepted as the main determinants of when leaves changed colour and fell, leading some scientists to assume that warming temperatures would delay this process until later in the season.
Every winter, the ice that forms on lakes, rivers and oceans, supports communities and culture. It provides transportation across winter roads, hunting and fishing, and recreational activities, such as lake ice festivals, skating, hockey and ice fishing.
Greenland is the largest island in the world and on it rests the largest ice mass in the Northern Hemisphere. If all that ice melted, the sea would rise by more than 7 metres.
The Arctic Circle became unbelievably hot on June 20, 2020. In the Russian community of Verkhoyansk, temperatures topped 38C (over 100F), marking what may be the highest air temperature ever recorded within the Arctic.
Climate change really is a burning issue. Simultaneous drought and heat are increasingly likely for more of the American West.
The fires in the Amazon region in 2019 were unprecedented in their destruction. Thousands of fires had burned more than 7,600 square kilometres by October that year. In 2020, things are no better and, in all likelihood, may be worse.
Fires now blaze under Arctic snows, where once even the wettest rainforests burned. Climate change delivers unlikely outcomes.
Earth is now firmly in the grips of its sixth “mass extinction event”, and it’s mainly our fault. But the modern era is definitely not the first time humans have been implicated in the extinction of a wide range of species.
Global heating means the southern ice will melt. Antarctica’s ice loss could then be permanent, drowning many great cities.
It seems like each day scientists report more dire consequences of climate change on animals and plants worldwide. Birds that are migrating later in the year can’t find enough food.
Amazon collapse could soon mean the end of one of Earth’s richest habitats, leaving the rainforest destroyed by humans.
Greenland is the largest island on Earth, and about 80% of it is covered by a giant sheet of ice. Slowly flowing glaciers connect this massive frozen reservoir of fresh water to the ocean, but because of climate change, these glaciers are rapidly retreating.
For years, scientists have been stressing the need to act quickly and effectively on climate change. And as part of my work as a media psychology academic, I’ve seen the way media outlets along with readers have discussed climate change over the past decade.
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