If a warming world becomes a drier one, how will the green things respond? Not well, according to a new prediction.

Wildfires have become one of the most potent symbols of the threats posed by global warming, and images of fire are widely used to illustrate climate change news stories.

As bushfires continue to burn around Australia, smoke has continued to blanket major cities and regional areas.

In the aftermath of Australia’s devastating Black Summer fires, research has begun to clarify the role of climate change.

Of an estimated 228 million cases of malaria worldwide each year, around 93% are in Africa. This proportion is more or less the same for the 405,000 malaria deaths globally.

Global heating may be to blame for the fact that Europe has grown drier over the last 2,000 years to a new high in 2015.

As the tides rise ever higher, the world’s coastal cities carry on sinking. It’s a recipe for civic catastrophe

The destruction of tropical forest is a major contributor to biodiversity loss and the climate crisis. In response, conservationists and scientists like us are debating how to best catalyse recovery of these forests. How do you take a patch of earth littered with tree stumps, or even a grassy pasture or palm oil plantation, and turn it back into a thriving forest filled with its original species?

The problem, at least in terms of public health, is that it was not actually a sandstorm. It was a dust storm.

As ever, the poorest people will most feel the heat in a hotter world. But a green growth initiative could help them.

Many tropical diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease and dengue are transmitted to humans via mosquitoes and other carriers known as vectors. These vector-borne diseases continue to have a major impact on human health in the developing world: each year, more than a billion people become infected and around a million people die.

It is well known that climate-induced sea level rise is a major threat. What is less well know is the threat of sinking land. And in many of the most populated coastal areas, the land is sinking even faster than the sea is rising.

Rivers and streams are changing on a global scale. A new study points the finger at climate change, not land or water management.

Many of the streams that people count on for fishing, water and recreation are getting warmer as global temperatures rise. But they aren’t all heating up in the same way.

Now that the disease-transmitting mosquito Aedes scapularis has invaded the Florida peninsula, researchers have come up with a method to predict where conditions may be most suitable for its spread.

One implication of the findings is that "rice breeding efforts may not have reached their full potential such that it may be possible to produce new varieties that will statistically perform better than older varieties in a farm setting

Despite living in dynamic environments and facing an uncertain future due to climate change, New Zealanders generally expect their land and property rights will endure indefinitely.

"If we continue with large ongoing emissions as we are at present, we will commit the world to meters of sea level rise over coming centuries."

Ocean pollution is widespread, worsening, and poses a clear and present danger to human health and wellbeing. But the extent of this danger has not been widely comprehended – until now.

Ask people to name the world’s largest river, and most will probably guess that it’s the Amazon, the Nile or the Mississippi. In fact, some of Earth’s largest rivers are in the sky – and they can produce powerful storms, like the one now soaking California.