Scientists reclassify Humboldt glacier, also known as La Corona, after it melted faster than expected
Venezuela has lost its last remaining glacier after it shrunk so much that scientists reclassified it as an ice field.
It is thought Venezuela is the first country to have lost all its glaciers in modern times.
Continue reading...The US cattle industry adopted a ‘climate neutral’ goal in 2021 but scientists say that ‘misses the point’ in keeping global temperature rises below 1.5C
Cattle Australia is lobbying the red meat sector to ditch its net zero target in favour of a “climate neutral” goal that would require far more modest reductions in methane emissions.
The $75bn red meat industry, led by Meat and Livestock Australia, announced a target of reaching net zero emissions by 2030 seven years ago, in an attempt to maintain its social licence and drive investments in emissions reduction technology.
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Continue reading...Demonstration against Welsh Labour policy included No Farmers No Food campaign calling for end to climate measures, and Welsh Tory leader
Rishi Sunak attended a protest alongside a group which has posted conspiracy theories about climate change, and which campaigns against net zero, the Observer can reveal.
The prime minister has been accused of “pandering to extremists” by farmers and wildlife groups, who have asked him to “listen to reason and logic” rather than conspiracy theories.
Continue reading...‘We need to respond now,’ says author of study that says crucial forest has already passed safe boundary and needs restoration
Up to half of the Amazon rainforest could hit a tipping point by 2050 as a result of water stress, land clearance and climate disruption, a study has shown.
The paper, which is the most comprehensive to date in its analysis of the compounding impacts of local human activity and the global climate crisis, warned that the forest had already passed a safe boundary and urged remedial action to restore degraded areas and improve the resilience of the ecosystem.
Continue reading...Exclusive: Prof Matt King says accelerated melting could transform country and affect viability of some agricultural industries
A leading Antarctic scientist has urged the Albanese government to pay closer attention to abrupt changes under way in the southern continent, warning they will affect Australians in ways that are little understood and research into them is drastically underfunded.
The head of the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, Prof Matt King, said he found it embarrassing how little was known about the local and global ramifications of changes including a historic drop in floating sea ice cover, the accelerating melting of giant ice sheets and the slowing of a deep ocean current known as the Southern Ocean overturning circulation.
Continue reading...Research shows climate crisis by far main cause of recent unseasonable temperatures in southern winter and early spring
The deadly heat in central South America over the past two months was made 100 times more likely by human emissions that disrupted the climate, scientists have shown.
Temperatures have exceeded 40C in late winter and early spring in the southern hemisphere, affecting millions and leading to heat-related deaths.
Continue reading...El Niño weather pattern could accelerate melting, leading to sea level rise
Two of the world’s few tropical glaciers, in Indonesia, are melting and their ice may vanish by 2026 or sooner as an El Niño weather pattern threatens to accelerate their demise, the country’s geophysics agency has said.
The agency, known as BMKG, has said the El Niño phenomenon could lead to the most severe dry season in Indonesia since 2019, increasing the risk of forest fires and threatening supplies of clean water.
Continue reading...Anticyclone Caronte could send thermometer to 48C/118F as Mediterranean heatwave intensifies
• Read more: Acropolis closes to protect tourists
A fierce anticyclone named after Cerberus, a three-headed monster-dog that features in Dante’s Inferno, had not even ended before Italians were warned that a more intense one called Caronte, or Charon, who in Greek mythology was the ferryman of the dead, was on its way.
Italy sweltered in temperatures reaching highs of 38C over the weekend, while Caronte will grip the country from Monday, sending the mercury beyond 40C in central and southern regions, with the islands of Sicily and Sardinia possibly hitting a peak of 48C.
Continue reading...UK’s 9.4m cattle produce 14% of human-related emissions, mostly from belching, but green groups remain sceptical
Cows in the UK could be given “methane blockers” to reduce their emissions of the greenhouse gas as part of plans to achieve the country’s climate goals.
Farmers welcomed the proposal, which follows a consultation that began in August on how new types of animal feed product can reduce digestive emissions from the animals.
Continue reading...Airline industry claimed science not ‘robust’ enough to implement new controls to combat climate warming caused by vapour trails
Airlines and airports opposed measures to combat global warming caused by jet vapour trails that evidence suggests account for more than half of the aviation industry’s climate impact, new documents reveal.
The industry argued in government submissions that the science was not “robust” enough to justify reduction targets for these non-CO2 emissions. Scientists say the climate impact of vapour trails, or contrails, has been known for more than two decades, with one accusing the industry of a “typical climate denialist strategy”.
Continue reading...Mean temperature of 10.03C beats 2014’s 9.88C, confirming 2022 as country’s warmest on record
The UK’s annual average temperature topped 10C for the first time in 2022, as last year was confirmed as the country’s warmest on record.
The mean temperature across the 12 months was 10.03C, beating the previous all-time high of 9.88C in 2014, the Met Office said on Thursday.
Continue reading...Expedition will traverse 1,200km in harsh conditions with the aim of collecting million-year-old ice to learn about climate change
Australian researchers have set off on their most ambitious polar expedition in two decades, aiming to drill down into million-year-old ice to learn about climate change.
A convoy of five specially designed tractor trains intends to traverse 1,200km to Little Dome C in Antarctica, where – if successful – they will set up a camp for scientists to start drilling as early as next summer.
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Continue reading...Oceanographer takes top honours in prime minister’s prizes for science after researching ocean’s role in regulating climate
When Trevor McDougall began studying the ocean in the 1970s he had no idea that his field would become a crucial part of climate science.
The University of New South Wales professor was on Monday awarded the top honour at the prime minister’s prizes for science for his contributions to the field of oceanography and research on the ocean’s role in regulating the climate.
Continue reading...Ed Husic says science agency should focus efforts elsewhere after ‘very major’ gas company asked it to support net-zero bid
The science minister, Ed Husic, has questioned the priorities of Australia’s premier science body, warning it against “renting out” its brand to huge gas companies that could easily fund their own decarbonisation efforts.
Husic told the Spark festival on Monday that a “very major gas company” had approached CSIRO to support its claims of working towards net zero greenhouse gas emissions. While emphasising CSIRO’s independence, Husic said it should focus efforts elsewhere.
“Gas firms at the moment are making enough money to ensure that the mint could blush,” Husic told the gathering.
Exclusive: Funding halted from June 2021 without fanfare and after science agency reportedly spent $15m on teams of scientists
Australia’s premier science organisation abruptly scrapped a fully-funded, globally recognised program to predict the climate in coming years without consulting an advisory panel that had praised its “good progress” only weeks earlier.
Launched in 2016 with $37m in funding over 10 years by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation, the Decadal Climate Forecasting Project was meant to help industries from agriculture to dam operators and emergency services to better cope with climate variability and extremes.
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Continue reading...Brutal heatwave in India and Pakistan also certain to have been exacerbated by global heating, scientists say
The massive and deadly floods that struck South Africa in April were made twice as likely and more intense by global heating, scientists have calculated. The research demonstrates that the climate emergency is resulting in devastation.
Catastrophic floods and landslides hit the South African provinces of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape on 11 April following exceptionally heavy rainfall.
Continue reading...The platform has been a source of a growing wave of climate misinformation and said denialism ‘shouldn’t be monetized’
Twitter chose Earth Day to announce it will ban advertisements that deny the scientific consensus on climate crisis.
“We believe that climate denialism shouldn’t be monetized on Twitter, and that misrepresentative ads shouldn’t detract from important conversations about the climate crisis,” the company declared on Friday.
Continue reading...People asked to record flowering cherry and plum trees near them to see whether patterns are changing
The British public have been asked to track flowering fruit trees to help determine whether climate change is changing blooming patterns, in one of the largest studies of its kind.
The University of Reading and Oracle for Research have developed a fruit recording website where citizen scientists can easily post their findings. People will initially be asked to record the flowering cherry and plum trees near them, with apple trees soon to follow.
Continue reading...Report says human actions are causing dangerous disruption, and window to secure a liveable future is closing
Climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has said.
Even at current levels, human actions in heating the climate are causing dangerous and widespread disruption, threatening devastation to swathes of the natural world and rendering many areas unliveable, according to the landmark report published on Monday.
Everywhere is affected, with no inhabited region escaping dire impacts from rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather.
About half the global population – between 3.3 billion and 3.6 billion people – live in areas “highly vulnerable” to climate change.
Millions of people face food and water shortages owing to climate change, even at current levels of heating.
Mass die-offs of species, from trees to corals, are already under way.
1.5C above pre-industrial levels constitutes a “critical level” beyond which the impacts of the climate crisis accelerate strongly and some become irreversible.
Coastal areas around the globe, and small, low-lying islands, face inundation at temperature rises of more than 1.5C.
Key ecosystems are losing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide, turning them from carbon sinks to carbon sources.
Some countries have agreed to conserve 30% of the Earth’s land, but conserving half may be necessary to restore the ability of natural ecosystems to cope with the damage wreaked on them.
Continue reading...The pandemic has seen borders close and divisions widened. But in almost all aspects of life, humanity will only thrive by coming together
During the pandemic, the nations of the world set about energetically strengthening borders around themselves, and within themselves, as states restricted entry. During the early lockdowns, according to the UNHCR, 168 of the world’s 195 countries partially or entirely closed their borders. This hit refugees particularly hard. “Movement is vital for people who are in flight,” said Filippo Grandi, the head of UNHCR. “They save their lives, by running.”
The virus knows no borders; it is the ultimate globalist. Covid-19 put an end to the idea that the 19th-century European nation state is the political arrangement we should all aspire to. The nation state is an outdated concept, and ill serves the present emergency. The rich countries have frozen immigration. But when people can’t move, they also can’t earn. Global remittances – money sent back to their families by people working abroad – which amount to four times all the foreign aid given by the rich countries to the poor ones – have gone down two years in a row. Poor countries will be poorer.
Continue reading...