Climate change is widely expected to disrupt future fire patterns around the world, with some regions, such as the western United States, seeing more frequent fires within the next 30 years, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with an international team of scientists. By the…
The final round of negotiations leading up to next week’s Rio+20 summit begins with countries very much at odds on key issues. The draft agreement would improve energy, water and food security in poorer countries, phase out fossil fuel subsidies and boost ocean protection. But with three days of negotiations left, only 20% has been…
Ozone-depleting gases from an eruption in a volcanically active region of Central America could thin Earth’s ozone layer for several years, scientists say. Current levels of the chemicals bromine and chlorine in the stratosphere – where ozone protects life on Earth from harmful ultraviolet radiation – could double or even triple with an eruption, German…
UK researchers have developed a porous material that can preferentially soak up CO2 from the atmosphere. NOTT-202 is a “metal-organic framework” that works like a sponge, absorbing a number of gases at high pressures. But as the pressure is reduced, CO2 is retained as other gases are released. The development, reported in Nature Materials, holds…
Natural fluctuations alone do not explain warming in the upper layers of the planet’s oceans, confirms a new computer modeling study. The ingredient necessary to fully account for rising water temperatures in the last 50 years? Humans’ greenhouse gas emissions. While attributing global warming to humans is hardly a new conclusion, this study adds to…
A climate time machine has been erected in Australia. The contraption, comprised of several nine-story-tall frames with pipes that pump carbon dioxide into the air surrounding a forest, is part of an experiment to measure the effect of carbon dioxide on real woodlands — and get a glimpse of the future. The four-acre project, called…
There is an understandable tendency to put problems of the ‘global commons’— climate change or biodiversity loss, for instance — in the hands of intergovernmental institutions. However, thus far these bodies have failed miserably. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), born at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 20 years…
The latest draft text that 180 governments are expected to sign up to at the end of the Rio+20 Earth summit has been leaked to the Guardian. According to the UN, only about 20% of the wording has been agreed, so with just three days formal negotiating time before world leaders arrive in Brazil, and…
NASA scientists say they’ve made a discovery in the Arctic Ocean ‘as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert’. When its Icescape expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice, the team found waters richer in the microscopic marine plants known as phytoplankton than any other ocean region on Earth….
About 12 million years ago, Earth wasn’t sensitive to carbon dioxide ups and downs. But like seasonal allergies that develop when one gets older, the planet’s climate has started responding to changing CO2 concentrations relatively recently, according to new findings from paleoclimate researchers. The prevailing understanding in climate science is that there’s been a persistent…