Environment

For the second straight year, the world heads into fall and winter with a La Nina weather event. This would tend to dry out parts of an already parched and fiery American West and boost an already busy Atlantic hurricane season.... Read more

The widespread flooding that submerged parts of the province's most densely populated regions in 2017 and 2019 exposed important gaps in Quebec's flood preparedness regime. With thousands of people displaced and hundreds of millions of dollars worth of damages incurred, the disasters spurred urgent re-investment in the aging system.... Read more

The red flags came early.... Read more

Hydropower is the dominant source of energy in the Amazon region, the world's largest river basin and a hotspot for future hydropower development. However, a new Global Environmental Change study warns that in the coming decades, climate change-driven reductions in precipitation and river discharge will diminish the Amazon's hydropower capacity.... Read more

The Southern Ocean's role in driving the global carbon cycle may be stronger than expected as the biological carbon pump is not "switched off" in winter as previously thought.... Read more

A new study documents the formation of a 3,000-square-kilometer rift in the oldest and thickest Arctic ice. The area of open water, called a polynya, is the first to be identified in an area north of Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost island, and is another sign of the rapid changes taking... Read more

An extensive field study into air quality along a road lined with buildings has confirmed that hedges can help mitigate traffic-related pollution up to 1.7m, reducing the pollutants breathed by pedestrians, young children and cyclists.... Read more

Respected Dutch climate scientist Geert Jan van Oldenborgh, co-founder of a group that rapidly analyzes the possible effects of climate change on extreme weather events, has died at age 59, the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute said Thursday.... Read more

It is a common perception that waters close to population would be more polluted than those offshore or at higher latitudes.  However, researchers from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) found that the ratio between two common microalgae diatom and dinoflagellate (dino) – a common benchmark of... Read more

Replacing petroleum-based aviation fuel with sustainable aviation fuel derived from a type of mustard plant can reduce carbon emissions by up to 68%, according to new research from University of Georgia scientist Puneet Dwivedi.... Read more

The investor Warren Buffett once remarked that "only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked". For the plastics recycling industry, the pandemic was a bit like the tide going out, exposing its deep-rooted structural problems.... Read more

Today's global energy inequities are staggering.... Read more

A French court on Thursday ordered the government to make up for its failure to meet its own greenhouse gas reduction targets, saying it needed to "repair" the emissions overshoots.... Read more

As the earth's climate warms, residents of affluent nations will find some relief with air conditioning, but people in lower-income countries may have to pay vastly more for electricity or do without cooling, says a new study co-authored at the University of California, Berkeley.... Read more

Measures to tackle climate change could significantly benefit human health in the next few years, as well as in the long-term, says a new report from the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Royal Society, released today [Thursday 14 October].... Read more