Climate Change, features and articles | Educational Science

May 31, 2021

Climate 'tipping points' could push us past the point-of-no-return after less than 2 degrees of warming

As climate change continues to heat the planet, ice sheets and ocean currents could destabilize each other, leading to a climate domino effect impacting 40% of the world’s population, according to new research. And these effects could be seen at way lower temperatures than previously thought. Scientists ran 3 million...

May 31, 2021

A dangerous 'Omega block' is trapping scorching hot air over the US and Canada

The Northwestern United States and Pacific Canada are in the grips of a heat wave that the National Weather Service called historic and dangerous in a bulletin on Sunday (June 27). A weather anomaly called a heat dome is partially to blame. In the last few days, multiple cities across...

Feb 25, 2022

Ukrainian scientists leave international climate report committee, amid safety fears

As Russian military forces invade Ukraine and bomb the capital Kyiv and other cities, Ukraine's leading climate experts have withdrawn from an international scientific committee — just as the group is finalizing their approval of a landmark report on global climate change. Climate experts from nations around the world have...

Feb 28, 2022

Humanity faces 'grave and mounting threat' of climate change — unless we act, IPCC report reveals

From food insecurity to our physical and mental health, the impact of climate change is affecting people around the world, and the window is rapidly closing for us to prevent catastrophic and irreversible consequences, according to a new report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which evaluates climate...

Mar 8, 2022

Amazon nears 'tipping point' where rainforest could transform into savanna

If deforestation continues, the Amazon rainforest could reach a critical tipping point where most of it transforms into a dry savanna, a new study warns. The study, published Monday (March 7) in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that more than 75% of the rainforest has steadily lost resilience since...

Mar 25, 2022

In global climate strike, youth demand action worldwide

On Friday (March 25), tens of thousands of young people across the world mobilized for a global climate strike, demanding that world leaders take action to curb the environmental abuses driving catastrophic climate change. Local activists collaborated with the youth-organized grassroots movement Fridays for Future (FFF) to organize the demonstrations,...

Mar 27, 2022

What countries and cities will disappear due to rising sea levels?

Sea levels are rising rapidly. The rate at which they are rising has more than doubled, from 0.06 inch (1.4 millimeters) annually throughout most of the 20th century to 0.14 inch (3.6 millimeters) per year from 2006 to 2015, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA predicts...

Mar 28, 2022

What is climate change, and how is it affecting Earth?

Climate change is any long-term alteration in average weather patterns, either globally or regionally. Climate change has occurred many times in Earth's history, and for many different reasons. The changes in global temperature and weather patterns seen today, however, are caused by human activity. And they're happening much faster than...

Apr 4, 2022

It's 'now or never' to stop climate disaster, UN scientists say

The time is now or never to limit catastrophic temperature rises and climate breakdown, UN scientists have said in a final warning to governments. Rapid, deep and immediate cuts to global carbon dioxide emissions, which need to begin declining by 2025 and halve by 2030, must be made immediately across...

Apr 29, 2022

Humanity locked in a 'spiral of self-destruction' unless we change our perception of risk, UN says

Humanity's faulty perception of risk has set us on a spiral of self-destruction, a new United Nations report claims. The report's authors also suggest our future will involve an onslaught of daily disasters by 2030. The UN's Global Assessment Report, published April 26, highlights some of the doom in store...

May 25, 2022

Physicists predict Earth will become a chaotic world, with dire consequences

Humans aren't just making Earth warmer, they are making the climate chaotic, a stark new study suggests. The new research, which was posted April 21 to the preprint database arXiv, draws a broad and general picture of the full potential impact of human activity on the climate. And the picture...

May 30, 2022

Is climate change making the weather worse?

United Nations climate scientists say it's now or never to stop catastrophic temperature rises and a breakdown of the climate systems on which our way of life depends. Reports of bomb-like blizzards and searing droughts paint a terrifying picture of the possible reality of climate change. But are we actually...

Jun 6, 2022

Siberian tundra could vanish in less than 500 years

The Siberian tundra could disappear by the year 2500, unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced. Even in the best-case scenarios, two-thirds of this landscape — defined by its short growing season and cover of grasses, moss, shrubs and lichens — could vanish, leaving behind two fragments separated by 1,553...

Jun 30, 2022

Never-before-seen microbes locked in glacier ice could spark a wave of new pandemics if released

Stunned scientists have uncovered more than 900 never-before-seen species of microbes living inside glaciers on the Tibetan Plateau. Analysis of the microbes' genomes revealed that some have the potential to spawn new pandemics, if rapid melting caused by climate change releases them from their icy prisons. In a new study,...

Jun 30, 2022

Supreme Court cripples the US government's power to fight climate change

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday (June 30) severely limited the federal government's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, in a 6-3 ruling split between the court's conservative majority and liberal minority. Ruling on the case, called West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the court's six conservative justices...