Climate Change, features and articles | Educational Science

May 17, 2023

Global warming will likely cross dangerous 1.5 C threshold within 5 years, UN report warns

Unprecedented global temperature rises will likely see the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.6 degrees Fahrenheit) threshold breached at some point in the next five years, a United Nations (U.N.) report predicts. The U.N.'s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) gave the stark warning in its latest annual assessment. According to the...

May 21, 2023

New York City may be sinking under its own weight because the buildings are too heavy, scientists warn

The combined weight of New York City's buildings may be causing the metropolis to sink, researchers have said. However, there may be other reasons why the city is sinking — including the way the earth continues to shift after the end of the last ice age more than 10,000 years...

May 26, 2023

Over half of the world's largest lakes and reservoirs are losing water

Over half of the world’s largest lakes and reservoirs now hold less water than they did three decades ago — and a warming climate and human water consumption are largely to blame, researchers have found. Lakes and reservoirs store 87% of the liquid fresh water on Earth’s surface. But new...

Jun 23, 2023

Watch the world choke on CO2 in eerie NASA videos of manmade emissions

Earth is being choked by a thick, curling fog of carbon dioxide that coats the planet as the months go by, a series of NASA videos shows. The newly released animations visualize the astonishing scale of human carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over a year by coloring the invisible greenhouse gas....

Jun 26, 2023

Climate change causes a mountain peak frozen for thousands of years to collapse

Part of a Swiss mountain's summit has collapsed, sending more than 3.5 million cubic feet (100,000 cubic meters) of rock crashing into the valley below. The incident was likely a result of thawing permafrost — and scientists have warned similar events are to be expected as climate change causes ancient...

Jul 3, 2023

Catastrophic climate 'doom loops' could start in just 15 years, new study warns

Earth's ecosystems may be careering toward collapse much sooner than scientists thought, a new study of our planet's warming climate has warned. According to the research, more than a fifth of the world's potentially catastrophic tipping points — such as the melting of the Arctic permafrost, the collapse of the...

Jul 6, 2023

Global temperatures have been the hottest on record for 3 days in a row

For the past three days, from Monday through Wednesday (July 3-5), global temperatures have either broken or matched records for the hottest day on Earth since at least 1979, according to the University of Maine's Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that compiles data and models to measure the global atmosphere. Monday's...

Aug 25, 2023

Did the Tonga eruption cause this year's extreme heat?

The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption in January 2022 was one of the biggest volcanic eruptions in recorded history. Detonating underwater with the force of 100 Hiroshima bombs, the blast sent millions of tons of water vapor high into the atmosphere. Some commentators have speculated in recent weeks that the volcano...

Sep 7, 2023

This was the hottest summer ever recorded on Earth

Earth just had its hottest summer in recorded history, data released Wednesday (Sept. 6) by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reveals. June to August 2023 were the hottest months ever and are yet another sign that climate change is happening. Global sea surface temperatures broke new records each consecutive month,...

Oct 30, 2023

The 'safe' threshold for global warming will be passed in just 6 years, scientists say

Global carbon emissions are on track to exceed safe limits by 2030 and unleash the worst effects of climate change, new research suggests. This means we have just six years to change course and dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A new estimate of our remaining carbon budget — the amount...

Nov 12, 2023

Which islands will become uninhabitable due to climate change first?

About a million people live in coral atolls like those in the Maldives, Tuvalu, Kiribati, and the Marshall Islands. These islands are just a few feet in elevation, making them some of the places most at-risk from the rising seas that will result from climate change. Five uninhabited islands in...

Nov 14, 2023

Michael Mann: Yes, we can still stop the worst effects of climate change. Here's why.

Last June, I came across a news piece claiming that scientists failed for decades to communicate [climate risks] to policymakers and the public. However, the story had mischaracterized a scientific review article about communicating unlikely but important climate consequences in the presence of deep uncertainty. But what bothered me most...

Dec 4, 2023

Breach of key global warming threshold 'inevitable' as carbon emissions hit record high

Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have risen to yet another record high in 2023, leading scientists to warn that it now appears inevitable that global warming will exceed the dangerous threshold of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial levels. Humanity released 40.6 billion tons (36.8 billion metric...

Dec 7, 2023

Experts are certain 2023 will be 'the warmest year in recorded history'

Before the year has even come to a close, climate experts are certain that 2023 will be the hottest year in recorded history. And while several factors are impacting this year's record heat, researchers say human-caused climate change is overwhelmingly responsible. On Dec. 6, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S)...

Jan 5, 2024

Satellite images reveal just how much cities on the US East Coast are sinking

Images collected by numerous satellites have shown that major cities and population centers across the U.S. East Coast are sinking. Land sinking, or subsidence, as seen by these satellites, is dangerous because it can undermine the foundations of buildings, potentially causing collapse. It can also damaging roads as well as...