- By Paul Brown
Powerful message to Europe’s politicians that building low-carbon cars and vans is the way to create a million jobs, boost the economy ? and improve air quality
- By Tim Radford
Clear and compelling evidence shows that winter snows vital for tourism and agriculture are in rapid decline in Southern California.
- By Alex Kirby
Sea-level rise may be slow to show its hand but once it really starts, researchers say, it will keep going for centuries, with baleful effects. For each degree by which the Earth warms, they believe, sea levels will probably rise by over two metres.
- By Tim Radford
New research shows that glaciologists still cannot say for certain whether the Earth’s north and south polar ice is melting faster as the years pass.
- By Tim Radford
The forensic search for the mysterious agent that almost melted Greenland goes on. The latest suspect to be rounded up for questioning is the jet stream, according to scientists in Sheffield, in the UK.
- By Tim Radford
Ocean acidification will make coral skeletons more feeble and coral reefs more vulnerable to battering by the seas – but it may not kill the corals, according to new research from the University of California, Santa Cruz.Two important habitats for marine life, coral reefs and eelgrass meadows, will survive climate change but it will make them vulnerable.
- By Tim Radford
The bad habits of the locals have been blamed for the decline of Lake Chad in Africa but it was pollution from people far away that caused rain patterns to shift.
- By Paul Brown
The British government’s promise not to subsidise new nuclear power stations in the UK looks set to torpedo its own stated energy policy which is to build a range of new reactors to keep the lights on.
- By Tim Radford
On both sides of the Atlantic scientists studying lakes have discovered they are warming – and this is bad news both for water quality and the fish. The Alpine lakes of Austria are warming up. By 2050, their surface waters could be up to 3°C warmer, according to new research in the journal Hydrobiologia.
- By Tim Radford
Some parts of the world face frequent catastrophic floods by the end of this century while other regions could get less hazardous.
- By Tim Radford
Work by 100 scientists over five years reveal that more than half the species studied are in danger because of a warming planet.
- By Paul Brown
One of the great stumbling blocks of climate talks in the last 15 years has been that America refuses to move to cut emissions of greenhouse gases until China does – but at the weekend leaders of the world’s two great polluters reached agreement to phase out one of the most potent of them hydrofluorocarbons (HCFs).
- By Paul Brown
One of Africa’s most distinguished scientists insists that in a warming climate the world needs to adopt genetically modified crops on a massive scale in order to feed the planet’s growing population.
- By Paul Brown
Over 40 years cloud cover has been steadily falling in Spain providing more sunshine but that is a threat as well as a bonus.
- By Tim Radford
The good news is that some coral can recover from periodic warming of the oceans: the bad news is it might take too long.
- By Paul Brown
A vast area of Canada, from southern forests to the Arctic Sea is administered by a weak government, but is threatened by warming and a rush to exploit precious minerals.
- By Kieran Cooke
There’s strong evidence that with rising temperatures and reductions in ice cover, the Arctic is seeing a spike in the rate of various diseases.
- By Tim Radford
Estimating how alterations in rainfall patterns will affect tree growth in different regions is a puzzling business. Nobody knows for certain what climate change will bring but on the basis of the latest research by plant ecologists, one thing has been established: there will be surprises.
- By Paul Brown
Forecasting is still difficult but it looks like the world will become a more stormy place in the years ahead. More intense thunderstorms combined with damaging winds are expected to occur because of climate change, according to speakers at the seventh European Conference on Severe Storms being held in Helsinki, Finland.
- By Tim Radford
New study predicts a big jump in foliage growth in arid regions as carbon dioxide levels increase.Australian scientists have solved one piece of the climate puzzle. They have confirmed the long-debated fertilization effect.
- By Tim Radford
That jet-propelled cephalopod of the seas, the squid, could be in for a hard time. As atmospheric carbon dioxide levels rise, so the oceans become more acid, and this is not good news for one of the most important animals of the ocean ecosystem.
- By Kieran Cooke
Indications the rate of warming in oceans is greater than previously thought. Now scientists are using data collected during the Challenger’s four year expedition to try to understand the heat content of the oceans.
- By Alex Kirby
Leading climate scientist highlights the importance of regional data in understanding the effects of global climate change.