With 2024 coming to a close as the hottest year on record, the year caps off what United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called a decade of deadly heat. “The top 10 hottest years on record have happened in the last 10 years, including 2024. This is climate breakdown in real time,” Mr Guterres said in his new year […]
Climate change created an extra six weeks of dangerous heat for the average person in 2024, and fuelled more prolonged heatwaves in most of the Middle East, scientists revealed on Friday. People typically endured 41 more days of extreme heat than they could expect in a world without global warming, according to calculations by researchers at […]
Our cities are polluted and overcrowded – but planting trees in urban spaces can increase biodiversity and create wildlife habitats for the future. Between busy streets, parks and shopping centres, a green transformation is quietly underway, bringing nature back to the urban sprawl of cities. Micro-forests, small areas of densely planted woodland trees, are being […]
Artificial light can wake sleeping fish and attract predators, changing nighttime coral reef communities, according to new research using novel underwater infrared cameras. The study, published today in Global Change Biology, was conducted by an international team of scientists from the UK, France, French Polynesia and Chile and the first large-scale experiment to investigate the impact of […]
A study co-led by Professor Moriaki YASUHARA and Ms Raine CHONG from the School of Biological Sciences, the Swire Institute of Marine Science, and the Institute for Climate and Carbon Neutrality at The University ofHong Kong (HKU), as well as Dr May HUANG from Department of Geosciences of Princeton University, has shed light on how […]
The carbon emissions of large companies are to be tracked and monitored in a key initiative being introduced by the Abu Dhabi Environment Agency (EAD). The international standard carbon Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) programme will require all centres that produce large amounts of carbon emissions to submit reports on an annual basis from 2026. To […]
Scientists have a new method for studying faults that could improve earthquake forecasts, shedding light on where quakes start, how they spread, and where the biggest impacts might be. A paper in the journal Geology describes the method, which helps determine the origins and directions of past earthquake ruptures — information valuable to modeling future earthquake scenarios […]
A recent study joins a growing body of evidence that climate influences seismic activity. Three days ago, a violent magnitude 7.3 quake struck just offshore from the Pacific nation of Vanuatu’s most populous island. Damage was concentrated in the capital Port Vila’s downtown area, and the official figure of 10 confirmed deaths and more than […]
It’s well established that urban tree cover provides numerous environmental and psychological benefits to city dwellers. Urban trees may also bolster education outcomes and their loss could disproportionately affect students from low-income families, according to new research by University of Utah social scientists. Economics professor Alberto Garcia looked at changes in school attendance and standardized […]
Environmental damage will cost the world economy up to $25 trillion a year in the decades to come and threaten the health of billions, unless governments address its effects on biodiversity and food production, according to a UN-backed report published on Tuesday. The Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), describes its document as the “most ambitious […]
