Climate change sparks regional mental health fears

A Sunshine Coast environmental expert is warning climate change could become a major cause of mental health problems in regional communities. A health congress in Brisbane has heard climate change could help spread diseases like dengue fever, increase heat stress and reduce clean water supplies.
8 July ABC News online article

Do believe the hype on climate change

When it comes to the science of climate change - if it reads like a disaster novel, then it really is that bad.
7 July Guardian opinion

Spain and Brazil top BBC climate change concern list

Spain and Brazil are the countries most concerned about climate change, according to new research from BBC World News and Synovate. It has also found that the US has shown the biggest growth in levels over the past year. The report shows that 88% of respondents in Spain and 86% of respondents in Brazil are concerned about climate change, while 80% of respondents in the US say they are worried about the environment, up from 57% last year.
7 July BBC article through Marketing Week

Religion's role in the climate debate

It is the duty of the religious, scientific and political communities to persuade a cynical public that global warming is a very real threat.
6 July Guardian opinion

Why Canada is the best haven from climate change

A group of islands with the potential to develop into a tourist paradise has been named as the country least equipped to withstand the effects of climate change. At the other end of the scale, Canada is the best place to move to if you want to be a climate change survivor in the decades ahead (although Britain is also a good place to be as a warming atmosphere takes hold).
4 July The Independent article

Merger of US earth sciences agencies proposed

From climate change to volcanoes and earthquakes, the world's growing challenges have leaders in earth science proposing a merger of agencies that study the planet. Creation of a new Earth Systems Science Agency is urged in the journal Science, by merging the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the US Geological Survey.
3 July Associated Press article through Yahoo News
4 July Science 321, 44-45 abstract

South Asia climate 'crisis' talks due

Environment ministers from the South Asian regional grouping, Saarc, have gathered in Bangladesh to discuss a plan to tackle climate change. Experts say millions of people in the region could be at risk from rising seas, melting glaciers, floods, droughts and cyclone.
3 July BBC News article

Poll shows climate change is no longer just a middle-class issue

A poll in The Guardian shows that public concern about climate change has reached a critical mass and now includes the less well-off
2 July Guardian opinion

Condemned to single-sex life by climate change

Rising temperatures look set to produce male-only offspring in the tuatara, condemning the ancient reptile species to extinction by 2085, computer modelling predicts.
2 July Environmental News Network article

North Pole may have ice-free period this summer: US expert

There could be a brief time this summer when there is no ice on the North Pole, a US scientist said, blaming global warming that has melted the Arctic ice sheet over decades. "We could have no ice at the North Pole at the end of this summer," National Snow and Ice Data Centre scientist Mark Serreze said.
28 June ABC News online article
27 June CNN article

Global warming causing plant migration in Europe: study

Global warming has caused numerous European plant species to migrate to higher elevations over the decades, according to new research. The research appears in the June 27 edition of the journal Science, and has potentially "important ecological and evolutionary consequences," the study's authors wrote. A team of international scientists working in mountainous regions of Western Europe compared the natural elevation range of 171 forest plant species between 1905 and 1985, and again between 1986 and 2005.
27 June AFP article
26 June Guardian article
27 June Science 320, 1768-1771 abstract

Tropical oceans expose riddle over global-warming equation

A probe into levels of an important greenhouse gas above the tropical Atlantic has challenged assumptions about key sources of global warming, scientists said. Researchers found that natural chemicals in the atmosphere west of equatorial Africa destroyed 50 percent more ozone in that region than expected. This process also reduced concentrations of methane, another powerful greenhouse gas.
25 June AFP article through Yahoo News
26 June ScienceDaily article

Extreme weather events can unleash infectious diseases: study

An international research team has found the first clear example of how climate extremes, such as the increased frequency of droughts and floods expected with global warming, can create conditions in which diseases that are tolerated individually may converge and cause mass die-offs of livestock or wildlife.
25 June ScienceDaily article

Climate change to create "plant refugees"

Climate change may turn many of California's native plants into "plant refugees" in the next century as they seek more suitable habitats, US researchers said. "Many species may have to move to cooler areas in order to survive," climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University said in a statement.
25 June Reuters article
25 June ScienceDaily article

Uganda: Water crisis - change in climate cited

Change in climate is one of the major barriers to safe water provision in the country, the water and environment minister has said. Maria Mutagamba cited areas lying along the cattle corridor as the most affected by the water crisis. The minister made the remarks while opening the African Water Facility regional project implementation training at the Imperial Royale Hotel in Kampala.
24 June New Vision Kampala article through allAfrica.com

Will climate change war cry fall on deaf ears?

You could hardly move for VIPs at the Global Humanitarian Forum meeting on "the human face of climate change" in Geneva. The participants range from wealthy businessmen like Richard Branson to the president of the Maldives and the heads of practically every U.N. agency going.But the stars of the show so far have been a group of youngsters who gave powerful testimonies about the impact of climate change on their own lives and their communities. Their stories are the reason why 300 or so eminent people have gathered in Switzerland for a rather swish two-day brainstorm in an air-conditioned luxury hotel.
25 June Reuters article
25 June AFP article
24 June China View article

Climate change will have destabilising consequences, intelligence agencies warn

US intelligence agencies usually work hard to stay outside the political fray, but they waded firmly into the debate over climate change by producing an unsettling assessment of the national security implications of changing weather patterns.
25 June US News & World Report article
25 June AFP article
25 June Reuters article

Oxygen-starved oceans rapidly dying

The world's coastal oceans are in crisis, with oxygen-starved ''dead zones'' increasing by a third in just two years as global temperatures increase with climate change, according to the International Whaling Commission's latest scientific report. Dead zones, caused by over-enrichment of waters by nutrients from run-off, sewerage and warming waters, represent ''the worst-case scenario for coastal biodiversity'' and are the ''severest form'' of ocean habitat degradation, the report says.
25 June The Canberra Times article

Reducing impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands and coral reefs

The US Environmental Protection Agency has released a report that can help reduce the potential impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other sensitive ecosystems. The report, entitled Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and Resources, identifies strategies to protect the environment as these changes occur.
24 June ScienceDaily article

NASA launches ocean satellite to keep a weather, climate eye open

A new NASA-French space agency oceanography satellite launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., on a globe-circling voyage to continue charting sea level, a vital indicator of global climate change. The mission will return a vast amount of new data that will improve weather, climate and ocean forecasts.
23 June ScienceDaily article

Years later, climatologist renews his call for action

Twenty years ago, James E. Hansen, a climate scientist at NASA, shook Washington and the world by telling a sweating crowd at a Senate hearing during a stifling heat wave that he was “99 percent” certain that humans were already warming the climate.
23 June The New York Times article
24 June CNN.com article

Ice core reveals how quickly climate can change

Weather patterns can permanently shift in as little as a year, according to the records preserved in an ice core from Greenland
23 June Scientific American article
19 June Reuters article

Birds migrate earlier, but some may be left behind as climate warms rapidly

Many birds are arriving earlier each spring as temperatures warm along the East Coast of the United States. However, the farther those birds journey, the less likely they are to keep pace with the rapidly changing climate.
22 June ScienceDaily article

Tibet prepares plan to fight environmental hazards

Tibet is planning an "ecological security" plan to counter threats from global warming and rapid development to glaciers and grasslands on the roof of the world, its top environmental official said. Tibet, which made headlines for recent unrest over Chinese control, is faced with environmental strains on the vast highlands that span the region and much of neighboring Qinghai province.
22 June Reuters article

Global warming: is it a scenario too scary to think about?

To Patricia Kremer, climate change is a runaway train carrying Earth toward a forbidding future. ”Just stop the train,” said Kremer, a retiring marine scientist who has witnessed the effects during her studies of the ocean's environments for 30 years. She and her husband, James, who is also about to retire from a career as a marine scientist and professor, work at the University of Connecticut's Avery Point campus. She is not alone in thinking this. United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon says that whether you call it climate change, global warming or climate disruption, it's “the defining challenge of our age.”
22 June TheDay.com article

Poll: Most Britons doubt cause of climate change

The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer. The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which found a 90 per cent chance that humans were the main cause of climate change and warned that drastic action was needed to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
22 June Guardian article

Global warming to spark increase in US wildfires

Today much of the north-western US wilderness is already a tinderbox, but thanks to global warming, wildfires will be scorching even more land every year by the end of the century.
21 June New Scientist article

Climate change 'could wipe out whales'

Climate change could help do to whale populations what commercial whaling has not - wipe out an entire species. Humpback, southern right and minke whale populations could be damaged by a lack of food caused by a change in sea temperatures, according to researchers from the Federal Environment Department.
19 June news.com.au article

20-year intense downpours to occur every 6 years

As President Bush toured the Midwest flood zones, a new administration report on extreme weather warns that human-induced climate change is making heavy downpours more intense, with storms that used to occur every 20 years projected to occur every six by the end of the century.
19 June ABC News article
19 June US Climate Change Science Program report

Ocean warming on the rise

Increased scientific confidence that ocean observations are accurately reflecting rising global temperatures is central to new Australian research published in the journal, Nature. The team of Australian and US climate researchers found the world’s oceans warmed and rose at a rate 50 per cent faster in the last four decades of the 20th century than documented in the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (IPCC AR4).
19 June CSIRO media release
18 June Telegraph article
19 June Nature, 453, 1090-1093, abstract

As sea turtles disappear, scientists ponder climate change

The Yucatan Peninsula, home to the largest hawksbill nesting population in the Atlantic, is witnessing a dramatic drop in the nesting population of the hawksbill sea turtle, one of the rarest marine turtles in the world. For unknown reasons, only about one-third of the nests will be laid by the endangered sea creature this year compared to the numbers a decade ago. Almost two decades of conservation efforts – which began in earnest in 1989 after Hurricane Gilbert, the strongest hurricane on record in the area – are now confronting a series of puzzling challenges that suggest the emergence of global warming as a principal factor in declining sea turtle populations.
18 June New America Media article

New 'lookouts' for climate change

Corries high in the Scottish mountains are to become "lookout posts" in an effort to better monitor the effects of climate change. Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) is leading the Snowbed Project which will attempt to uncover evidence of warming temperatures on fauna and flora. Corries are large circular, hollow depressions on a mountainside. Climate change models predict a decrease in the amount of snow on the mountains into the summer.
18 June BBC News Online article

UN warns of growth in climate change refugees

Climate change is forcing growing numbers of people in the developing world to flee their homes and seek refuge abroad, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees warned. Announcing findings that the number of refugees worldwide had risen steeply for the second year running, António Guterres said that environmental degradation induced by climate change was forcing greater displacement as resources became increasingly scarce.
17 June Times Online article
18 June ABC News online article

Climate change threatens 4,000 species of fish, corals

Beautiful coral reefs are increasingly under threat from climate change, and so are 4,000 species of fish, critically dependent on them for food, shelter or reproduction, warns a study. It blames global warming for the latest threat to marine biodiversity. Already many corals have died because of warmer waters associated with climate change.
17 June NDTV.com article

The good news about global warming

File under necessity, invention: the Lilypad, Vincent Callebaut Architectures' concept for off-shore cities, to be used when rising sea levels have obliterated coastlines around the globe. Modeled after an Amazonian, er, lily pad, the Parisian firm's stunning design includes space for 50,000 people each, and revolves around a central lagoon, which collects and purifies rainwater, and serves as ballast for the structure.
16 June men.style.com article

Alaska salmon may bear scars of global warming

With a sickening thud, another hefty and handsome salmon lands in the waste barrel, headed for the dogs. "See, it's all of the biggest, best-looking fish," said Pat Moore, waving a stogie at the pile of discards. "It breaks my heart. My dogs cannot eat all that. The maggots will get them first." More Alaskan salmon caught here end up in the dog pot these days, their orange-pink flesh fouled by disease that scientists have correlated with warmer water in the Yukon River.
15 June Los Angeles Times article

Even the Antarctic winter cannot protect Wilkins Ice Shelf

Wilkins Ice Shelf has experienced further break-up with an area of about 160 km² breaking off from 30 May to 31 May 2008. ESA’s Envisat satellite captured the event – the first ever-documented episode to occur in winter.
14 June ScienceDaily article

Southern collaboration 'key to adaptation' says climate scientist

Adapting to climate change — unlike mitigating it — will succeed in developing countries only by sharing local understanding and knowledge with other low-income nations. These were the words of a leading climate scientist speaking at a Commonwealth Foundation briefing on climate change and health in London, United Kingdom.
13 June SciDev.net article

Computer models show major climate shift as a result of closing ozone hole

A new study led by Columbia University researchers has found that the closing of the ozone hole, which is projected to occur sometime in the second half of the 21st century, may significantly affect climate change in the Southern Hemisphere, and therefore, the global climate.
13 June ScienceDaily article
13 June Science 320, 1486-1489, abstract

More disease outbreaks in Europe with climate change: experts

Europe could face an increase in outbreaks of diseases carried by insects and rodents as the climate on the continent becomes hotter and wetter, EU health experts said. "These diseases are closely linked to climate change ... We need to address this risk," Renaud Lancelot of the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD) told reporters in Stockholm.
13 June AFP article

Freshwater runoff from Greenland ice sheet will more than double by end of century

The Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster than previously calculated according to a scientific paper by University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher Sebastian H. Mernild published in the journal Hydrological Processes. The study is based on the results of state-of-the-art modeling using data from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as satellite images and observations from on the ground in Greenland.
12 June ScienceDaily article

Has global warming research misinterpreted cloud behaviour?

Climate experts agree that the seriousness of manmade global warming depends greatly upon how clouds in the climate system respond to the small warming tendency from the extra carbon dioxide mankind produces.
12 June ScienceDaily article

Permafrost threatened by rapid retreat of Arctic sea ice: study

The rate of climate warming over northern Alaska, Canada, and Russia could more than triple during periods of rapid sea ice loss, according to a new study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The findings raise concerns about the thawing of permafrost, or permanently frozen soil, and the potential consequences for sensitive ecosystems, human infrastructure, and the release of additional greenhouse gases.
11 June ScienceDaily article

Changing global environment under the lens in new UN photo exhibition

From the glaciers of Antarctica to the dry river beds of Sudan’s Darfur region to the devastation wrought by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the world’s changing environment is being documented by photographers at a new exhibition at United Nations Headquarters in New York.
11 June UN News Centre article

Africa most vulnerable to global warming effects, UN says

Africa produces a tiny fraction of the world's greenhouse gases but is particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming, UN environmental experts said at a conference of African environment ministers. Some of those present had harsh words for the developed world, in particular the United States, the largest producer of greenhouse gases. They said industrialized nations are pressing Africans to reduce gas emissions while not doing enough themselves.
11 June Los Angeles Times article

Africa’s changing environment emerges in new UN atlas

Major changes in Africa’s environmental landscape, from disappearing glaciers in Uganda to the loss of unique vegetation in South Africa, are shown in a new atlas published by the United Nations which uses satellite images taken over the past 35 years.
10 June UN News Centre article
11 June ZEENEWS.COM article
11 June The Independent article

South Africa: Climate change threatening world oceans

The world's oceans are under the constant threat of climate change, with water levels rising resulting in an increase in the acidity of the water. The celebration of World Ocean Day was a sombre reminder of just how volatile the planet is and what must be done to halt climate change.
10 June BuaNews article through allAfrica.com

May 'warmest since records began'

Last month was the warmest May in Scotland since records began in 1914, according to Met Office data. The statistics showed May was also the fourth driest recorded, with just 34% of the usual rain for the month.
10 June BBC News online article

The world's first climate change "refugees"

The 1,500 residents of Carteret Island, an atoll of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, are fast becoming the world's first climate change refugees. Sea levels around the atoll have risen 10cm in the past 20 years, inundating plantations, and the situation is deteriorating, islanders told IRIN, saying they urgently need assistance to be relocated to higher ground.
8 June IRIN article

Nobel winner puts Bollywood spotlight on climate change

The head of the UN's Nobel prizewinning climate panel grabbed Bollywood's spotlight to call for greater efforts to stop climate change, during a star-studded awards weekend for Indian film. Rajendra Pachauri accepted a special global leadership award from the International Indian Film Academy, which will hand out its film honours in Bangkok. He praised the body and the event's host, Indian megastar Amitabh Bachchan, for advocating action against climate change during the weekend gala.
6 June AFP article

Nepal hard hit by climate change

Global warming is causing ‘massive problems’ for Nepal, melting snows and bringing deadly floods despite the Himalayan country's low greenhouse gas output. The towering mountain range that forms Nepal's northern border with Tibet is showing worrying evidence of global warming, Environment Minister Formullah Mansoor said. “Our contribution is very low in the global context, but the effects of global warming on our country are very high and costly,” the minister said.
5 June The Times of India article

"Spiderman" sparks copycat with NY skyscraper climb

The man known as the French "Spiderman" climbed The New York Times building to draw attention to global warming, and six hours later another climber made an apparent copycat ascent. Alain Robert, 45, the first person to scale the 52-story skyscraper, told reporters ahead of the ascent on UN World Environment Day his aim was "to raise awareness of global warming since this is one of the main problems for our time."
5 June Reuters article

Sahel in the front line in fight against climate change

West Africa's Sahel region is "humanity's front line in the fight against climate change" and industrialised countries have a moral obligation to help the region cope, a UN special advisor said. Jan Egeland, the special advisor to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon on conflict and climate change, told AFP in a telephone conversation from Mali. "There is a moral responsibility for those industrial countries that caused climate change to help countries in the Sahel that did nothing to cause it" he said.
5 June AFP article 

Kiribati likely doomed by climate change

The president of the low-lying Pacific atoll nation of Kiribati said that his country may already be doomed because of climate change. President Anote Tong said communities had already been resettled and crops destroyed by seawater in some parts of the country, made up of 33 coral atolls straddling the equator.
5 June AFP article through Yahoo News
6 June The Independent article

World Environment Day calls for end to carbon addiction

The United Nations urged the world to kick an all-consuming addiction to carbon dioxide and said everyone must take steps to fight climate change. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said global warming was becoming the defining issue of the era and will hurt rich and poor alike. "Our world is in the grip of a dangerous carbon habit," Ban said in a statement to mark World Environment Day, which is being marked by events around the globe and hosted by the New Zealand city of Wellington.
4 June Reuters article

South Africa: Midrand threatened by climate change

Midrand is one of the areas under threat by uncontrolled climate change due to its development on wetlands, said City of Johannesburg's MMC for Environmental Management, Prema Naidoo. This he said was because a portion of Midrand was built on wetlands, which act as a sponge in the event of an extended period of wet weather.
2 June BuaNews article

A captivating remedy

A crude division can be made between two sets of people who both want to fight climate change. One seeks a fundamental reconstruction of the way humans live, a sustainable revolution that would change many aspects of modern society. The other has smaller ambitions, hoping technology will provide a specific solution to climatic threats, leaving the rest of life intact.
2 June The Guardian opinion

Reef madness

Silently and steadily, a tragedy is unfolding beneath the ocean's waves: Coral reefs around the world are disappearing. According to some projections, there may be few, if any, left by the end of the century. This dire and credible prediction has shocked many marine scientists, who had not realized how close to the tipping point coral reefs are. The news is especially disheartening because 2008 is the International Year of the Reef. The culprit here is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is responsible for global warming and that also is turning our oceans into an acid bath.
1 June Los Angeles Times editorial opinion

Case against climate change discredited by study

A difference in the way British and American ships measured the temperature of the ocean during the 1940s may explain why the world appeared to undergo a period of sudden cooling immediately after the Second World War. Scientists believe they can now explain an anomaly in the global temperature record for the twentieth century, which has been used by climate change sceptics to undermine the link between rising temperatures and increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
29 May The Independent article

New US climate report foresees big changes

The rise in concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activities is influencing climate patterns and vegetation across the United States and will significantly disrupt water supplies, agriculture, forestry and ecosystems for decades, a new federal report says.
28 May The New York Times article
29 May US Climate Change Science Program report

Brazil gets new environment minister

President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva swore in Brazil's new environment minister, delivering a speech that accused rich nations of hypocrisy over the Amazon and global warming. Carlos Minc, the former environment secretary for Rio de Janeiro state and a founder of Brazil's Green Party, replaces rain forest defender Marina Silva as environment minister. Marina Silva resigned on May 13, citing stagnation in promoting the federal environmental agenda.
27 May Associated Press article through Yahoo News

Over 31,000 US scientists deny man-made global warming

In 1998, Dr. Arthur Robinson, Director of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine, posted his first Global Warming skeptic petition on the internet. It quickly attracted the signatures of more than 17,000 Americans who held college degrees in science. Widely known as the Oregon Petition, it became a counter-weight for the "all scientists agree" mantra of the man-man Global Warming crowd. His list now includes nearly 32,000 American man-made warming skeptics with science qualifications.
26 May Enter Stage Right article

Methane rise points to wetlands

Higher atmospheric levels of the greenhouse gas methane noted last year are probably related to emissions from wetlands, especially around the Arctic. Scientists have found indications that extra amounts of the gas in the Arctic region are of biological origin. Global levels of methane had been roughly stable for almost a decade. Rising levels in the Arctic could mean that some of the methane stored away in permafrost is being released, which would have major climatic implications.
23 May BBC News online article

Vast cracks appear in Arctic ice

Dramatic evidence of the break-up of the Arctic ice-cap has emerged from research during an expedition by the Canadian military. Scientists travelling with the troops found major new fractures during an assessment of the state of giant ice shelves in Canada's far north. The team found a network of cracks that stretched for more than 10 miles (16km) on Ward Hunt, the area's largest shelf. The fate of the vast ice blocks is seen as a key indicator of climate change.
23 May BBC News online article

Rising seas to threaten US shore and bay by 2100

Rising sea levels could swamp sections of the Eastern Shore, eat away islands in the Chesapeake Bay and submerge long stretches of Atlantic Ocean beaches by 2100, according to a report released by the National Wildlife Federation. The report says a computer model was used to simulate the effect of a 27.2-inch rise in sea levels triggered by global climate change. It says that kind of a rise was at the upper end of forecasts by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
23 May Washington Post article

Alaska to sue to block polar bear listing

The state of Alaska will sue the US government to stop the listing of the polar bear as a threatened species, arguing the designation will slow development in the state, Gov. Sarah Palin said.
22 May Reuters article

EU report calls for faster climate change curbs

Global temperature rises should be kept well below the European Union's target of 2 degrees Celsius to avoid costly damage to people and their lifestyles, according to a European Parliament report. European consumers must be given better information about the "carbon footprint" of goods they buy, including products imported from outside the 27-nation bloc, it added.
21 May Planet Ark article
21 May European Parliament resolution

New vision of climate change through Google Earth

Millions of Google Earth users around the world will be able to see how climate change could affect the planet and its people over the next century, along with viewing the loss of Antarctic ice shelves over the past 50 years. All this is possible through a new project “Climate Change in Our World,” launched as collaboration between Google, the U.K. government, the Met Office Hadley Centre and the British Antarctic Survey.
21 May The Hindu article

Human impacts, climate change pushing species to extinction

German Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has urged governments to take stronger action to protect the diversity of life. Opening the largest UN biodiversity gathering yet, Gabriel warned that the world is not on the right path to protect the diversity of species and said the world would not reach its agreed target of the year 2010 for reversing biodiversity loss.
20 May Environment News Service article

Climate change hitting bird species

One in eight of the world's birds are at risk of extinction as climate change puts birds under great pressure, a leading conservation group warned.  The population of rare birds such as the Floreana mockingbird of the Galapagos Islands or the spoon-billed sandpiper, which breeds in northeastern Russia and winters in south Asia, has declined sharply and they could go extinct, the International Union for Conservation of Nature said in a report.
19 May Reuters article

Study says global warming not worsening hurricanes

Global warming isn't to blame for the recent jump in hurricanes in the Atlantic, concludes a study by a prominent federal scientist whose position has shifted on the subject. Not only that, warmer temperatures will actually reduce the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic and those making landfall, research meteorologist Tom Knutson reported in a study.
19 May Associated Press article
19 May Telegraph.co.uk article
18 May Nature Geoscience Letter abstract

Anger over climate change loans

Development campaigners have accused the UK government of making a stealth cut to an £800m fund designed to help poor countries adapt to climate change. Ministers said they were proud to have set a moral lead when the Environmental Transformation Fund was launched. The government now says an unspecified amount will go out as interest-free loans but insists it never pledged all the money would be used as aid.
18 May BBC News article

Ocean nitrogen only limited help for climate - study

Rising amounts of nitrogen entering the oceans from human activities are less beneficial than previously thought as a fertiliser for tiny marine plants that help slow global warming, scientists said.  "As much as a third of the nitrogen entering the world's oceans from the atmosphere is man-made," according to a team of 30 scientists writing in the journal Science.
16 May Planet Ark article
16 May Science 320, 893-897 abstract

Polar bear named 'threatened species'

Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne listed polar bears as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act, saying the loss of Arctic sea ice in a warming climate could drive them to the brink of extinction in less than four decades.
15 May Washington Post article

Global warming may lead to increase in kidney stones disease

Rising global temperatures could lead to an increase in kidney stones, according to research presented at the 103rd Annual Scientific Meeting of the American Urological Association (AUA). Dehydration has been linked to stone disease, particularly in warmer climates, and global warming will exacerbate this effect. As a result, the prevalence of stone disease may increase, along with the costs of treating the condition.
15 May ScienceDaily article

Wildlife and environment already hit by climate change

Global warming is disrupting wildlife and the environment on every continent, according to an unprecedented study that reveals the extent to which climate change is already affecting the world's ecosystems. Scientists examined published reports dating back to 1970 and found that at least 90% of environmental damage and disruption around the world could be explained by rising temperatures driven by human activity.
15 May The Hindu article
15 May Sydney Morning Herald article
15 May Nature, 453, 353-357 abstract

Cornflakes in cereal killer warning

Climate change could lead to "killer cornflakes" with the most potent liver toxin ever recorded, an environmental health conference has been told.The effects of the toxins, known as mycotoxins, have been known since the Middle Ages when rye bread contaminated with ergot fungus was a staple part of the European diet, environmental health researcher Lisa Bricknell of Central Queensland University (CQU) said.
13 May news.com.au article

Mysterious Arctic whale under threat from changing habitat

Polar bears may get more attention – and later this week a court-ordered decision by the US government will almost certainly see them listed as a threatened species – but new research suggests the narwhal, the mysterious whale with a long spiral tusk, may be more at risk from climatic change. Researchers fear that the narwhal is so attuned to its environment, so narrow in its range of habitat and specific in diet, that it may be one of the least able of Arctic mammals to adapt to rapid warming in the high north.
13 May Guardian article

Japan scientists warn Arctic ice melting fast

Arctic ice is melting fast and the area covered by ice sheets in ocean could shrink this summer to the smallest since 1978 when satellite observation first started, Japanese scientists warned in a report.
12 May Reuters article

Spain to help fight hunger, climate change in Africa

Spain plans to help five poor African countries fight hunger and climate change under a 60 million euro ($90 million) scheme to help the continent whose people flood to Spain in their tens of thousands each year.
12 May Reuters article

Tanzania: Global warming threatens Indian Ocean islands

Scientists are issuing an alert that the islands of Zanzibar and Mafia in Tanzania are likely to disappear under water in the next century due to global warming. The islands off the Tanzania mainland coast could be submerged by the ocean by 2100 following a catastrophic rise in sea-level caused by the melting of polar ice, said scientists meeting in Arusha during the launch of the International Year of Planet Earth for Africa.
12 May Business Daily (Nairobi) article through allAfrica.com

Tiny krill could help unlock global climate change secrets

Scientists in Hobart are starting small in their bid to discover the answers to one of the world's biggest problems: they are researching krill in the hope of finding out what impact climate change may be having in the Southern Ocean. The shrimp-like krill is one of the smallest animals in the Antarctic, but Dr Andrew Constable from the Australian Antarctic Division says it could help unlock some of the secrets of one of the world's most complex ecosystems.
9 May ABC News online article

Melting glaciers release toxic chemical cocktail

Decades after most countries stopped spraying DDT, frozen stores of the insecticide are now trickling out of melting Antarctic glaciers. The change means Adélie penguins have recently been exposed to the chemical, according to a new study.
7 May New Scientist article
30 April Environmental Science and Technology 42, 3909 paper

Cleaner air may threaten Amazon rainforest

Cleaner air may actually threaten the Amazon rainforest, according to Brazilian and British climate scientists. They claim that a reduction in coal burning and the resultant sulphur dioxide emissions is linked to increasing sea surface temperatures in the tropical north Atlantic, which increases the risk of drought in the Amazon rainforest.
7 May Washington Post article
7 May Yahoo News article

Cyclone 'is a sign of things to come'

A top Indian advocacy group that monitors climate change in south Asia has warned that the Nargis cyclone that devastated Burma was "a sign of things to come", as climate change caused extreme weather to increase in intensity. India's influential Centre for Science and Environment warned that destructive cyclones were likely to occur more often unless nations sped up their efforts to curtail the emission of greenhouse gases.
7 May The Australian article

World may be heating quickly

Climate change is happening faster than predicted and the world could be as much as seven degrees hotter by the end of the century, a CSIRO scientist says. New Australian research showed current policies did not go far enough to manage the risks posed by climate change, according to Dr Roger Jones, a climate risk analyst with CSIRO's energy transformed flagship.
7 May Sydney Morning Herald article

Women face tougher impact from climate change

Climate change is harder on women in poor countries, where mothers stay in areas hit by drought, deforestation or crop failure as men move to literally greener pastures, a Nobel Peace laureate has said. "Many destructive activities against the environment disproportionately affect women, because most women in the world, and especially in the developing world, are very dependent on primary natural resources: land, forests, waters," said Wangari Maathai of Kenya.
6 May Reuters article

The climate change deniers

When heralded Canadian environmentalist Lawrence Solomon first set out two years ago — on a bet, no less — to find credible dissenters to the well-entrenched climate change dogma, he thought he might perhaps unearth enough material for a few National Post columns. Instead, like Alice passing through the looking glass, Mr. Solomon entered a world wherein it soon became clear the much-ballyhooed idea of a "scientific consensus" was as nonsensical as "Jabberwocky."
6 May The Washington Times editorial opinion

Climate change contributing to spread of dengue fever

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the health of hundreds of millions of people might be put at risk by the effects of climate change. The WHO regional director, Dr Shigeru Omi, said that global warming had already impacted on lives and health and that this problem would pose an even greater threat to mankind in coming decades unless action was taken. The WHO warned that the Western Pacific Region may be heading for a major dengue outbreak unless concerted effort and cooperation was undertaken quickly. The geographical reach of dengue, already entrenched in many tropical countries, has gradually expanded over the last 30 years.
6 May Tonga Review article

Lake Baikal challenges global warming idea

Lake Baikal, the world's largest lake, is warming faster than the atmosphere, challenging the idea that large bodies of water can withstand global warming, US and Russian scientists have reported.
5 May Moscow Times article
2 May inthenews.co.uk article

A pause in global warming?

Global warming is in the middle of a ten-year pause according to an article in Nature. The article does not say that global warming is stopping, just that there is a pause due to alterations in ocean circulation patterns. This may be because of natural causes, because global warming has altered ocean circulation, or a combination.
5 May Gather article
1 May Nature, 453, 84-88 article

Climate change could hit tropical wildlife hardest

Tropical wildlife could really struggle if the climate warms even a few degrees in places that are already hot, scientists have reported. Many of these tropical creatures are living at the edge of their temperature tolerance already. Even slight tropical warming could push them to the brink.
5 May Reuters article
5 May Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105, 18, 6668-6672 article

Carolinas need flexibility to counter continued sea-level rise

The past 12 months have been a landmark as far as recognition of sea level rise is concerned. Last year, the 4th International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report came out and predicted a maximum two-foot rise in the sea level, not counting the disintegrating ice sheets, by the year 2100. The two-foot rise is mainly from thermal expansion of ocean water. There is widespread agreement among sea-level experts that the ice sheets are likely to be the driving forces of sea-level rise this coming century.
5 May The Post and Courier article

Plan to help Himalayan communities tackle global warming

As communities living in the Himalayan mountain regions are likely to be worst affected by global warming, the Indian government is mooting a plan to enhance the adaptation and resilience of the locals in meeting the threats.
5 May The Hindu article

AIDS cases to rise with climate change

A leading researcher from the University of New South Wales has cautioned that social factors, including economic pressures, caused by climate change may in turn elevate HIV infection rates world-wide.
4 May The Times of India article

'They cheat, I tell you'

He was famously Thatcher's 'brilliant Chancellor'. Now he wants to convince us that fears of climate change are overblown. Should we take Nigel Lawson seriously?
3 May The Guardian article

The answer to climate change can be found on your roof

Homeowners and businesses in Britain are looking to their roofs to manage water and cut costs. Britain is experiencing one of the biggest booms in Europe in the "green roof" and rainwater harvesting industries.
3 May TimesOnline article

Climate change warms Arctic, cools Antarctica

The Arctic and Antarctica are poles apart when it comes to the effects of human-fueled climate change, scientists have said: in the north, it is melting sea ice, but in the south, it powers winds that chill things down.
2 May Reuters article
2 May Associated Press article

Climate change claims caribou calves: study

Fewer caribou calves are being born and more of them are dying in West Greenland as a result of a warming climate, says a US biologist who believes the mammal may serve as an indicator species for climate change. Penn State biology professor Eric Post based his conclusions on data collected since 1993 showing that the timing of peak food availability no longer corresponds to the timing of caribou births.
2 May CBC News article

Oxygen-depleted ocean zones are growing

German-led scientists say they've confirmed computer predictions that oxygen-depleted zones in tropical oceans are expanding, possibly due to climate change. The researchers led by Lothar Stramma from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences in Kiel, Germany, discovered oxygen levels in tropical oceans at depths of 985 to 2,300 feet have declined during the past 50 years.
1 May UPI article
2 May Science, 320, 655-658 abstract

Stern paints an even bleaker picture

The internationally influential Stern report on climate change underestimated the risks of global warming and should have presented an even bleaker view of the future, according to its own author. In the 18 months since the government-commissioned review was published, Lord Stern has faced the wrath of economists and climate change sceptics who argued he had underestimated the cost of cutting emissions and overestimated the benefits to future generations.
16 April AFP article
17 April Financial Times article

Global warming could force 1 billion out of their homes by 2050  

As many as one billion people could lose their homes by 2050 because of the devastating impact of global warming, scientists and political leaders will be warned. They will hear that the steady rise in temperatures across the planet could trigger mass migration on unprecedented levels.
29 April The Independent article

Climate change brings security risks

Countries around the world have hugely underestimated the potential conflicts stemming from climate change and must invest heavily to correct that mistake, a report said. The report for Britain's Royal United Services Institute by environment expert Nick Mabey said the response had been "slow and inadequate" and to rectify it spending needed to surge to levels comparable to sums spent on counter-terrorism.
23 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Climate change could create world war

Climate change could cause global conflicts as large as the two world wars but lasting for centuries unless the problem is controlled, a leading defence think tank has warned. The Royal United Services Institute said a tenfold increase in research spending, comparable to the amount spent on the Apollo space program, will be needed if the world is to avoid the worst effects of changing temperatures.
23 April The Telegraph article

Poor children of the world at biggest risk of climate change

Millions of the world's poorest children are among the most vulnerable and unwitting victims of climate change caused by the rich developed world, a United Nations report said, calling for urgent action.
29 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Global warming reversal plans could have drastic effects

A proposed solution to reverse the effects of global warming by spraying sulfate particles into Earth's stratosphere could make matters much worse, climate researchers said. They said trying to cool off the planet by creating a kind of artificial sun block would delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole by 30 to 70 years and create a new loss of Earth's protective ozone layer over the Arctic.
25 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network
24 April The Telegraph article

Polar bears 'not in danger of extinction'

The polar bear, a symbol of Canada's far north as well as the effects of climate change on the sensitive Arctic environment, is in trouble, but it is not endangered or threatened with extinction, a Canadian advisory panel said. The Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada gave the polar bear its weakest classification, that of "special concern," but the Canadian government would nonetheless have to develop a management plan to protect the animals if it agrees with the new label.
25 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Lough Neagh ducks disappearing

Climate change could be behind a dramatic fall in the number of ducks on Lough Neagh, according to scientists. Twenty years ago there were 90,000 diving ducks using the lough, compared to 25,000 today.
16 April BBC News online article

Pine beetles may affect climate change

Mountain pine beetles that are destroying forests along much of the Rocky Mountain range are doing so much damage that they may affect climate change, Canadian researchers reported. The damage is nearly equivalent to the polluting effects of forest fires, they report in the journal Nature.
24 April Reuters article through Planet Ark

Arctic melting quicker than first thought

Arctic ice may be melting faster than most climate change science has concluded, the conservation group World Wildlife Fund said in a report published. It found that ice in Greenland and across the Arctic region was retreating "at rates significantly faster than predicted in previous expert assessments."
24 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Flooding threat to Florida

Scientists studying the consequences of global warming in south Florida say rising sea levels could flood coastal cities and damage fresh water supplies. The Miami-Dade County Climate Change Task Force presented a set of recommendations to help slow or prevent social, environmental and economic damage to the region, The Miami Herald reported. Recommendations included promoting the use of hybrid cars, limiting development and changing building and zoning codes.
23 April United Press International article

Climate change and global food crisis, both hot topics

Climate change and the global food crisis headed the topics for discussion at the United Nation conference on trade and development here in Ghana, as they will affect development significantly and hurt the poor especially.
22 April The Nation article

Antarctic waters freshen up

Scientists studying the icy depths of the sea around Antarctica have detected changes in salinity that could have profound effects on the world's climate and ocean currents. The scientists returned to the southern Australian city of Hobart after a one-month voyage studying the Southern Ocean to see how it is changing and what those changes might mean for global climate patterns.
18 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Pyrenees may well see 50 per cent of its usual snowfall

By the end of the century skiing holidays to the Pyrenees could be a distant memory, according to a study which says snowfalls could decrease by half. Spanish scientists from the Pyrenean Ecological Institute predicted that temperatures in the mountain range in eastern Spain and south-west France could rise by between 2.8C and 4C by the start of the 22nd century. At the same time, snowfall levels could decline by between 30% and 50%.
18 April The Guardian article

Turtles provide climate change evidence

Just as canaries help miners monitor underground gases, marine turtles are emerging as excellent indicators of the effects of climate change. “Turtles are a really good way to study climate change because they depend on healthy beaches as well as mangroves, sea grass beds, coral reefs and deep ocean ecosystems to live”, said Dr. Lucy Hawkes, coordinator of an initiative to develop adaptation strategies for climate change impacts to turtles.
18 April WWF article through Environmental News Network

The Amazon is shrinking rapidly

Deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon may be on the rise, according to high-resolution images released by an agency of the Brazilian government. The images suggest an end to a widely hailed three-year decline in the rate of deforestation and have spurred a public controversy among high-level Brazilian officials, writes Tim Hirsch, author of "The Incredible Shrinking Amazon Rainforest" in the May/June 2008 issue of World Watch magazine.
17 April Worldwatch Institute article through Environmental News Network

Major flooding - a sign of things to come

Major floods striking America’s heartland this week offer a preview of the spring seasonal outlook, according to National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service. Several factors will contribute to above-average flood conditions, including record rainfall in some states and snow packs, which are melting and causing rivers and streams to crest over their banks. This week, more than 250 communities in a dozen states are experiencing flood conditions.
17 April NOAA article through Environmental News Network

Scientists predict significant sea level rise

New scientific analysis forecasts world sea levels to rise by up to 5 feet by the end of this century. The new analysis comes from a British/Finnish team which built a computer model linking temperatures to sea levels for the last two millennia. In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change forecast an average rise in global sea levels of 28-43 cm by 2100.
16 April AHN online article
16 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Wildlife to suffer rising seas

Impacts of climate change on the region’s coast will have major knock-on effects for a whole host of wildlife, says a study by the National Trust. Rising sea levels and flooding could damage the habitats of a number of animals, such as species of tern and wading birds, as well as the grey seal.
14 April Journal Live article

Arctic ice shelf breakup 'alarming'  

A Canadian military operation at the top of the world that married science and Arctic sovereignty has discovered the largest remaining ice shelf in the northern hemisphere is breaking apart at an alarming rate. A team of scientists and Canadian Rangers witnessed dramatic deep new cracks, 18 kilometres long and 40 metres wide, on the southern edge of Ward Hunt Ice Shelf while patrolling Ellesmere Island this month by snowmobile.
14 April Globe and Mail article

Bangladesh faces climate change nightmare

Abdul Majid has been forced to move 22 times in as many years, a victim of the annual floods that ravage Bangladesh. There are millions like Majid, 65, in Bangladesh and in the future there could be many millions more if scientists' predictions of rising seas and more intense droughts and storms come true.
13 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Floods and droughts on the rise due to climate change

Flooding in temperate regions and the tropics and droughts in arid regions are likely to increase over the course of the century due to climate change, according to a study released on. The study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the body which won last year's Nobel Prize with former United State's Vice President Al Gore, said changes in fresh water supplies would have a huge impact on humans and on the environment.
9 April Reuters article

Climate change to affect poor countries fighting poverty

The world is on course to halve extreme poverty by 2015, but Africa will fall far short of the UN's Millennium Development Goals, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund said. A new report by the global institutions also warned that urgent action was needed to tackle climate change, which threatens to exact a hefty toll on particularly poor countries and reverse progress in fighting poverty.
9 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Warming trends are greater than first thought

Warming trends in a third of the world's large ocean regions are two to four times greater than previously reported averages, increasing the risk to marine life and fisheries, a United Nations-backed environmental study said.
9 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Top holiday spots will be hit by climate change

Some of the best and most desired destinations by travellers will feel the consequences of climate change within the next few decades, a United Nations report has warned. The destinations to bear the brunt of the changing weather include hotspots in Caribbean, Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, Australia and New Zealand.
7 April The Times of India article

Climate change a factor in disease-related deaths

Climate change is one of the factors causing an increase in the incidence of diseases like malaria and dengue fever, the World Health Organisation said. At least 150,000 more people are dying each year of malaria, diarrhoea, malnutrition and floods, all of which can be traced to climate change.
7 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network
9 April IRIN article

Amazonians seek a role in climate change agreements

Some wore traditional headdresses, and some travelled by riverboat or canoe. But the dozens of “forest peoples” who descended on this capital of Amazonas State had a common goal of becoming bigger players in global climate talks.
6 April New York Times article

Peru's climate will entail more extremes

Peru's climate will be characterised by more extreme weather phenomena in coming years as a result of climate change, meteorologists warned. Sixto Flores, from Peru's National Meteorological and Hydrology Service, told reporters in Lima that according to Pan American Health Organisation, the Andean country has been the third most vulnerable country by extreme weather, following Honduras and Bangladesh.
6 April China View article

Iceland to feel the effects of global warming in more ways than expected

If any country can claim to be pitched on the global warming front line, it may be the North Atlantic island nation of Iceland. On a purely physical level, this land of icecaps and volcanoes and home to 300,000 people is undergoing a rapid transformation as its glaciers melt and weather patterns change dramatically. But global warming is also having a profound effect on Iceland economically -- and in many ways the effects have actually been beneficial.
6 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Molina warns on climate change

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist, Mario Molina, who rang the first alarm bells over the ozone hole issued a warming about climate change, saying there could be "almost irreversible consequences" if the Earth warmed 2.5 degrees Celsius above what it ought to be.
5 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Dust - a huge player in climate change

Scientists know that dust affects climate. Tiny particles create veils that reflect sunlight and cool the atmosphere. Dark particles absorb sunshine and warm things up. But as scientists look deeper into the dust-climate connection, they find that they have underestimated its importance.
3 April Christian Science Monitor article

No reliable connection between cosmic rays and climate change

New research has dealt a blow to the sceptics who argue that climate change is all due to cosmic rays rather than to man-made greenhouse gases. The new evidence shows no reliable connection between the cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover.
3 April Institute of Physics article through Environmental News Network
11 April People's Daily online article

Coral reefs - a dying life

Coral reefs could be dying out because of changes to the microbes that live in them just as much as from the direct rise in temperature caused by global warming, according to scientists speaking at the Society for General Microbiology’s 162nd meeting.
2 April Society for General Microbiology article through Environmental News Network

Woolly mammoths driven to extinction due to climate change

Climate change drove woolly mammoths to the edge of extinction and then humans finished them off, according to a Spanish study that adds to the debate over the demise of the Ice Age behemoths.
1 April Reuters article through Environmental News Network

American West 'warming faster'

The American West is heating up faster than any other region of the United States, and more than the Earth as a whole, according to a new analysis of 50 scientific studies. For the five years from 2003 through 2007, the global climate averaged 1 degree Fahrenheit warmer than its 20th century average. During the same period, 11 Western US states averaged 1.7 degrees warmer, the analysis reported.
28 March Los Angeles Times article

Vietnam 'must upgrade sea defences'

Vietnam will have to upgrade its sea defences to brace for rising ocean levels and stronger typhoons caused by global warming, according to the Southern Institute of Water Resources director Le Manh Hung. Work is needed on about 520 kilometres of sea dykes and over 320 kilometres of river dykes that are unable to resist flood tides and storms.
28 March AFP article

Climate changing? Just adapt

The world would be better off adapting to the consequences of climate change rather than trying to fight the causes, according to group of scientists, including Mike Hulme, the founding director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. They also believe that climate change may not necessarily be as catastrophic for the planet as has been forecast.
26 March Telegraph article
26 March Los Angeles Times article

Butterflies adapted to prehistoric climate change

Prehistoric cooling in a changing climate caused significant increases in butterfly species numbers, according to new research. The study provides further evidence that while some animals and plants are likely to suffer from global warming, others will adapt and spread.
26 March Telegraph article

Ice shelf collapse

An ice shelf of 5,000 square miles in western Antarctica has started to collapse, scientists said. The disintegration of the Wilkins ice sheet, the largest on the Antarctic Peninsula to be threatened, is more evidence of rapid climate change on the continent. The British Antarctic Survey said the ice shelf was "hanging by a thread".
26 March Telegraph article
26 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network
27 March The Times article
25 March Associated Press article through CNN
25 March New Scientist article
26 March The Independent article

From krill to king crabs, the collapse of a 160-square-mile portion of the Wilkins Ice Shelf in Antarctica could mean many changes for wildlife at the bottom of the world.
29 March CNN article 

Voyage to Antarctica

Scientists set off on a voyage to Antarctica to see if the icesheets at the edge of the vast continent are melting faster and whether the Southern Ocean is soaking up less carbon dioxide.
25 March Reuters article through Planet Ark

Immunological consequences coming with warming

The first two bee sting-related deaths in Fairbanks, Alaska, were reported in the summer of 2006, which researchers suspect was a consequence of global warming; and they predict that this is just the beginning.
25 March Reuters article

Climate at core of election

London's Labour Mayor Ken Livingstone put climate at the core of his re-election campaign.
25 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Global warming disturbing lake's ecosystem

A new study predicts water circulation in Lake Tahoe in the United States of America is being dramatically altered by global warming, threatening the lake's delicate ecosystem and famed clear waters.
24 March Associated Press article

Black carbon significant factor in global warming

Black carbon has a warming effect in the atmosphere three to four times greater than prevailing estimates, according to scientists. Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego atmospheric scientist V. Ramanathan and University of Iowa chemical engineer Greg Carmichael said that soot and other forms of black carbon could have as much as 60 per cent of the current global warming effect of carbon dioxide.
24 March University of California article through Environmental News Network
24 March The Guardian article

Coral under threat

Over two hundred million humans depend for their subsistence on the fact that coral has an addiction to 'junk food' - and orders its partners, the symbiotic algae, to make it. This curious arrangement is one of nature’s most delicate and complex partnerships — a collaboration now facing grave threats from climate change.
24 March ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies article through Environmental News Network

Climate change driving migration

The effects of climate change are increasingly driving people in sub-Saharan Africa to migrate in search of better living conditions, according to experts who gathered in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
20 March Voice of America article 

Perennial Arctic ice cover diminishing sharply

The amount of long-lasting sea ice in the Arctic - thick enough to survive for as much as a decade - declined sharply in the past year, even though the region had a cold winter and the thinner one-year ice cover grew substantially, United States federal officials said.
19 March Washington Post article
18 March BBC article

Cold start to a warm year

Bucking the trend of global warming, the start of 2008 saw icy weather around the world from China to Greece. But despite its chilly start, 2008 is expected to end up among the top 10 warmest years since records began in the 1860s.
19 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Global warming playing with the seasons

Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying. "The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast," Stanford University biologist Terry Root said. Blame global warming.
19 March Associated Press article

Shrinking ice

Ice scientists around the world watched with a mixture of alarm and astonishment as the great Arctic Sea ice sheet shrank over the northern summer to its lowest level in memory. The rapid melt exceeded almost every scenario the scientists had modelled.
18 March Brisbane Times article

Effects of climate change on Gulf Coast transportation

The United States Department of Transportation released a study of the potential impacts climate change and land subsidence could have on the Gulf Coast region's transportation infrastructure. The report is the first of a three-phase study on a region of particular concern given its geography, ecology and vulnerability, as well as the central role it plays in the nation's oil and gas infrastructure. 
17 March Triple Pundit article through Environmental News Network

Unchecked climate change = 125 million refugees in South Asia

Blue Alert, Climate Migrants in South Asia, a new Greenpeace report, warns that left unchecked climate change could lead to global temperature increases of 4-5°C, unleashing a barrage of impacts that will drive mass migration in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. The report warns that impacts will include: "inundation itself, flood and storm damage, erosion, saltwater intrusion, rising water tables and impeded drainage and wetland loss. These will together reduce the ability of these regions to provide their inhabitants access to land itself, in some cases, and to many others their means of cultivation, water resources and fodder, causing severe hardship in terms of livelihood and habitat loss."
28 March Greenpeace article

Glaciers showing record losses

The world's glaciers are continuing to melt away with the latest official figures showing record losses, the United Nations Environment Programme announced. Data from close to 30 reference glaciers in nine mountain ranges indicate that between the years 2004-2005 and 2005-2006 the average rate of melting and thinning more than doubled.
16 March Guardian article
15 March Associated Press article
15 March AFP article
17 March United Nations Environment Programme article through Environmental News Network

A brown Ireland

Climate change could turn Ireland's legendary emerald landscape a dusty tan, with profound effects on its society and culture, a new study reported.
16 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Confusion for migrating birds

The swallows' return to British shores each year symbolises the passing of winter and the approach of summer. But in a sign of the blurring of the seasons brought on by climate change, one of the birds has this year shunned migration to Africa and instead spent all winter in Britain.
16 March The Telegraph article

Glaciers are disappearing

The world's glaciers are melting at an alarming rate, the United Nations said, calling for immediate action to prevent further constraints on water resources for large populations. The culprit is climate change, according to data from the World Glacier Monitoring Service.
15 March AFP article

Climate change causing housing problems

The islanders of Tuvalu could lose their homes and much of their land in the coming decades. But the world has yet to figure out how it will deal with them, and millions of others, who may be displaced by climate change.
13 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Town planners to beware of rise in sea levels

A rise in sea levels and other changes fuelled by global warming threaten roads, rail lines, ports, airports and other important infrastructure, and policy makers and planners should be acting now to avoid or mitigate their effects, according to new government reports.
12 March The New York Times article

Polar bear protection

The Natural Resources Defense Council, Environmental News Network, the Center for Biological Diversity and Greenpeace sued the Bush administration of the United States of America for missing the legal deadline to issue a final decision on whether to list the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act due to global warming.
11 March NRDC article through Environmental News Network

US transport infrastructure to suffer

While every mode of transportation in the United States will be affected as the climate changes, potentially the greatest impact on transportation systems will be flooding of roads, railways, transit systems, and airport runways in coastal areas because of rising sea levels and surges brought on by more intense storms, says a new report from the National Research Council. Though the impacts of climate change will vary by region, it is certain they will be widespread and costly in human and economic terms, and will require significant changes in the planning, design, construction, operation, and maintenance of transportation systems.
11 March Reuters article
12 March New York Times article
11 March media statement
Report summary
Links to access the full report

Minorities bearing the brunt of climate change

Minorities and indigenous people frequently bear the brunt of the ravages of climate change but also often come last on the aid list because they are on the margins of society. Some are even the victims of efforts to tackle global warming such as clearing tracts of land and forest for growing biofuels, according to State of the World's Minorities 2008 report from Minority Rights Group International.
11 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network

Europe warned to prepare for conflict

European governments have been told to plan for an era of conflict over energy resources, with global warming likely to trigger a dangerous contest between Russia and the west for the vast mineral riches of the Arctic.
10 March Guardian article

Fish battling rising sea temperatures

Fish that are crucial to Australia's coral reefs are getting lost at sea because climate change is making it difficult for them to navigate open waters and return to their home reefs.
7 March The Australian article

Canada reports on future impacts

The first comprehensive national study in a decade on likely future climate change impacts in Canada finds that humans run the real risk of triggering processes in this century that will inevitably lead to “potentially cataclysmic surprises” in the next and Canadians will experience greater economic and social impacts at the local and regional levels than national or global scale analyses predict.
National Union of Public and General Employees statement
17 March Vancouver Sun article
Link to download the report, From Impacts to Adaptation: Canada in a Changing Climate 2007, in parts

Ocean levels to fall over millions of years

Sea levels are set to fall over millions of years, making the current rise blamed on climate change a brief interruption of an ancient geological trend, according to a report in the journal Science. Oceans are getting deeper and sea levels had fallen by about 170 metres since the Cretaceous period 80 million years ago. Previously, the little-understood fall had been estimated at 40 to 250 metres, according to Bernard Steinberger at the Geological Survey of Norway, one of five authors of the report.
7 March Reuters article through Environmental News Network
Abstract from Science
Article from Science (subscription required, or buy access to article)

Climate change affecting the Arctic tundra

Research from ancient sediment cores indicates that a warming climate could make the world’s Arctic tundra far more susceptible to fires than previously thought.
5 March Public Library of Science article through Environmental News Network
5 March New Scientist article

The bittern at risk

Rising sea levels are threatening the future of an already endangered species of wetland bird, campaigners warned. The bittern could become extinct in Britain if it is not protected from the effects of global warming, the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds claimed.
5 March Telegraph