Bellona: The upcoming fifth climate change report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is believed to reveal new, and gruesome, scientific data: Natural and anthropogenic factors contributing to global climate change will escalate in the 2040s, causing ever more devastating effects on the planet. The “climate time bomb” is set to go off

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Himalayan times: Representatives of all 49 member countries in the Least Developed Countries Group (LDC Group) in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), are scheduled to gather in Bonn of Germany to discuss the upcoming framework of the 2015 protocol from June 3 to 14. Talking to this daily, Chair of the

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CNN: Although hundreds of the world’s glaciers are shrinking fast, far more are losing ice much more slowly, new research has established. But it shows that, almost everywhere, the glaciers are in retreat. Forget, for the moment, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets: what about all the other stuff? What kind of difference does the

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PHYS: Few members of the UK public are comfortable with the idea of injecting aerosols high into the atmosphere to help slow down climate change, a study has found. People voiced concerns that this type of approach fails to address the basic problem of increasing greenhouse gas emissions. They are also nervous about any unintended

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RTCC: The world’s largest cities are feeling the effects of climate change and are leading efforts to adapt to them. That is according to the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group that includes London, New York, Cairo and Sao Paulo. Terri Wills, director of global initiatives at C40, told RTCC that the group has had to

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Guardian: Global warming has not stalled, insists world’s best-known climate scientist. Prof James Hansen warns public not to be fooled by ‘diversionary tactic’ from deniers. from “deniers” who want the public to be confused over climate change, according to the world’s best-known climate scientist. Prof James Hansen, who first alerted the world to climate change

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BBC: Scientists are calling on world leaders to take action on climate change after carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere broke through a symbolic threshold. Daily CO2 readings at a US government agency lab on Hawaii have topped 400 parts per million for the first time. Sir Brian Hoskins, the head of climate change at

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ToI: About 90 per cent of glaciers in Tibet called the Third Pole region, are shrinking because of black carbon pollution “transferred from South Asia” to the Tibetan Plateau, a Chinese scientist has warned. The Third Pole region, which is centred on the Tibetan Plateau and concerns the interests of the surrounding countries and regions,

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SMH: Sea levels may rise as much as 69 centimeters through 2100 as water temperatures rise, glaciers melt in the Andes and Himalayas and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica shed water, European scientists said. The new estimate exceeds a previous forecast of as much as 59 centimeters by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on

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Sciencecodex: A recent study indicated that the urbanization in eastern China has significant impact on the observed surface warming and the temporal-spatial variations of urbanization effect have been comprehensively detected. This work was led by YANG XiuQun, professor of meteorology in the Institute for Climate and Global Change Research, School of Atmospheric Sciences at Nanjing

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BBC: More than half of common plant species and a third of animals could see a serious decline in their habitat range because of climate change. New research suggests that biodiversity around the globe will be significantly impacted if temperatures rise more than 2C. But the scientists say that the losses can be reduced if

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Scidev.net: While satellite data has shown aerosols — tiny polluting particles in the air — to be rising over India, a new study based on primary data gathered from measuring instruments installed in a network of stations confirms the trend. The study, by a team from the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre, Thiruvananthapuram, and Indian Institute

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Scidev.net: Nepal is looking at waste-to-energy (WtE) technologies to address its huge energy deficit and also manage growing urban and industrial waste. Half of Nepal’s households are off the national grid while supply shortfalls and interrupted power cause industries losses worth 60 billion Nepali rupees (US$ 700 million) annually. Last month (26 April), the ‘Waste-to-Energy

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The Earth’s climate is more sensitive to changes in CO2 than previously thought, according to new research. New data taken from an Arctic sediment core that has recorded the climate for the past 3.6m years, suggests climate models, including those used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), have not given enough weighting to

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CNN: While Brazil’s Government tends to favour a one-size-fits-all approach to energy provision, an indigenous group in the far north has come up with its own more sustainable solution, as our São Paulo correspondent reports. A few years ago I lay in a hammock in a mud and wattle hut in a Makuxi village, shining

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Guardian: Heir to throne intervenes on issue dividing coalition, making outspoken criticism of attempts to tackle global warming. Prince Charles has attacked corporate lobbyists and climate change sceptics for turning the Earth into a “dying patient”, making his most outspoken criticism yet of the world’s failure to tackle global warming just when the heir to

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CDKN: Pakistan is one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases (GHG) in the world: it accounts for just 0.8% of total global emissions, and ranks 135th in terms of per capita emissions.  Unfortunately, Pakistan is also one of the most climate vulnerable countries in the world.  Over the past 20 years, 141 extreme events

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Hydropower is by far the most established form of renewable energy. Though not without environmental impact, either in terms of the local environment or, in the case of large dams, in terms of carbon emissions from the reservoirs behind the dams, hydro is here to stay. Unfortunately hydropower will be affected to a far greater

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CDKN, in collaboration with partners across Asia, Africa and Latin America, is pleased to announce a new publication on Climate resilience and disaster risk management. It presents recent results from CDKN-supported projects to assess vulnerability and mainstream climate resilience into development planning. Our stories from India, Ghana and Colombia illustrate the importance of involving diverse

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The world is driven by fossil fuels like oil and gas. This has some negative repercussions: Rising energy prices due to decreasing deposits, dependence on unstable oil and gas producing regimes and global warming. It becomes clear, that a revolution in the way how we produce and use energy is necessary. Central to this energy

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Himalayan Times: Reducing green house emission is indispensable for attaining sustainable economic growth, an Asian Development Bank (ADB) report has pointed out. The report on green house gas emission of South Asian countries – Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Nepal, prepared recently has mentioned that negative impact has been made in economic growth by

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Spaceindustrynews: Mid-elevation forests – those between approximately 6,500 to 8,000 feet (1,981 to 2,438 meters) in elevation – are the most sensitive to rising temperatures and changes in precipitation and snowmelt associated with climate change, finds a new University of Colorado Boulder-led study co-funded by NASA. The study looked at how the greenness of Western

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Scientific skepticism is healthy. In fact, science by its very nature is skeptical. Genuine skepticism means considering the full body of evidence before coming to a conclusion. However, when you take a close look at arguments expressing climate ‘skepticism’, what you often observe is cherry picking of pieces of evidence while rejecting any data that

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Business week: Hazardous kerosene lamps, still used in many developing countries, are a major expense for many of the world’s estimated 1.5 billion families without electricity. Poor households typically spend at least 10 percent of their income on kerosene, as much as $36 billion a year worldwide, according to the World Bank. So far, efforts to use solar

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We’ve all heard about rising sea levels and the possibility of more frequent, stronger storms. But oyster death? The Post’s Darryl Fears on Monday highlighted one of the many consequences of carbon dioxide emissions that scientists are only just beginning to detect — and most Americans have probably never considered — in Washington’s nearby Chesapeake Bay.

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Scientific American: Margaret Thatcher, who passed away on April 8, saw global warming as a threat. Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady” of British politics who died Monday at the age of 87, is being lionized as the woman who tilted British domestic and economic policy to the right. Less noted is how seriously she viewed

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Skeptical Science: Skeptic Argument: Climate is always changing. We have had ice ages and warmer periods when alligators were found in Spitzbergen. Ice ages have occurred in a hundred thousand year cycle for the last 700 thousand years, and there have been previous periods that appear to have been warmer than the present despite CO2

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UCSUSA: Sea level is rising — and at an accelerating rate — especially along the U.S. East Coast and Gulf of Mexico. Why are the East Coast and Gulf of Mexico hotspots of sea level rise? Global, regional, and local factors all affect the rate of local sea level rise. In the Gulf region, land

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EU Climate Adaptation Platform: The preparation of these guidelines has benefited from useful inputs from a range of stakeholders, who had the opportunity to comment on a preliminary draft. Those include representatives from the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, KPMG, Network Rail, the European Institute for Environmental Policy, and KfW.

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Aljazeera: Government attempts a new insurance scheme to protect farmers from floods and other worsening weather problems. After five consecutive dry winters, Abdul Qadeer was jubilant at the prospect of a plentiful harvest of wheat after December rains soaked his farmland. But the 39-year-old farmer’s hopes were destroyed last month by torrential spring rains and

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Nature: Dengue is a systemic viral infection transmitted between humans by Aedes mosquitoes1. For some patients, dengue is a life-threatening illness2. There are currently no licensed vaccines or specific therapeutics, and substantial vector control efforts have not stopped its rapid emergence and global spread3. The contemporary worldwide distribution of the risk of dengue virus infection4

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CNN: Environmentally-friendly biofuel may have come a step closer with the news that scientists in the UK think they have found how a genetically-modified bacterium can produce diesel oil – on a very small scale so far.  British scientists may have found a new way to pump high quality diesel into the tractors, trucks and

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CNN: They may be small and live in some of the most inaccessible regions on the planet, but the behaviour of Antarctic clams could be key to understanding how ocean life adapts to changes in climate. Antarctic clams (Laternula elliptica) play a vital role in the ocean ecosystem, drawing down carbon into sea-bed sediments and

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National Geographic: Larsen B Ice Shelf Breakup Over a 35-day period in early 2002, Antarctica’s Larsen B ice shelf lost a total of about 1,255 square miles, one of the largest shelf retreats ever recorded. This image, captured by NASA’s MODIS satellite sensor on February 23, shows the shelf mid-disintegration, spewing a cloud of icebergs

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Guardian: With governments failing to promote green energy, top scientists say the drive to keep temperature rise below 2C has stalled. The development of low-carbon energy is progressing too slowly to limit global warming, the International Energy Agency (IEA) said on Wednesday. With power generation still dominated by coal and governments failing to increase investment

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Business Green: China confirms it is moving forward with carbon market plan as India’s prime minister vows to double renewable energy capacity within four years. China and India have both signalled this week that they will deliver ambitious climate change policies within the next few years, including the creation of a Chinese national carbon market

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CNN: Work by an international scientific team has disclosed what the patterns of climate change have been across almost all the Earth’s continents over the past millennium. and sometimes longer. LONDON, 21 April – A worldwide consortium of 70 scientists has completed the most detailed climatic history of the planet so far during the last

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DW: The cold start into spring has made people in parts of Europe wonder if the climate is really warming. Global temperatures have not been rising in recent years. Is the earth cooling instead of warming? Looking at the average temperature over five years during the last 15 years, global temperatures might appear to be

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Scientific American: Rain began to fall over the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires late at night April 1. By the next morning, rainfall records for the month had been broken and the city woke up to find its streets covered with water. Torrential rains dumped more than 6 inches of water on the city in

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Himalayan Times: Minister for Agriculture Development Tek Bahadur Thapa Gharti has directed ministry officials to evaluate the performance of projects based on the benefits that the projects have provided to people. Impact on livelihoods should be the base for evaluating the projects, he said during a performance review meeting of the Agriculture Ministry. “The traditional

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Business Recorder: On Sunday, billions of people around the world celebrated the International Earth Day. The main purpose of the day is to save our mother Earth from the challenges, which are threatening its existence. The global theme for Earth Day 2013 is “The Face of Climate Change”. Earth Day history Earth Day first celebrated

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HT: Voicing his concern on “painfully slow” progress in climate talks, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh hit at rich nations for not doing enough to fight climate change. Singh, while inaugurating the Fourth Clean Energy Ministerial, also made it clear that rich nations, who were responsible for a bulk of global warming causing greenhouse gas emissions,

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CDKN: Dr. Govinda Nepal, IDS-Nepal, reflects at the half way point of a project in Nepal which is calculating the economic cost of climate change in key sectors on what the team has learnt so far Which climate risk screening tool is the most appropriate for Nepal? What questions does an Investment and Financial Flow

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NRDC: I found it quite interesting that an Indian city should have a proper ‘action plan’ to tackle the effects of changing climate patterns that have resulted in some severe summer temperatures in the last decade. Living in India, the action plans by city or state administrations we have mostly seen are: close schools and

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CNN: Using biofuels as the European Union demands will force up costs for British motorists, make food more expensive for poorer countries and may increase the greenhouse emissions they are meant to cut, a report says. Biofuels, widely seen as the green way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, may in some cases be worse for

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Mitigation Partnership: The NAMA-Tool provides developers and implementers of NAMA with brief step-by-step instructions on how to develop a NAMA. The tool navigates users to the relevant information, knowledge, instruments, and publications available. The process is structured into ten steps. The 10-step approach is designed to supply users with more data and accessible instruments for

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RTCC: Scientists in China have revealed the world’s lightest material, a carbon gel six times lighter than air, could provide a boost to a number of emissions slashing technologies. From batteries to desalination, a new carbon aerogel derived from graphene, could have a big role to play in improving a number of existing low carbon

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Reuters: Climate change could get worse quickly if huge amounts of extra heat absorbed by the oceans are released back into the air, scientists said after unveiling new research showing that oceans have helped mitigate the effects of warming since 2000. Heat-trapping gases are being emitted into the atmosphere faster than ever, and the 10

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In a world where it’s commonly believed that one person can’t make a difference, one Indian man is proving that argument to be false. Jadav Molai Payeng is a modern-day hero to those who fight to protect natural habitats around the world. He’s not a traditional activist, but a man who was motivated 30 years

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China Post: Flights will become bumpier as global warming destabilizes air currents at altitudes used by commercial airliners, climate scientists warned Monday. Already, atmospheric turbulence injures hundreds of airline passengers each year, sometimes fatally, damaging aircraft and costing the industry an estimated US$150 million, scientists said. “Climate change is not just warming the Earth’s surface,

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China Daily: China plans to increase its presence in Antarctica with two more research stations, an official in charge of the country’s scientific programs in the polar regions said on Tuesday. The two new facilities are expected to join the existing three Chinese stations on Antarctica — Changcheng (Great Wall), Zhongshan, and Kunlun — by

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World Bank: Looking Beyond the Horizon: How Climate Change Impacts and Adaptation Responses Will Reshape Agriculture in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Food security remains a key development challenge across the globe, with some projections estimating the need for an increase in agricultural production of 70-100 percent by 2050. Shifts in temperature and precipitation are

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Asian Scientist: Temperatures in South-East Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin are set to rise by up to three times the global average temperature increase, according to a USAID-funded study. By Alexander Hotz – Temperatures in South-East Asia’s Lower Mekong Basin are set to rise by up to three times the global average temperature increase, according to

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ANI: Cyclical activity below the Earth’s surface does indeed play a part in rising sea levels and global warming, a new study has found. However, the article’s authors, New York University’s Michael Rampino and Carleton University’s Andreas Prokoph, note that changes spurred by the earth’s interior are gradual, taking place in periods ranging from 60

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Indian Express: Himalayan nations, including India and China, will be affected in a big way by the melting of the ice in Arctic and the glaciers in Himalayas, Iceland President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson today warned as he asked parties and organisations to hold dialogue to deal with the issue. Noting that the Arctic, the Himalayas

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WeAdapt: What are mitigation and adaptation? Mitigation and adaptation are the two strategies for addressing climate change. Mitigation is an intervention to reduce the emissions sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases. Adaptation is an ‘adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic stimuli or their effects, which moderates

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Climatefundsupdates: The Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC is the largest event of the year for those working on climate change. This year attention turns to Qatar, the host of the 18th of these major conferences. Once again, the hot topic will be how to finance developing-country efforts to respond to climate change. 2013

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‘Adaptation Ideas’ is a new series of Climate Himalaya. Here we will be showcasing a number of simple, practical and innovative ideas those could be adopted by individuals, communities and organizations for various environment friendly adaptive practices at home, offices and in public places. The purpose of this ongoing series is to disseminate and communicate

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Guardian: The citizens of Pompeii had no warning of the disaster about to befall them. Today, we do not have that excuse. The twin themes of the moment are death and rebirth. With the snow melting and the sun peeking through, the Easter story’s promise, that what’s gained through the latter will outweigh what was

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Tribune: Since February, the Pakistan-Environment Protection Agency (Pak-EPA) has been negotiating with the business community and plastic bag manufacturers to shift to an eco-friendly alternative for plastic bags. The agency’s efforts began when the Ministry of Law and Justice notified the Prohibition of Non degradable Plastic Bags (Manufacture, Sale, Use) Regulation 2013 earlier this year.

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