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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The UNFCCC Secretariat has published a report on the technical workshop on ecosystem-based approaches for adaptation to climate change (FCC/SBSTA/2013/2), which was held in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, from 21-23 March 2013. The workshop sought to enhance parties’ and expert organizations’ understanding of ecosystem-based approaches for adaptation, share best practices and lessons learned, and identify areas for

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CNN: New research suggesting that the Earth may be warming a little more slowly than expected certainly does not  mean climate change is a false alarm, experts say. Several leading authorities on climate change have given a guarded welcome to research suggesting the Earth may warm more slowly than scientists had expected. An international research

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CGIAR: Almost 40 years ago, Revelle and Lakshminarayana (1975) coined the term “Ganges Water Machine” trying to find a solution to the fundamental problem of land and water development in the Ganges, where 80% of the monsoon-driven river flow occurs during 4 months from July to October. The dry-season flow of the Ganges in the

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Earthtimes: The University of Oxford’s Alexander Otto and the old Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)have stirred and issued a prediction about climate, based on how the earth is currently warming. Unfortunately, since the IPCC last said anything, people have realised that trends are accelerating and the future will probably have more pollutants than at

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Euresia Review: How will rainfall patterns across the tropical Indian and Pacific regions change in a future warming world? Climate models generally suggest that the tropics as a whole will get wetter, but the models don’t always agree on where rainfall patterns will shift in particular regions within the tropics. A new study, published online

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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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Hill post: The Himalayas are being pounded again. Timber was stolen first; medicinal and aromatic herbs next. Now power projects are stealing water, life line for 30 million mountain folks and 3 billion in the Himalayan-water-dependent nations, as far as Vietnam. [1] The reassessed country-wise potential is: Pakistan: 41,722 MW, India 108,143 MW; Nepal 83,000

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ABC News: Climate changes and rising carbon dioxide levels don’t just affect the environment. Experts say they also affect your nose. Warmer temperatures and higher carbon dioxide levels mean certain plants will thrive, and those are the plants that tend to make us sneeze during allergy season. Allergies may seem like a minor nuisance, but

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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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EJNet: The most comprehensive survey of the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming ever done reveals a 97.1 per cent consensus. The research team surveyed the abstracts of over 12,000 scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 on the subjects of “global climate change” or “global warming” to see to what extent they endorsed or

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Scientific American: Increased melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet and other ice losses worldwide have helped to move the North Pole several centimeters east each year since 2005. Global warming is changing the location of Earth’s geographic poles, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin, report

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Science Alert: Ocean warming has already affected global fisheries in the past four decades, a new international study has found, driving up the proportion of warm-water fish being caught and posing a threat to food security worldwide. The new study, conducted by researchers from the University of Tasmania’s specialist Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies

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BBC: Nandi Lal Paswan, 59, is a farmer in Sripur, East Terai in Nepal. He is married and takes responsibility for the six other family members living in his house. Nandi Lal is content with his life, but he has worked hard to get where he is today. Thirty years ago he began farming a

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CNN: As temperatures climb in parts of northern Europe, some bird species, unable to find other ways of adapting to the warmer conditions, are simply not migrating as they once did. Most birds are acutely sensitive to changes in temperature. Scientists now say that changes in climate and warmer temperatures in parts of Europe have

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Indian Himalayan basins are earmarked for widespread dam building, but aggregate effects of these dams on terrestrial ecosystems are unknown. We mapped distribution of 292 dams (under construction and proposed) and projected effects of these dams on terrestrial ecosystems under different scenarios of land-cover loss. We analyzed land-cover data of the Himalayan valleys, where dams

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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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Cancún, Mexico — Researchers taking a new look at the snow and ice covering Mount Everest and the national park that surrounds it are finding abundant evidence that the world’s tallest peak is shedding its frozen cloak. The scientists have also been studying temperature and precipitation trends in the area and found that the Everest

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Business Standard: India is amongst the countries most vulnerable to climate change and must develop its own model to study changes at the regional level and take necessary mitigation measures, a senior US scientist of Indian origin said. Anjuli S. Bamzai, program director of the Climate and Large Scale Dynamics Program of the National Science

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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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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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Huffingtonpost: The habitats of many common plants and animals will shrink dramatically this century unless governments act quickly to cut rising greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said on Sunday after studying 50,000 species around the world. The scientists from Britain, Australia and Colombia said plants, amphibians and reptiles were most vulnerable as global temperatures rise and

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What does successful adaptation look like? This is a question frequently asked by planners, policy makers and other professionals charged with the task of developing and implementing adaptation strategies. While adaptation is increasingly recognized as an important climate risk management strategy, and on-the-ground adaptation planning activity is becoming more common-place, there is no clear guidance

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Thomson Reuters Foundation: Plans to protect ecosystems and help people adapt to climate change ― also known as ecosystem-based adaptation (EBA) ― must involve vulnerable groups, including women and communities greatly hit by global warming if they are to succeed, according to scientists who met in Tanzania last month (21-23 March). Scientists and policymakers at the UN-ledinternational

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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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World Bank: On World Water Day 2013: 85% of the world’s population lives on the driest half of the land, 783 million people do not have access to clean water, and 2.5 billion do not have access to adequate sanitation. The economic and health effects will be exacerbated by climate change and its effect on

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From local knowledge to national policy: how can China’s mountain communities better adapt to climate change? Faced with increasing rainfall variability – especially continuous, four-year droughts – mountain farmers in Southwest China’s Yunnan province have developed innovative strategies to minimize water-related threats to their livelihoods. Yufang Su, Jianchu Xu and a team of World Agroforestry

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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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World Bank: Climate Change Cutting Crop Production in Eastern Europe and Central Asia by over 25 Percent unless Action Is Taken Now. In parts of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, climate change is poised to hamper food production and curb rural incomes over the next decades unless farmers get the help they need through improved

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An amendment to the old treaty between the US and Mexico promises to bring back life to the dry Colorado delta. ‘Minute 319’, apart from sending water down the river and restoring the native habitat, also calls for more water sharing between the two countries, writes Henry Fountain. German Munoz looked out at the river

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Science Daily: A team of researchers led by Associate Professor Edward L. Webb of the National University of Singapore (NUS) is calling for the global adoption of a method to identify areas that are vulnerable to sea-level rise. The method, which utilises a simple, low-cost tool, is financially and technically accessible to every country with

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Mongabay: In Climate Myths: The Campaign Against Climate Science, Dr. John J. Berger deconstructs the climate change denialists’ myths in simple, easy-to-read terms. According to the Pew Research Center: “Nearly seven-in-ten (69%) [Americans] say there is solid evidence that the earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades, up six points

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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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Daily Times: Speakers at the launch of the policy brief on water management in the Central Karakorum National Park (CKNP) emphasised the need for collaborative and synchronised efforts to research the impact of climatic changes in the highlands. They said only the integrated and collaborative approach would help conserve the large glaciers for smooth and

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The Hindu: Development of a large-scale software model to examine the impact of climate change in Kerala is part of a forthcoming scientific study that will formulate an integrated climate change database and information system for the State. The proposal, estimated at Rs.80 crore, will map the impact of climate change on agriculture, fisheries, industries,

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Science Daily: As temperatures warm, plants release gases that help form clouds and cool the atmosphere, according to research from IIASA and the University of Helsinki. The new study, published in Nature Geoscience, identified a negative feedback loop in which higher temperatures lead to an increase in concentrations of natural aerosols that have a cooling

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PIB: There is no clear cause and effect established between global warming and excessive rains and floods. Monsoon rainfall varies on different spatial and temporal scales. Extreme rainfall events that occur at some isolated places (viz. heavy rainfall over Mumbai or in Rajasthan) are highly localized and are part of the natural variability of the

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The Atlantic: Government officials say it’s been caused by statistical inaccuracies and climate change. But is that the whole story? As recently as 20 years ago, there were an estimated 50,000 rivers in China, each covering a flow area of at least 60 square miles. But now, according to China’s First National Census of Water,

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Atlantic wire: The dramatic images resulting from this week’s floods in the Midwest are, in a way, a welcome sight. Six months ago, the region was wracked by drought. While the sudden drought-to-flood transition may not be due to climate change, it’s close to what some models predict. High water has been pervasive throughout the

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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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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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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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TckTckTck: A groundbreaking new study, published in Nature Geoscience, has found that global temperatures were warmer between 1970 and 2000 than any other 30-year period in the last 1,400 years. The research, compiled by 73 scientists from 28 institutions worldwide, is the most comprehensive reconstruction of global temperatures to date. It used corals, ice cores, tree rings, lake 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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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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CNN: Climate change is responsible for more than half the changes detected in the world’s vegetation, researchers say, and human activities for only about a third. The amount of vegetation in the world, and the way it is spread across the planet, has changed significantly in the last three decades, researchers say. They attribute more

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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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Alertnet: Pakistan’s government has boosted the funding of a state institution that researches the impacts of climate change, and granted it autonomy, in an effort to increase the quality of its recommendations on climate resilience for government policy and programmes. The Global Change Impact Studies Centre (GCISC) will focus on research aimed at helping sectors

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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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