TR Foundation: For years, Deepa Newar and her neighbours lived with the fear that their livelihoods – and even their lives – might be swept away without warning. Newar and her fellow residents of Jhirpu Phulpingkatti, a village some 112 km (70 miles) northeast of Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital, live perched on the bank of the

[continue reading...]

Online International NN: Federal Secretary of the Ministry of Climate Change, Syed Muhammad Ali Gardezi has said that providing and sustaining water for the needs of the surging population people has become a daunting challenge of the present time and achieving sustainable development in both the developed and developing countries and Pakistan is not exception

[continue reading...]

Guardian: More than 32 million people fled their homes last year because of disasters such as floods, storms and earthquakes – 98% of displacement related to climate change. Asia and west and central Africa bore the brunt. Some 1.3 million people were displaced in rich countries, with the US particularly affected. Floods in India and

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

Stephen Bailey: You need a bit of height to appreciate the size of a brick factory. You need to get close to appreciate the human cost. From a hill over Duwakot you can see people labouring in the grey mud beneath the towering chimney.  Down in the factory you can see the weather beaten faces,

[continue reading...]

Buenos AH: The tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan is the last surviving paradise on Earth. This legendary Shangri-La, now a member of the United Nations, is home to over 700,000 people. Until 1958, it was practically closed to visitors. When Nehru, the Indian Prime Minister, visited Bhutan during that year he rode in on a

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

With climate science evolving but remaining uncertain, how can journalists accurately communicate about climate change in the media? And, how can they break through the national perspective of their media outlet to give the regional story of climate change? The 24 journalists selected from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka as the CDKN/Panos

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

D+C: The impacts of climate change make the poorest people on earth suffer more than others. This is evident in Mustang, a northern district of Nepal. Entire villages are thinking of relocating because water scarcity is getting worse. Swiss researchers assessed the options. Mustang is a tough place to live because of desert-like drought, freezing

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

The Hindu: Chinese authorities have granted approval for an environmental assessment of a controversial 2 GW dam project — slated to be the country’s tallest dam — despite concerns voiced by a number of environmental groups. The Ministry of Environmental Protection this week said it had approved a year-long assessment of the Shuangjiangkou project on

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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,

[continue reading...]

I thought that it would be time to stop writing about the environment, specifically about climate change, that my previous articles had  lambasted and even backed up with actions to mitigate,enhance,restore and rehabilitate our natural resources. However, today’s extreme heat prompted me back to writing. The day’s temperature was over 37-degrees  Centigrade. Frankly, without exaggeration,it

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

Shalini Dhyani: Writes about hill agriculture, agro-forest and such ecosystem practices from Indian Himalayan region. She emphasizes on improving the socio-economic condition of mountain people by adopting a range of animal husbandry, agro-forestry and traditional agriculture practices through better scientific and technical inputs. Entire Himalayan ecosystem is undergoing rapid land-use and climatic changes in last

[continue reading...]

Reuters: A newly established global panel on biodiversity faces being sidetracked by niche interests and northern agendas if it does not tread carefully, a meeting has heard. The Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services (IPBES) was formed in April 2012, with a mandate to assess the state of the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems, and provide accessible scientific

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

Zee News: It is increasingly likely that hundreds of millions of people will be displaced from their homelands in the near future as a result of global warming, according to an expert. That is the stark warning of economist and climate change expert Lord Stern following the news last week that concentrations of carbon dioxide

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

Business Standard: Climate change is likely to bring down the production of key foodgrain crops like wheat and rice in the country by up to 18% in 2020, Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said today. “Climate change is projected to reduce timely sown irrigated wheat production by about 6% in 2020. In case of late sown

[continue reading...]

South America has got its first think-tank aimed at providing climate change knowledge to decision-makers to help them design tools tailored to local needs. The Regional Centre for Climate Change and Decision-Making was launched earlier this year (19 March) in Montevideo, Uruguay, where it will have its headquarters and where it is organising its first

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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,

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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,

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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.

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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.

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]

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

[continue reading...]