Global News

[ad_1] WASHINGTON: State-of-the-art climate models drastically underestimate how much extreme rainfall increases under global warming , according to a study published Monday that signals a future of more frequent catastrophic floods unless humanity curbs greenhouse emissions. It comes as countries prepare to meet at the COP28 summit in Dubai beginning later this week, amid fears it could soon be impossible to limit long-term warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius scientists say is necessary to curb the worst effects of human-caused climate change. Researchers from the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) looked at the intensity and frequency of daily precipitation extremes over land in 21 "next generation" climate models used by a UN body in its global assessments. They then compared the changes projected by the models with those observed historically, finding that nearly all climate models significantly underestimated the rates at which increases in preci

[ad_1] UNITED NATIONS: Island nations bearing the brunt of climate change this week confronted rich countries at the United Nations General Assembly, saying the failure by developed countries to act with urgency had put the islands' survival at risk. "There are many amongst us, the small and marginalized islands of our globe, surrounded by rising seas and scorched by rising temperatures, who are beginning to question this annual parade of flowery speeches and public pretense of brotherhood, otherwise known as the UN annual General Assembly," Saint Lucia prime minister Philip Pierre told the gathering on Friday. Several speakers at the week-long event quoted UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres , who in July cautioned that the era of global warming had ended and "the era of global boiling has arrived." A perceived lack of urgency by developed nations was a recurring theme. Speakers emphasized that a failure to sufficiently curb greenhouse gas emiss

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: Global warming may uncover an ancient river landscape hidden beneath the East Antarctic Ice Sheet for a million years, according to a recent study. Although this ancient landscape remains untouched by the massive ice retreat in the region, projected climate warming could expose it in the future, as per a paper published on Tuesday in Nature Communications. The author of the study and who researches ice sheet behavior, long-term, and landscape evolution at Durham University in the UK, Stewart Jamieson , told ABC News that for about 34 million years, ice has covered Antarctica. Before that, the continent had a comparatively warm climate similar to modern-day southern South America, such as the Patagonia region in Argentina and Chile. According to Jamieson, at one time, there was evidence that Antarctica had tropical vegetation, including palm trees. Jamieson said, Scientists have recently found a vast landscape shaped by ancient rivers in Antarctica. This land

[ad_1] ALEXANDROUPOLIS: Firefighters on Tuesday found the burnt bodies of 18 people believed to have been migrants who had crossed the Turkish border into an area of northeastern Greece where wildfires have raged for days. The discovery near the city of Alexandroupolis came as hundreds of firefighters battled dozens of wildfires across the country amid gale-force winds. On Monday, two people died and two firefighters were injured in separate fires in northern and central Greece. With their hot, dry summers, southern European countries are particularly prone to wildfires. Another major blaze has been burning across Tenerife in Spain's Canary Islands for a week, although no injuries or damage to homes was reported. European Union officials have blamed climate change for the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires in Europe, noting that 2022 was the second-worst year for wildfire damage on record after 2017. In Greece, police activated the country's Disaster Vi

[ad_1] Sweltering heat is blanketing much of the planet, and the past seven days have been the hottest week on record, the latest grim milestone in a series of climate-change-driven extremes. Earth ’s average temperature on Wednesday remained at an unofficial record high set the day before. And for the seven-day period ending Wednesday, the daily average temperature was .08 degrees Fahrenheit (.04 degrees Celsius) higher than any week in 44 years of record-keeping, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. The average global temperature for Tuesday and Wednesday was 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius). That follows a short-lived record set Monday, at 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 Celsius). The Climate Reanalyzer figures are unofficial but significant data, and an indication that climate change is reaching uncharted territory. “The situation we are wit

[ad_1] Global rise in temperatures is increasing the threat of fungal infections, which can be fatal to human lives, according to US health officials. Climate predictions show that temperatures will likely rise by more than 1.5 Celsius above the UN-mandated pre-industrial levels at some point before 2027. The health officials state that climate change is "pushing the organisms to adapt to better infect and invade people", the Telegraph reported. "Since many of these fungal pathogens typically exist in nature, they`re not as well adapted to human or mammalian body temperatures at 37 degrees centigrade," Dr Michael Kurilla, a director of the US National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences, a department within the National Institutes of Health was quoted as saying. "But with global warming, they are actually adapting... (it is) becoming much easier for fungi to colonise and infect and invade citizens, as well as other mammalian species," he

[ad_1] NEW DELHI: The pace and scale of what has been done so far, as well as the current pledges of emission cuts by nations, are insufficient to tackle climate change and the world may well breach the dangerous threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature rise (from the 1850-1900 level) by 2030, warns UN climate panel IPCC in its latest report. The IPCC, while releasing its “synthesis report” on six previous findings post-2015, said on Monday that the planet will warm permanently by at least 1.5 degrees C in the next two decades in all scenarios. The report said a 1.5 degrees C warming is likely to trigger a trail of destruction across the world due to an increase in the number of extreme weather events and sea level rise resulting from the melting of polar ice. Pitching for global “net zero” emissions by 2050 as a necessity to save the world from such disastrous consequences of climate change, the report made a strong case for cutting carbon dioxide emission by almost half b

[ad_1] Sweltering heat is blanketing much of the planet, and the past seven days have been the hottest week on record, the latest grim milestone in a series of climate-change-driven extremes. Earth ’s average temperature on Wednesday remained at an unofficial record high set the day before. And for the seven-day period ending Wednesday, the daily average temperature was .08 degrees Fahrenheit (.04 degrees Celsius) higher than any week in 44 years of record-keeping, according to data from the University of Maine’s Climate Reanalyzer, a tool that uses satellite data and computer simulations to measure the world’s condition. The average global temperature for Tuesday and Wednesday was 62.9 degrees Fahrenheit (17.18 degrees Celsius). That follows a short-lived record set Monday, at 62.6 degrees Fahrenheit (17.01 Celsius). The Climate Reanalyzer figures are unofficial but significant data, and an indication that climate change is reaching uncharted territory. “The situation we are wit