Insight and inspiration in turbulent times.
The last time atmospheric carbon dioxide levels were this high, millions of years ago, the planet was very different. For one, humans didn’t exist. On Wednesday, scientists at the University of California in San Diego confirmed that April’s monthly average atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration breached 410 parts per million for the first time in our history.
What the Keeling Curve shows, then, are two separate but connected rifts in Earth’s metabolism. First, an increase in total CO2 that breaks with at least 800,000 years of history. Second, increased CO2 is changing the way that plants absorb and emit CO2, and that in turn is altering a seasonal cycle that has likely been unchanged for hundreds of millions of years.
Overall, the consensus in the scientific literature is that climate change will increase the number of people exposed to extreme events and, therefore, to subsequent psychological problems, such as worry, anxiety, depression, distress, loss, grief, trauma and even suicide.
How easy is it to tell the difference between so-called “fake news” and real news? Could algorithms designed to do that exclude important stories about climate and environment?
Shell knew climate change was going to be big, was going to be bad, and that its products were responsible for global warming all the way back in the 1980s, a tranche of new documents reveal.
In this ninth part of our mini-series on climate science, we turn to one of the key suspects in extreme weather events we have experienced in recent years—the shifting shape of the North Atlantic jet stream.
According to alarming weather data released this week, the Arctic just experienced its warmest winter on record. This is devastating news for polar bears, who are suffering as their sea-ice habitat melts from under their paws.
Last week my newly adopted home of Washington, D.C. had two back-to-back days of summer in the middle of winter. But the long walk I took on day one was not a particularly happy one. As most of the rest of the Washingtonians I encountered were experiencing the feel-good part of the feel-good catastrophe called climate change, I was experiencing the catastrophe part.
Our actions have planet-wide consequences that we don’t fully understand.
The climate system will heat well past 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) and perhaps up to 2°C without any further fossil fuel emissions. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from new research which should also help demystify the rhetoric from the 2015 Paris climate talks of keeping warming to below 1.5°C .
The current water shortage in Cape Town suggests that the effects of climate change can and will continue to surprise us with their suddenness and severity.
Now that one of the strongest nor’easters on record has swirled off to Canada, it’s time to talk about what everyone was thinking during the storm: Is this just what happens now? Short answer: yes. Get used to it. Wild storms like this week’s massive coastal cyclone will be part of winters in the Anthropocene.
