This is what passes for good news about coral reefs these days: Around the world, some reefs aren't dying as quickly as scientists thought they would.
A newly published study in Nature identifies 15 places in the Pacific and Indian Oceans where fish populations in coral reefs are doing better than ...
The concentration of heat-trapping CO2 pollution in the atmosphere has passed the 400 parts per million (ppm) threshold in Antarctica for the first time in at least 800,000 years, and possibly as long as four million years, scientists reported this week.
The new measurements, reported by British an...
A changing climate means that by 2070 koalas may no longer call large parts of inland Australia home, researchers have found.
Using a detailed ecological model, the University of Melbourne study shows hotter temperatures and altered rainfall patterns will make it much more difficult for koalas to...
Last year, global efforts on climate change focused on Paris, where representatives from 195 countries hammered out a landmark agreement to limit warming.
This week, the diplomatic scrum shifts to San Francisco.
Energy ministers from the world’s largest economies — including the United States, Chi...
It’s raining in Washington, D.C., as I write this, drops tapping out a steady beat that recalls the rhythms of my Oregon childhood. There’s something familiar about this weather, whatever its imperfections. Meanwhile, 1,100 miles to the southwest, a storm system threatens Dallas with torna...
Greenland's snowy surface has been getting darker over the past two decades, absorbing more heat from the sun and increasing snow melt, a new study of satellite data shows. That trend is likely to continue, with the surface's reflectivity, or albedo, decreasing by as much as 10 percent by ...
The hottest year in recorded history is coming to a close with a wave of extreme weather and ecosystem shifts, from unprecedented flooding in the UK to dangerous deluges in South America.
Looking back at 2015, it is clear that such extremes are not the except...
It’s no secret that whatever climate deal comes out of Paris in the next two weeks won’t be sufficient to hit the U.N. target of limiting the increase in global temperatures to no more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100. The U.N.’s climate chief Christiana Figueres even threatened to “chop the head off”...
Hurricane Patricia is bearing down on Mexico's Pacific coast Friday. Forecasters say this could be potentially catastrophic. It's a monster storm with sustained winds of 200 mph. That's the most powerful ever recorded by the National Hurricane Center in either the eastern Pacific or A...
Making predictions about climate variability often means looking to the past to find trends. Now paleoclimate researchers from the University of Missouri have found clues in exposed bedrock alongside an Alabama highway that could help forecast climate variability. In their study, the resea...
Last week, President Obama released a plan to cut carbon emissions from power plants. Climate change has also been cropping up on the presidential campaign trail — both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have released their own proposals.
Nearly three-quarters of Americans now favor government acti...
With sea levels rising, the U.S. Geological Survey Bay Area predicts the lower Napa River could see an increase of 39 inches over the next 100 years, a rise of more than 3 feet.
What this means for towns along the Napa River was the subject of a community meeting at Napa Valley College this week ho...
A disconcerting report released last week revealed that New York City could see a 6-foot rise in sea levels by the end of this century. It would make nearly half a million New Yorkers vulnerable to flooding, and waterfront properties would be virtually uninhabitable.
But what if climate c...
A new paper published in Global Change Biology summarizes the results of a 23-year experiment monitoring how global warming is impacting certain ecosystems.
At the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory, the scientists have monitored ten 30-square meter plots of meadowland since 1989. ...
Today hundreds of people across New Zealand buried their heads in sand to send a clear message to the New Zealand Government – get your head out of the sand and do something useful on climate change! With 12 events spanning the length of the country, and timed to coincide with the United Natio...
The latest IPCC report turns up the heat on policymakers - and rightly so. It is high time to get serious about the switch from oil and coal to renewables, says DW climate correspondent Irene Quaile.
Experts from more that 100 governments went through the latest IPCC report with a fine-to...
Why is it so difficult to teach climate change in our classrooms?
My kids hear climate change discussed in the news as a very real threat, but it is largely absent from school science curricula. In fact, most children the world over don’t receive any formal academic reasoning to put the vast a...
Last month was the hottest June in more than 130 years of recorded weather history, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced Monday in its monthly state of the climate report, surpassing the previous record high for the month set in 1998.
June 2014 also marked the third st...
Fighting climate change and global warming is a big project, and encouraging the private sector to take part is an important part of President Obama's Climate Action Plan. That's what led to the U.S. Department of Energy announcing a $4 billion loan guarantee program on Thursday for new ideas o...
This past weekend, Pope Francis did something that was quietly revolutionary. In a talk at the Italian university of Molise, Francis characterized concerns about the environment as “one of the greatest challenges of our time”—a challenge that is theological, as well as political, in nature...
