Climate history

Half of the Earth's glaciers, notably smaller ones, are destined to disappear by the end of the century because of climate change, but limiting global warming could save others, according to a new study.

The findings, published in the journal Science on Jan. 5, provide the most comprehensive look so far at the future of the world's 215,000 glaciers.

Whether they realize it or not, some 7.6 billion people - 96% of humanity - have felt the impact of global warming on temperatures in the past 12 months, researchers say.

But some regions have felt it much more strongly and more often than others, according to a report by Climate Central, a climate science think tank.

Heat waves, intensified by climate change, have cost the global economy trillions of dollars in the last 30 years, a study published Friday found, with poor countries paying the steepest price.  

And those lopsided economic effects contribute to widening inequalities around the world, according to the research.     

Researchers believe that huge, continent-spanning ‘flood basalt’ eruptions are what caused the mass extinction – and others in Earth’s history

A series of "once-in-a-millennium" rainstorms have lashed the United States in recent weeks, flooding areas baked dry by long-term droughts, as human-caused climate change brings weather whiplash.

And scientists warn that global warming means once-rare events are already much more likely, upending the models they have long used to predict possible disasters, with worse to come.

2019 was one of the three warmest years since the statistics were released, according to the annual report of the American Meteorological Society.

It involves more than 500 climatologists from 61 countries. According to the data, only 2015 and 2016 were warmer.

Last month was the hottest May on record worldwide, a European climate agency has reported, with temperatures in Siberia rising 10 degrees Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) above their normal levels.

Sir John Theodore Houghton, a prominent British atmospheric physicist and climate scientist, and co-chair of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), died on April 15 in the U.K, from a suspected case of coronavirus.

The climate crisis is a "systematic shock to civilization" rather than a social, environmental or economic issue, a United Nations Development Program (UNDP) official said on Feb. 26.

"It's a tremendous challenge for our planets and residents," Sukhrob Khojimatov, the UNDP's deputy resident representative, said at an event in the Turkish capital Ankara.

Due to climate change, about one-third of plants and animals can disappear from the planet by 2070, according to a scientific report in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.