Electricity is essential to just about everyone – rich and poor, old and young. Yet, when severe storms strike, socioeconomically disadvantaged communities often wait longest to recover. That isn’t just a perception. We analyzed data from over 15 million consumers in 588 U.S. counties who lost power when hurricanes made landfall between January 2017 and […]
You’ve probably heard people say, “It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity.” There’s a lot of truth to that phrase, and it’s important to understand it as summer temperatures rise. Humidity doesn’t just make you feel sticky and uncomfortable – it also creates extra dangerous conditions on hot days. Together, too much heat and humidity […]
“My parents said the planet is getting too hot for people to live here. They called it climate change. What does that mean?” – Joseph, age 12, Boise, Idaho Scott Denning, Colorado State University The Conversation Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert […]
In 2023, wind and solar combined added more new energy to the global mix than any other source, for the first time in history, according to Carbon Brief analysis of newly released data. Nevertheless, record global demand for energy saw coal and oil use also reaching new highs last year, the Energy Institute Statistical Review of World […]
Accumulating evidence supports the interpretation in our Pipeline paper: decreasing human-made aerosols increased Earth’s energy imbalance and accelerated global warming in the past decade. Climate sensitivity and aerosol forcing, physically independent quantities, were tied together by United Nations IPCC climate assessments that rely excessively on global climate models (GCMs) and fail to measure climate forcing […]
El Niño is zipping along in the tropical Pacific. There’s a 54% chance that this El Niño event will end up “historically strong” (more details below), potentially ranking in the top 5 on record. Looking ahead, it’s likely that El Niño will end and neutral conditions return by April–June. By Emily Becker NOAA El Niño is associated […]
Watch it for the dad joke, stay for the climate message. Thanks to Jeff Glor and the awesome crew at CBS Saturday for this fantastic segment! By Dr Michael Mann Famous climate scientist Michael Mann on new book “Our Fragile Moment” Michael Mann has been at the center of the discussion on climate change for over […]
Hotter summers, drier forests, rising waters: climate change is not just a threat to our future, it’s hurting our world right now. While there are many ways human activity has brought about climate change, global electricity generation sources are among the leading culprits. Despite small upticks in the supply of wind and solar power, we […]
This year’s string of record-breaking disasters – from Hurricane Lee to deadly wildfires and catastrophic floods to record-high ocean temperatures and record-low sea ice in Antarctica – seems like an acceleration of human-induced climate change. And it is. But not only because greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise. What we are also observing is the […]
On The Secret Life of Cookies podcast with Melissa Rothkopf: “What we learn to understand now, will be vital to all our future understanding of this catastrophic crisis.” By Dr Michael Mann “Noted climate scientist and author Dr. Michael Mann has a gift for making the most complex ideas clear enough for us all to […]
Global temperature in June and July (Fig. 1) shot far above the prior records for those months for the 140 years of good instrumental data. Early indications are that warming exceeds expectation based on only the long-term trend due to increasing greenhouse gases (GHGs) plus the emerging El Nino. Three additional mechanisms will have a […]
Our team used superglue as a starting material to develop a low-cost, recyclable and easily produced transparent plastic called polyethyl cyanoacrylate that has properties similar to those of plastics used for single-use products like cutlery, cups and packaging. Unlike most traditional plastics, this new plastic can be easily converted back to its starting materials, even […]
Today marks the release of the final installment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Sixth Assessment Report (AR6), an eight-year long undertaking from the world’s most authoritative scientific body on climate change. Drawing on the findings of 234 scientists on the physical science of climate change, 270 scientists on impacts, adaptation and vulnerability to climate change, and […]
It was anchovy fishermen in Peru who first noticed and named El Niño events in the tropical Pacific hundreds of years ago. Their catches would fluctuate and the largest declines were seen near Christmas when the ocean was at its warmest – they called it El Niño de Navidad, the boy of Christmas. William Roberts, […]
India and China were widely criticised at COP26 in 2021 when they pushed to tone down the language on coal consumption that emerged from the climate summit. As a result of this intervention from two highly coal-dependent nations, with the covert support of other key players, the final version of the Glasgow Climate Pact only called on nations to “phase down” rather than “phase […]