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By Rochelle GLUZMAN PARIS, Jan 9, 2024 (AFP) – The year of 2023 was the hottest on record, with the increase in Earth’s surface temperature nearly crossing the critical threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, EU climate monitors said Tuesday. Climate change intensified heatwaves, droughts and wildfires across the planet, and pushed the global thermometer 1.48 C above the preindustrial benchmark, the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) reported. “It is also the first year with all […]
Bottled water is up to a hundred times worse than previously thought when it comes to the number of tiny plastic bits it contains, a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences said Monday. Using a recently invented technique, scientists counted on average 240,000 detectable fragments of plastic per liter of water in popular brands — between 10-100 times higher than prior estimates — raising potential health concerns that require further […]
STOCKHOLM, Jan 3, 2024 (AFP) – Sweden on Wednesday recorded its coldest January night in 25 years, with a reading of minus 43.6 degrees Celsius in the far north as a cold snap hit the Nordics. “To put that into perspective, that is the lowest January temperature in Sweden since 1999,” Mattias Lind, meteorologist at Sweden’s national weather agency SMHI, told AFP. In January 1999, a temperature of minus 49 degrees Celsius (minus 56.2 Fahrenheit) […]
By Laurence COUSTAL PARIS, Dec 27, 2023 (AFP) – As the deadliest year this century for forest fires comes to a close, attention is turning to how to prevent such infernos happening again. In 2023 forest fires destroyed nearly 400 million hectares (988 million acres) of land around the world, killed more than 250 people and emitted 6.5 billion tonnes of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. Pauline Vilain-Carlotti, a researcher in geography and wildfires, told […]
By Paula RAMON YUMA, United States, Dec 23, 2023 (AFP) – As the world pivots from planet-warming fossil fuels to renewable energy, a new pollution problem is rearing its head: What to do with old or worn-out solar panels? Thousands of photovoltaic slabs are being installed across the United States every day, particularly in the sunny west and south of the country, as states like California race to towards greener energy production. But with an […]
By Zinyange Auntony Storm clouds are finally gathering over Zimbabwe’s biggest animal reserve, but it has come too late for more than 110 elephants that have died in a searing, extended drought. There is little that Simba Marozva and other rangers at the Hwange National Park can do except cut the tusks off the rotting corpses before poachers find them. With the black clouds in recent days promising life-saving rains, the rangers may not find […]
By Issam AHMED Scientists investigating how Antarctica’s ice sheets retreated in the deep past have turned to an innovative approach: studying the genes of octopuses that live in its chilly waters. A new analysis published Thursday in Science finds that geographically-isolated populations of the eight-limbed sea creatures mated freely around 125,000 years ago, signaling an ice-free corridor during a period when global temperatures were similar to today. The findings suggest the West Antarctic Ice Sheet […]
Peruvian authorities have seized some 4,000 turtles that originated in the Amazon at the country’s main international airport, the national wildlife service said Thursday. The National Forestry and Wildlife Service said in a statement it has intercepted “a shipment of live turtles at the Jorge Chavez airport that were going to be exported to Indonesia.” Among the reptiles were baby Arrau turtles — the largest river turtle in South America — and the yellow-spotted river […]
By Simon Sturdee and Harumi Ozawa KARUIZAWA, Japan, Dec 21, 2023 (AFP) – Thousands of bears are being shot in Japan each year as they become more and more of a problem. Junpei Tanaka and his dog Rela, straining at her leash in the woods, have a kinder, smarter way. People moving from rural areas and Japan’s ageing society — plus climate change affecting bears’ food and hibernation time — are prompting ever more of […]
Temperatures in cities across northern China hit record lows on Wednesday, as authorities issued an alert for extreme cold across swathes of the country. The national weather office said subzero temperatures smashed records at five stations in the provinces and regions of Shanxi, Hebei and Inner Mongolia in the early hours of Wednesday. That included a drop to minus 33.2 degrees Celsius (minus 27.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in Shanxi’s historic city of Datong and -27C in […]
By Issam AHMED The Arctic saw its warmest ever summer in 2023, the result of accelerating human-caused climate change that is pushing ecosystems and the people that depend on them into uncharted territory, according to an official report Tuesday. Average summer surface air temperature from the months of July-September was 43 degrees Fahrenheit (6.4 Celsius), the highest since records began in 1900. The Arctic is warming roughly four times faster than the rest of the […]
MANILA, Dec 12, 2023 (AFP) – The Philippines has so far endured fewer storms in 2023 than in any of the past 25 years and now faces potentially the worst drought in decades, officials said Tuesday. The tropical archipelago nation — which is ranked among the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change — is usually affected by around 20 major storms a year. So far this year, only 10 have made landfall […]
