Tag: climate

Bangladesh reopens schools despite heat alert

DHAKA, April 28, 2024 (AFP) – Millions of students returned to their reopened schools across Bangladesh Sunday despite a lingering heatwave that prompted a nationwide classroom shutdown order last weekend. Average maximum temperatures in the capital Dhaka over the past week have been 4-5 degrees Celsius (7.2-9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 30-year average for the same period, with several more days of hot weather forecast. Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing […]

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Dubai roads, airport reel from floods after record rains

By Talek Harris, Sahar Al-Attar and Amanda Mouawad DUBAI, April 17, 2024 (AFP) – Dubai’s giant highways were clogged by flooding and its major airport was in chaos as the Middle East financial centre remained gridlocked on Wednesday, a day after the heaviest rains on record. Tailbacks snaked along waterlogged, six-lane expressways after up to 259.5 millimetres (10.2 inches) of rain, the most since records began 75 years ago, fell on the desert United Arab […]

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Thousands flee flooding in Russian Urals region of Orenburg

ORENBURG, Russia, April 13, 2024 (AFP) – Russian emergency services on Saturday said they had evacuated thousands of people from the Orenburg region in the south of the Urals as flood water continued to rise. Fast-rising temperatures have melted snow and ice, and along with heavy rain have caused a number of major rivers that cross Russia and Kazakhstan to overflow this month. In the city of Orenburg, one of the worst affected areas in […]

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Climate change is slowing heat waves, prolonging misery

Climate change is causing heat waves to slow to a crawl, exposing humans to extreme temperatures for longer than ever before, a study published in Science Advances said Friday. While previous research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense, the new paper differed by treating heat waves as distinct weather patterns that move along air currents, just as storms do. For every decade between 1979 to […]

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Landmark Australia, Tuvalu climate and security pact to go ahead

SYDNEY, March 27, 2024 (AFP) – Australia and Tuvalu are pressing ahead with a landmark treaty offering the Pacific Island’s citizens a climate refuge, quieting speculation about the fate of the pact. The 11-page treaty was tabled to the Australian parliament late Tuesday — offering Tuvalu residents the right to live in Australia if their homeland is lost to rising sea levels. The pact also commits Australia to defending Tuvalu in the face of natural […]

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Climate change changing Earth’s time: study

By Daniel Lawler and Juliette Collen PARIS, March 27, 2024 (AFP) – Struggle to wrap your head around daylight savings? Spare a thought for the world’s timekeepers, who are trying to work out how climate change is affecting Earth’s rotation — and in turn, how we keep track of time. In a strange twist, global warming could even help out timekeepers by delaying the need for history’s first “negative leap second” by three years, a […]

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NASA: El Niño and climate change drive global sea level rise

Global average sea level rose by about 0.3 inches (0.76 centimeters) from 2022 to 2023 — nearly four times the increase of the previous year — NASA said Thursday, attributing the “significant jump” to a strong El Nino and a warming climate. The NASA-led analysis is based on more than 30 years of satellite observations, with the initial satellite launching in 1992 and the latest in 2020. Overall, sea levels have risen by around four […]

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UN warns ‘planet on the brink’ after warmest decade on record

By Nina LARSON GENEVA, March 19, 2024 (AFP) – Global heat records were “smashed” last year, the UN confirmed Tuesday, with 2023 rounding out the hottest decade on record, as heatwaves stalked oceans and glaciers suffered record ice loss. The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization issued its annual State of the Climate report, confirming preliminary data indicating that 2023 was by far the hottest year ever recorded. And it came at the end of “the […]

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Great Barrier Reef hit by seventh ‘mass bleaching event’ since 1998

By Laura CHUNG SYDNEY, March 8, 2024 (AFP) – A “mass bleaching event” is unfolding on Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef, authorities said Friday, as warming seas threaten the spectacular home to thousands of marine species. Often dubbed the “world’s largest living structure”, the Great Barrier Reef is a 2,300 kilometre (1,400 mile) expanse of tropical corals that house a stunning array of biodiversity. But repeated mass bleaching events have threatened to rob the tourist […]

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Above-normal temperatures for March-May due to El Nino: UN

By Robin MILLARD GENEVA, March 5, 2024 (AFP) – The warming El Nino weather phenomenon that peaked in December was one of the five strongest ever recorded, the United Nations said Tuesday, predicting that it would produce above-normal temperatures from now to May. Though El Nino is now gradually weakening, its impact will continue over the coming months by fuelling the heat trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) […]

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Faulty warnings, deforestation turned Philippine rains ‘deadly’: study

MANILA, March 1, 2024 (AFP) – Faulty warning systems, poverty and deforestation of mountains in the southern Philippines turned recent unseasonably heavy rains into deadly disasters, scientists said in a report Friday. More than 100 people were killed in landslides and floods in January and February on the country’s second-largest island of Mindanao as the northeast monsoon and a low pressure trough brought downpours. A study by the World Weather Attribution group found the unsually […]

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Vietnam’s ‘rice bowl’ cracks in monster heatwave

HANOI, Feb 28, 2024 (AFP) – Southern Vietnam, including business hub Ho Chi Minh City and its “rice bowl” Mekong Delta region, suffered an unusually long heatwave in February, weather officials said Wednesday. Several areas of the delta are also suffering drought and farmers are struggling to transport their crops due to low water levels in the region’s canals. The intense period of heat began on February 9, meteorologists told AFP, with temperatures reaching up […]

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