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Simultaneous harvest failures across major crop-producing regions are a threat to global food security. Concurrent weather extremes driven by a strongly meandering jet stream could trigger such events, but so far this has not been quantified. Specifically, the ability of state-of-the art crop and climate models to adequately reproduce such high impact events is a crucial component for estimating risks to global food security. Here we find an increased likelihood of concurrent low yields during summers featuring meandering jets in observations and models. While climate models accurately simulate atmospheric patterns, associated surface weather anomalies and negative effects on crop responses are mostly underestimated in bias-adjusted simulations. Given the identified model biases, future assessments of regional and concurrent crop losses from meandering jet states remain highly uncertain. Our results suggest that model-blind spots for such high-impact but deeply-uncertain hazards have to be anticipated and acc
Winter downpours also made 20% wetter and will occur every three years without urgent carbon cuts, experts warn
Dr Sarah Benn has long been concerned about the climate crisis, diligently recycling until she was “blue in the face”. But the rise of the climate activist group Extinction Rebellion in 2019 inspired her and her husband to go further. “We thought: well, if we don’t do it then who else is going to?”
Evidence shows a continuing increase in the frequency and severity of global heatwaves1,2, raising concerns about the future impacts of climate change and the associated socioeconomic costs3,4. Here we develop a disaster footprint analytical framework by integrating climate, epidemiological and hybrid input–output and computable general equilibrium global trade models to estimate the midcentury socioeconomic impacts of heat stress. We consider health costs related to heat exposure, the value of heat-induced labour productivity loss and indirect losses due to economic disruptions cascading through supply chains. Here we show that the global annual incremental gross domestic product loss increases exponentially from 0.03 ± 0.01 (SSP 245)–0.05 ± 0.03 (SSP 585) percentage points during 2030–2040 to 0.05 ± 0.01–0.15 ± 0.04 percentage points during 2050–2060. By 2060, the expected global economic losses reach a total of 0.6–4.6% with losses attributed to health loss (37–45%), labour productivity loss (18–37%) and i
European and US oil and gas majors have made profits of more than a quarter of a trillion dollars since Russia invaded Ukraine, according to a new analysis by Global Witness marking two years since the conflict began. After posting record gains in 2022 off the back of soaring energy prices, the big five fossil fuel companies paid shareholders an unprecedented $111 billion in 2023. In the hottest year ever recorded, this figure is some 158 times what was pledged to vulnerable nations at last year’s COP28 climate summit.
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New study reveals insight into which animals are most vulnerable to extinction due to climate change
(08/03) - University of OxfordA new study led by researchers at the University of Oxford has used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results, published today in the journal Science, could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change.
In Munich I heard both Ukrainians and Alexei Navalny’s widow tell us why Putin must be defeated, says Guardian columnist Timothy Garton Ash
A new paper published in the journal Science has warned that melting areas in the Arctic have become 'frontlines for resource extraction', describing it as a 'modern day gold rush'.
The celebrated science broadcaster and environmental activist says we have to stop elevating the economy and politics over the state of our world
There has been a strong push to promote increased investments in new nuclear power as a strategy to decarbonize economies, especially in the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). The evidence base for these initiatives is poor. Investments in new nuclear power plants are bad for the climate due to high costs and long construction times. Given the urgency of climate change mitigation, which requires reducing emissions from the EU electricity grid to almost zero in the 2030s (Pietzcker et al.1), preference should be given to the cheapest technology that can be deployed fastest. On both costs and speed, renewable energy sources beat nuclear. Every euro invested in new nuclear plants thus delays decarbonization compared to investments in renewable power. In a decarbonizing world, delays increase CO2 emissions. Our thoughts focus on new nuclear power plants (not phasing out existing plants) in the US and Europe. In Europe, new nuclear power plants are planned or seriously discussed in France, Czechia, Hu
Permafrost and glaciers in the high Arctic form an impermeable ‘cryospheric cap’ that traps a large reservoir of subsurface methane, preventing it from reaching the atmosphere. Cryospheric vulnerability to climate warming is making releases of this methane possible. On Svalbard, where air temperatures are rising more than two times faster than the average for the Arctic, glaciers are retreating and leaving behind exposed forefields that enable rapid methane escape. Here we document how methane-rich groundwater springs have formed in recently revealed forefields of 78 land-terminating glaciers across central Svalbard, bringing deep-seated methane gas to the surface. Waters collected from these springs during February–May of 2021 and 2022 are supersaturated with methane up to 600,000 times greater than atmospheric equilibration. Spatial sampling reveals a geological dependency on the extent of methane supersaturation, with isotopic evidence of a thermogenic source. We estimate annual methane emissions from prog
Rishi Sunak has confirmed that a fossil fuel-funded think tank helped to draft his government’s laws targeting climate protests.
Hopes of the UK government meeting its domestic and international climate targets have “worsened” over the past year, according to the CCC.
Emmanuel Macron’s government is at least doing the bare minimum to avert the planetary crisis – and putting the UK to shame, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Hundreds of students and graduates vow not to work for ‘climate wreckers that insure those responsible for the climate crisis’
The UK’s advertising watchdog has banned a group of big oil and gas company advertisements for being misleading as part of crackdown on “greenwashing”, or making something appear more sustainable than it really is.
..on a higher-resolution illustration of World3’s ‘runaway global warming’ scenario (∼8–12 °C+). Our simulation indicates rapid decline in food production and unequal distribution of ∼6 billion deaths due to starvation by 2100. ..
Terrestrial ecosystems have taken up about 32% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the past six decades1. Large uncertainties in terrestrial carbon–climate feedbacks, however, make it difficult to predict how the land carbon sink will respond to future climate change2. Interannual variations in the atmospheric CO2 growth rate (CGR) are dominated by land–atmosphere carbon fluxes in the tropics, providing an opportunity to explore land carbon–climate interactions3–6. It is thought that variations in CGR are largely controlled by temperature7–10 but there is also evidence for a tight coupling between water availability and CGR11. Here, we use a record of global atmospheric CO2, terrestrial water storage and precipitation data to investigate changes in the interannual relationship between tropical land climate conditions and CGR under a changing climate. We find that the interannual relationship between tropical water availability and CGR became increasingly negative during 1989–2018 compared to 1960–1989
the biophysical limits of food production are being reached. Second, current food production systems are actively destroying the very resource base upon which they rely. Third, the majority of food production and all its storage and distribution is critically dependent upon fossil fuels, not only making the food supply vulnerable to price and supply instability, but also presenting an impossible choice between food security and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Fourth, climate change is already negatively impacting the food supply and will do so with increasing intensity as the Earth continues to warm and weather destabilises. Fifth, the trajectory of increasing food demand that cannot easily be reversed. Sixth, the prioritisation of economic efficiency and profit in world trade has undermined food sovereignty and the resilience of food production at multiple scales, making both production and distribution highly vulnerable to disruptive shocks. Considered individually, each one of the hard trends presents a
UK tops all league tables for highly polluting form of travel, with a flight taking off every six minutes last year
Campaigners say Rosebank, with a potential yield of 500m barrels, would seriously undermine legal commitment to net zero
After unusually low amounts of rain and snow this winter, the continent faces a severe water shortage.
I cannot support laws that defend those who destroy the planet, and criminalise those who try to protect it, says Jolyon Maugham KC
Our rising power finally reached the point where we could destroy ourselves – the first point at which the risks to humanity from within exceeded the risks from the natural world. These extreme risks – high-impact threats with global reach – define our time. They range from global tragedies such as Covid-19, to existential risks which could lead to human extinction. By our estimates – weighing the different probabilities of events ranging from asteroid impact to nuclear war – the likelihood of the world experiencing an existential catastrophe over the next 100 years is one in six. Russian roulette.
It’s not ‘the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ if campaigners cannot explain their motivations to a jury, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
Major mapping project reveals PFAS have been found at high levels at thousands of sites
Past governments blamed the growing of coca – the base component of cocaine – for clearcutting, but a recent study shows otherwise
Dozens of people have been imprisoned, as changes in the law are used to curb protest. Is it part of a turn towards a more authoritarian state?
Black Mountains College in Wales aims to prepare students for life during a planetary emergency. The college is this year offering a radical new degree course designed to prepare students for a career in times of climate breakdown, and build a generation with the innovative skills and ideas required to tackle the crisis.
Studying the demise of historic civilisations can tell us about the risk we face today, says collapse expert Luke Kemp. Worryingly, the signs are worsening.
