Glaces & glaciers

“We have failed to shift the narrative and we are still caught up in the same legal, economic and political systems,” said David Suzuki in an exclusive interview with iPolitics. “For me, what we’ve got to do now is hunker down.”

Rapporteur calls for defossilization of economies and urgent reparations to avert ‘catastrophic’ rights and climate harms

Climate models that give a low warming from increases in greenhouse gases do not match satellite measurements. Future warming will likely be worse than thought unless society acts, according to a new study published in Science.

Economic assumptions about risks of the climate crisis are no longer relevant, says the communications expert Genevieve Guenther

For more than three decades, Brazilian climate scientist Carlos Nobre has warned that deforestation of the Amazon could push this globally important ecosystem past the point of no return. Working first at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research and more recently at the University of São Paulo, he is a global authority on tropical forests and how they could be restored.

The world has been too optimistic about the risk to humanity and planet – but devastation can still be avoided, says Timothy Lenton

Real world measurements of how much extra heat the Earth is trapping are well beyond most climate models. That’s a real problem.

Between 80% and 89% of the world’s people want their governments to do more about climate change. This fact is the central tenet of the 89% Project for climate journalism. Timed to coincide with Earth Day and Earth Week, the project launched in April, 2025, and will culminate in another week of focused stories in October, just before the next COP meeting in Brazil.

Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics os the Ocean at the University of Potsdam since 2000, presents a colloquium on the risks associated with the destabilization of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and its potential consequences for the global climate.

A German court has delivered a landmark ruling in a climate lawsuit brought by Peruvian farmer, Saúl Luciano Lliuya, against German energy giant RWE. The German Higher Regional Court of Hamm has ruled that, in principle, companies can be held liable to people halfway around the world for their contribution to the impacts and risks of climate change . While the Court ultimately dismissed Mr Lliuya’s claim, its reasoning represents a significant breakthrough for climate litigation globally. Below we explain what the Court decided, why it matters, and what it might mean in a New Zealand context with Smith v Fonterra still moving through the courts.

Identifying the socio-economic drivers behind greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to design mitigation policies. Existing studies predominantly analyze short-term CO2 emissions from fossil fuels, neglecting long-term trends and other GHGs. We examine the drivers of all greenhouse gas emissions between 1820–2050 globally and regionally. The Industrial Revolution triggered sustained emission growth worldwide—initially through fossil fuel use in industrialized economies but also as a result of agricultural expansion and deforestation. Globally, technological innovation and energy mix changes prevented 31 (17–42) Gt CO2e emissions over two centuries. Yet these gains were dwarfed by 81 (64–97) Gt CO2e resulting from economic expansion, with regional drivers diverging sharply: population growth dominated in Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, while rising affluence was the main driver of emissions elsewhere. Meeting climate targets now requires the carbon intensity of GDP to decline 3 times faster than the global

Heat waves are getting more dangerous with climate change — and we may still be underestimating them

Climate misinformation campaigns have shifted tactics, a comprehensive new analysis shows.

In a rapidly changing climate, evidence-based decision-making benefits from up-to-date and timely information. Here we compile monitoring datasets (published at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15639576; Smith et al., 2025a) to produce updated estimates for key indicators of the state of the climate system: net emissions of greenhouse gases and short-lived climate forcers, greenhouse gas concentrations, radiative forcing, the Earth's energy imbalance, surface temperature changes, warming attributed to human activities, the remaining carbon budget, and estimates of global temperature extremes. This year, we additionally include indicators for sea-level rise and land precipitation change. We follow methods as closely as possible to those used in the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) Working Group One report.

False claims obstructing climate action, say researchers, amid calls for climate lies to be criminalised

An international group of researchers has produced a third update to key indicators of the state of the climate system set out in the IPCC AR6 assessment, building on previous editions in 2023 and 2024. Forster et al. (2025) assess emissions, concentrations, temperatures, energy transfers, radiation balances, and the role of human activity and conclude that, while natural climate variability also played a role, the record observed temperatures in 2024 were dominated by human activity and the remaining carbon budget for 1.5° C is smaller than ever.

Breaching threshold would ramp up catastrophic weather events, further increasing human suffering

Even if agricultural practices adapt in response to higher temperatures, five of the world's six main staple crops will suffer severe losses due to climate change. Global corn yields are projected to fall by about 12 or 28 per cent by the end of the century

Les financements aux industries du pétrole et du gaz repartent de plus belle. Le rapport Banking on climate chaos, signé par huit ONG, estime à près de 900 milliards de dollars les financements octroyés en 2024 par 65 banques aux industriels du secteur, en augmentation de 23%. Le backlash contre la finance durable n’est pas étranger à ce nouvel appétit de la finance pour les hydrocarbures.

Mark Lynas has spent decades pushing for action on climate emissions but now says nuclear war is even greater threat Climate breakdown is usually held up as the biggest, most urgent threat humans pose to the future of the planet today. But what if there was another, greater, human-made threat that could snuff out not only human civilisation, but practically the entire biosphere, in the blink of an eye?

Exclusive: Climate.gov, which supports public education on climate science, will soon no longer publish new contentA major US government website supporting public education on climate science looks likely to be shuttered after almost all of its staff were fired, the Guardian has learned.

Recent simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) indicate that a tipping event of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cause Europe to cool by several degrees. This AMOC tipping event was found under constant pre-industrial greenhouse gas forcing, while global warming likely limits this AMOC-induced cooling response. Here, we quantify the European temperature responses under different AMOC regimes and climate change scenarios. A strongly reduced AMOC state and intermediate global warming (C, Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) has a profound cooling effect on Northwestern Europe with more intense cold extremes. The largest temperature responses are found during the winter months and these responses are strongly influenced by the North Atlantic sea-ice extent. Enhanced North Atlantic storm track activity under an AMOC collapse results in substantially larger day-to-day temperature fluctuations. We conclude that the (far) future European temperatures are dependent o

SO2 declines have contributed ~25% of recent warming and driven recent acceleration. The impact of additional SO2 emissions on cloud formation diminishes as emissions increase, meaning that reductions in SO2 over areas with low background sulphate concentrations, such as the ocean, could result in a proportionately larger warming effect than in highly polluted areas, such as south Asia.

There’s frustration among researchers that falling pH levels in seas around the globe are not being taken seriously enough, and that until the buildup of CO2 is addressed, the consequences for marine life will be devastating

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

Under existing climate policies, global temperatures are projected to reach 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9F) above pre-industrial levels by 2100—a pathway that would ultimately erase 76% of current glacier mass over the coming centuries. But if warming is held to the Paris Agreement's 1.5C target, 54% of glacial mass could be preserved, according to the study, which combined outputs from eight glacier models to simulate ice loss across a range of future climate scenarios.

the rapid rises in global military spending threaten climate action, undermining our collective security. In a new joint paper we explore how everything from direct emissions to diverted climate finance are threatening SDG 13 on Climate action.

Articles curated and summarized by the Environmental Health News' curation team. Some AI-based tools helped produce this text, with human oversight, fact checking and editing.

Despite mounting evidence of global warming’s costs, the Trump administration has made multiple moves to avoid tracking climate-related economics.

A new study uncovers Earth’s deep temperature history and shows just how tightly carbon dioxide has always controlled the climate