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Het is vandaag Earth Overshoot Day: vanaf vandaag tot het einde van het jaar verbruikt de wereldbevolking meer dan onze planeet op een jaar aan grondstoffen en diensten kan leveren. Voor onze huidige levensstijl zijn eigenlijk 1,7 planeten aarde nodig, en dat kan uitdraaien op een ramp, waarschuwen experts. Earth Overshoot Day valt dit jaar ook een dag vroeger dan vorig jaar.

Under current emission trajectories, temporarily overshooting the Paris global warming limit of 1.5 °C is a distinct possibility. Permanently exceeding this limit would substantially increase the probability of triggering climate tipping elements. Here, we investigate the tipping risks associated with several policy-relevant future emission scenarios, using a stylised Earth system model of four interconnected climate tipping elements. We show that following current policies this century would commit to a 45% tipping risk by 2300 (median, 10–90% range: 23–71%), even if temperatures are brought back to below 1.5 °C. We find that tipping risk by 2300 increases with every additional 0.1 °C of overshoot above 1.5 °C and strongly accelerates for peak warming above 2.0 °C. Achieving and maintaining at least net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2100 is paramount to minimise tipping risk in the long term. Our results underscore that stringent emission reductions in the current decade are critical for planetary stabili

A carbon bomb is any fossil fuel extraction project that will generate more than one gigatonne of carbon dioxide (1GtCO2) over its remaining life.

Le satellite EarthCARE de l'Agence spatiale européenne a pris son envol mardi depuis la base de Vandenberg en Californie, à bord d'une fusée Falcon 9 de SpaceX. Sa mission : explorer en détail les effets des nuages sur le climat, un phénomène encore mal compris.

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

Ontdek het 4,5 miljard jaar oude verhaal van de planeet die we onze thuis noemen: de aarde. Vandaag de dag is de aarde een planeet waarop 8 miljard mensen wonen, mensen die een grotere invloed hebben op de vormgeving van ons aardoppervlak dan de meeste natuurlijke processen. Dramatische wendingen in onze geschiedenis hebben gemaakt dat de mens controle heeft gekregen over de natuur. Maar het is noodzakelijk om hieruit ook de nodige lessen te trekken, voor het te laat is. Earth – een vijfdelige miniserie op Canvas Een erg goede reeks over natuurlijke transities in de geschiedenis van de aarde met schitterende beelden maar evenzo sterke wetenschappelijke onderbouwing. Momenteel werden reeds drie van de vijf afleveringen uitgezonden. In zijn geheel te bekijken via vrt max.

A UN meeting this week considered a motion on a suite of technologies known as ‘solar radiation modification’, but no consensus could be reached on the controversial topic.

The planetary boundaries concept presents a set of nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to develop and thrive for generations to come

Juristen van ClientEarth hebben, samen met 14 ngo's, nieuwe juridische stappen ondernomen tegen INEOS, nu de petrochemiereus zijn plannen doorzet om Europa's grootste plasticproject te bouwen. De milieuorganisaties hebben vandaag een rechtszaak aangespannen tegen de Vlaamse overheid. Deze zaak markeert een nieuwe fase in de langdurige juridische strijd van de groep milieuorganisaties tegen 'Project One' van INEOS.

Even recapituleren. Op zondag 7 jan 2024 kreeg Ineos – na een verrassend positief advies van ANB – zijn huidige vergunning van de Vlaamse Regering. De vorige was onderuit gehaald op grond van de beroepsprocedure die de provincie Noord-Brabant had aangespannen. VlaReg werd toen door de Raad voor Vergunningenbetwistingen op de vingers getikt voor haar lossepolswerk aangaande de verwachte stikstofdepositie van Project One voorbij de Nederlandse grens. En al stond het in de sterren geschreven dat zowel de provincie Noord-Brabant als de provincie Zeeland opnieuw beroep zouden aantekenen en dat ook Client Earth opnieuw met een beroep ten gronde zou komen, toch startte Ineos op 8 januari full speed de constructiewerken in Lillo. Evident met de bedoeling om de weg van de voldongen feiten te kiezen en om de beroepsprocedures in snelheid te pakken. Mocht er een kink in de kabel komen, dan was er altijd nog de overheidswaarborg van een half miljard, waarvan overigens al 250 miljoen zijn geactiveerd. Poker à la Ratcliffe

Anthropogenic emissions drive global-scale warming yet the temperature increase relative to pre-industrial levels is uncertain. Using 300 years of ocean mixed-layer temperature records preserved in sclerosponge carbonate skeletons, we demonstrate that industrial-era warming began in the mid-1860s, more than 80 years earlier than instrumental sea surface temperature records. The Sr/Ca palaeothermometer was calibrated against ‘modern’ (post-1963) highly correlated (R2 = 0.91) instrumental records of global sea surface temperatures, with the pre-industrial defined by nearly constant (<±0.1 °C) temperatures from 1700 to the early 1860s. Increasing ocean and land-air temperatures overlap until the late twentieth century, when the land began warming at nearly twice the rate of the surface oceans. Hotter land temperatures, together with the earlier onset of industrial-era warming, indicate that global warming was already 1.7 ± 0.1 °C above pre-industrial levels by 2020. Our result is 0.5 °C higher than IPCC estim

Overall losses from natural disasters in 2023: US$ 250bn; more than 74,000 fatalities Insured global losses of US$ 95bn close to five-year average (US$ 105bn) and above the ten-year average (US$ 90bn) Earthquake in Turkey and Syria was the year’s most devastating humanitarian disaster Thunderstorms in North America and Europe more destructive than ever before: overall losses of US$ 76bn; insured losses US$ 58bn 2023 was the hottest year ever, with a large number of regional records broken

An easy way to start a long, heated debate is to mention global population. Thomas Malthus famously ignited furious arguments in the eighteenth century when

Humanity faces ‘devastating domino effects’ including mass displacement and financial ruin as planet warms

Plastic waste in aquatic environments may be severely disrupting the reproductive behavior of marine animals. 

When Rishi Sunak granted 27 new North Sea licences this week, he wasn’t thinking about the survival of the living world, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

September 2023 smashed the prior global temperature record. Hand-wringing about the magnitude of the temperature jump in September is not inappropriate, but it is more important to investigate the role of aerosol climate forcing – which we chose to leave unmeasured – in global climate change. Global temperature during the current El Nino provides a potential indirect assessment of change of the aerosol forcing. Global temperature in the current El Nino, to date, implies a strong acceleration of global warming for which the most likely explanation is a decrease of human-made aerosols as a result of reductions in China and from ship emissions. The current El Nino will probably be weaker than the 1997-98 and 2015-16 El Ninos, making current warming even more significant. The current near-maximum solar irradiance adds a small amount to the major “forcing” mechanisms (GHGs, aerosols, and El Nino), but with no long-term effect. More important, the long dormant Southern Hemisphere polar amplification is probably com

Une fresque globale pour prendre du recul et comprendre ce qui rend notre planète habitable.

Ahead of the UN’s SDG Summit (18-19 September), ground-breaking analyses shows how by enacting five ‘extraordinary turnarounds’ SDGs implementation can be accelerated.

This planetary boundaries framework update finds that six of the nine boundaries are transgressed, suggesting that Earth is now well outside of the safe operating space for humanity. Ocean acidification is close to being breached, while aerosol loading regionally exceeds the boundary. Stratospheric ozone levels have slightly recovered. The transgression level has increased for all boundaries earlier identified as overstepped. As primary production drives Earth system biosphere functions, human appropriation of net primary production is proposed as a control variable for functional biosphere integrity. This boundary is also transgressed. Earth system modeling of different levels of the transgression of the climate and land system change boundaries illustrates that these anthropogenic impacts on Earth system must be considered in a systemic context.

First complete ‘scientific health check’ shows most global systems beyond stable range in which modern civilisation emerged

La séquestration du CO2 dans les sols agricoles est présentée comme une excellente stratégie pour atténuer le changement climatique. Mais est-ce réellement le cas ? Plusieurs pédologues ont exprimé leurs doutes lors de la Conférence sur les sols de Wageningen le 29 août.

Bonn and Geneva, 6 September 2023 (ECMWF and WMO) - Earth just had its hottest three months on record, according to the European Union-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) implemented by ECMWF. Global sea surface temperatures are at unprecedented highs for the third consecutive month and Antarctic sea ice extent remains at a record low for the time of year.

Morgen, op 2 augustus, zullen alle hulpbronnen al opgebruikt zijn die de planeet in een jaar kan genereren. Als iedereen aan het tempo van de Belgen zou consumeren, zou “Earth Overshoot Day” zelfs al op 26 maart gevallen zijn, zegt het Wereldnatuurfonds.

Climate breakdown and crop losses threaten our survival, but the ultra-rich find ever more creative ways to maintain the status quo, says Guardian columnist George Monbiot

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research published in Nature Geoscience. The study, led by researchers from the University of Cambridge and the University Center in Svalbard, Norway, identified large stocks of methane gas leaking from groundwater springs unveiled by melting glaciers.

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

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

If Nature were to draw a map of the world, what would it look like? One Earth presents a novel biogeographical framework called Bioregions 2023, which delineates 185 discrete bioregions organized within the world's major biogeographical realms.

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 stability and resilience of the Earth system and human well-being are inseparably linked1–3, yet their interdependencies are generally under-recognized; consequently, they are often treated independently4,5. Here, we use modelling and literature assessment to quantify safe and just Earth system boundaries (ESBs) for climate, the biosphere, water and nutrient cycles, and aerosols at global and subglobal scales. We propose ESBs for maintaining the resilience and stability of the Earth system (safe ESBs) and minimizing exposure to significant harm to humans from Earth system change (a necessary but not sufficient condition for justice)4. The stricter of the safe or just boundaries sets the integrated safe and just ESB. Our findings show that justice considerations constrain the integrated ESBs more than safety considerations for climate and atmospheric aerosol loading. Seven of eight globally quantified safe and just ESBs and at least two regional safe and just ESBs in over half of global land area are alrea

Going beyond climate disruption, the report by the Earth Commission group of scientists presents disturbing evidence that our planet faces growing crises of water availability, nutrient loading, ecosystem maintenance and aerosol pollution. These pose threats to the stability of life-support systems and worsen social equality.

Flash drought, characterized by unusually rapid drying, can have substantial impact on many socioeconomic sectors, particularly agriculture. However, potential changes to flash drought risk in a warming climate remain unknown. In this study, projected changes in flash drought frequency and cropland risk from flash drought are quantified using global climate model simulations. We find that flash drought occurrence is expected to increase globally among all scenarios, with the sharpest increases seen in scenarios with higher radiative forcing and greater fossil fuel usage. Flash drought risk over cropland is expected to increase globally, with the largest increases projected across North America (change in annual risk from 32% in 2015 to 49% in 2100) and Europe (32% to 53%) in the most extreme emissions scenario. Following low-end and medium scenarios compared to high-end scenarios indicates a notable reduction in annual flash drought risk over cropland. Flash droughts are projected to become more frequent unde

Earth Day - Dag van de Aarde - is één van de grootste milieu protestbewegingen ter wereld. Het begon in 1970 en vindt elk jaar plaats op 22 april. Ongeveer 1 miljard mensen uit meer dan 190 landen nemen deel aan demonstraties, projecten e...

Several nations plan to build new coal power plants, with China alone approving nearly 100 gigawatts. Each gigawatt is the equivalent of installing more than 3 million solar panels.

Une étude démographique commandée par le Club de Rome présente de nouvelles perspectives sur l’évolution de la population mondiale d’ici la fin du siècle. Cette étude réalisée par Earth4all revoit en effet à la baisse les projections sur le nombre d’habitants qui peupleront la Terre en 2100. Alors que les démographes de l’ONU estiment que, à ce moment-là, notre planète comptera 9,7 milliards d’humains, le rapport d’Earth4all avance un chiffre plus faible compris entre 6  et 7,3 milliards.

Population likely to peak sooner and lower than expected with beneficial results – but environment is priority

Cette étude a pour but d’amener à réfléchir sur les raisons profondes des échecs des COPs depuis 27 ans et des COPs à venir, en utilisant un angle de vision mathématique global et neutre. Alexandre DUMAS a écrit : "n'estimez l'argent ni plus ni moins qu'il ne vaut : c'est un bon serviteur et un mauvais maître." L’argent est un outil inventé pour faciliter les échanges, un moyen de substitution au troc. La financiarisation de l’économie concentre la monnaie, transformant l’argent, outil serviteur, en un mauvais maître, créancier conditionnant son débiteur à une contrainte exclusivement financière.

Global CO2 emissions for 2022 increased by 1.5% relative to 2021 (+7.9% and +2.0% relative to 2020 and 2019, respectively), reaching 36.1 GtCO2. These 2022 emissions consumed 13%–36% of the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5 °C, suggesting permissible emissions could be depleted within 2–7 years (67% likelihood).

Researchers found that exceeding the 2C increase has a 50% chance of happening by mid-century

Energy and extractive industry giants are targeting environmentalists with racketeering charges.

Fossil fuels, fisheries and farming: the world’s most destructive industries are protected – and subsidised – by governments

Quel futur sur Terre en 2100 ? Analyse et résumé du rapport Earth4All

Flash droughts can develop within a few weeks, causing water shortages, damaging crops and worsening fire risks.

MIT researchers have confirmed that Earth harbors a “stabilizing feedback” mechanism that acts over hundreds of thousands of years to keep global temperatures within a steady, habitable range.“On the one hand, it’s good because we know that today’s global warming will eventually be canceled out through this stabilizing feedback,” says Constantin Arnscheidt, a graduate student in MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS). “But on the other hand, it will take hundreds of thousands of years to happen, so not fast enough to solve our present-day issues.”

Bewoners uit heel België spannen een rechtszaak aan tegen de regionale overheden omdat zij hebben nagelaten de gezondheid van de burgers te beschermen tegen schadelijke niveaus van luchtvervuiling.

Lost nets, lines and hooks trap wildlife for years as they float in the ocean, sink to the bottom or are washed ashore

Earth For All is both an antidote to despair and a road map to a better future. Using powerful state-of-the-art computer modeling to explore policies likely to deliver the most good for the majority of people, a leading group of scientists and economists from around the world present five extraordinary turnarounds to achieve prosperity for all within planetary limits in a single generation.

Äerdchëff, le premier “earthship” (géonef) du Luxembourg, est sorti de terre à Redange. Un bâtiment quasiment autonome en énergie et en eau, en partie construit en utilisant certains types de déchets. Le gouvernement luxembourgeois veut en faire un projet pilote.

This Southern Ocean warming and its associated impacts are effectively irreversible on human time scales, because it takes millennia for heat trapped deep in the ocean to be released back into the atmosphere. This means changes happening now will be felt for generations to come – and those changes are only set to get worse, unless we can stop carbon dioxide emissions and achieve net zero.

Même si la sécheresse amène de nombreux cours d’eau européens à des niveaux record et endommage la biodiversité, la menace d’inondations catastrophiques à la suite d’une période de sécheresse se cache en arrière-plan.

Experts call for a new ‘Climate Endgame’ research agenda, and say far too little work has gone into understanding the mechanisms by which rising temperatures might pose a catastrophic risk to society and humanity.

Earth Overshoot Day is de dag waarop de vraag van de mensheid naar ecologische hulpbronnen dat wat de aarde in dat jaar kan aanleveren, overstijgt.

‘Earth Overshoot Day’ valt dit jaar weer een dag vroeger dan vorig jaar, op 28 juli. Daarmee is de jaarlijkse toename van de voetafdruk bevestigd na de terugval tijdens corona (in 2020 viel de datum op 22 augustus). Voor België viel de overshoot dag dit jaar nog vier maanden vroeger. Als de hele wereld zou leven zoals de Belgen, dan hadden we meer dan 4 aardes nodig. We moeten heel dringend structurele maatregelen nemen om onze voetafdruk terug te dringen, in België en overal ter wereld.

In a major environmental case, the court has made clear that it would rather represent the interests of corporations and the super-rich than the needs and desires of the vast majority of Americans – or people on Earth

Begin juni 1972 en tijdens de afgelopen week was er in Stockholm een VN Earth Summit. De eerste leidde tot een reeks van Earth Summits, de oprichting van het United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) en een reeks van andere initiatieven, zoals het IPCC. In 1972 maakte men zich grote zorgen over het milieu en de schade die wij veroorzaken. Dat doen we nu, vijftig jaar later nog. We hebben gefaald. De kans op een duurzame en rechtvaardige wereld neemt af, maar die kans bestaat wel degelijk; als we willen. En wie zou dat niet willen?

Mapping where the earth will become uninhabitable Lethal heat, flooded coastlines, powerful hurricanes, water scarcity: climate models show that by the end of the century, life as normal won’t be possible in many places. Find out where populations are projected to be hit hardest with our 3D interactive visualisation.

Humankind is revealed as simultaneously insignificant and utterly dominant in the grand scheme of life on Earth by a groundbreaking new assessment of all life on the planet. The world’s 7.6 billion people represent just 0.01% of all living things, according to the study. Yet since the dawn of civilisation, humanity has caused the loss of 83% of all wild mammals and half of plants, while livestock kept by humans abounds.

A new survey from YouGov asked Americans for their thoughts on climate change, including what they believe its potential impacts could be and whether they believe they and their country are doing enough to tackle climate change. The findings suggest that most Americans anticipate dire consequences to climate change, but many believe there are still ways to avoid the worst of it. 

Most marine-terminating glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere are shrinking; some have completely left the water.

Following record-level declines in 2020, near-real-time data indicate that global CO2 emissions rebounded by 4.8% in 2021, reaching 34.9 GtCO2. These 2021 emissions consumed 8.7% of the remaining carbon budget for limiting anthropogenic warming to 1.5 °C, which if current trajectories continue, might be used up in 9.5 years at 67% likelihood.

Patagonian ice fields are among some of the fastest-melting glaciers on the planet. As these glaciers disappear, the earth that once lay beneath them is rebounding upwards at rates much faster than expected.

Water vapor is Earth’s most abundant greenhouse gas. It’s responsible for about half of Earth’s greenhouse effect — the process that occurs when gases in Earth’s atmosphere trap the Sun’s heat. Greenhouse gases keep our planet livable. Without them, Earth’s surface temperature would be about 59 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) colder. Water vapor is also a key part of Earth’s water cycle: the path that all water follows as it moves around Earth’s atmosphere, land, and ocean as liquid water, solid ice, and gaseous water vapor.

Tree diversity is fundamental for forest ecosystem stability and services. However, because of limited available data, estimates of tree diversity at large geographic domains still rely heavily on published lists of species descriptions that are geographically uneven in coverage. These limitations have precluded efforts to generate a global perspective. Here, based on a ground-sourced global database, we estimate the number of tree species at biome, continental, and global scales. We estimated a global tree richness (≈73,300) that is ≈14% higher than numbers known today, with most undiscovered species being rare, continentally endemic, and tropical or subtropical. These results highlight the vulnerability of global tree species diversity to anthropogenic changes.

We submit that the safe operating space of the planetary boundary of novel entities is exceeded since annual production and releases are increasing at a pace that outstrips the global capacity for assessment and monitoring. The novel entities boundary in the planetary boundaries framework refers to entities that are novel in a geological sense and that could have large-scale impacts that threaten the integrity of Earth system processes. We review the scientific literature relevant to quantifying the boundary for novel entities and highlight plastic pollution as a particular aspect of high concern. An impact pathway from production of novel entities to impacts on Earth system processes is presented.

Berkeley Earth, a California-based non-profit research organization, has been preparing independent analyses of global mean temperature changes since 2013. The following is our report on global mean temperature during 2021.

Une agence de publicité vient de créer “boite noire de la terre”, The Earth Black Box. La boîte noire de la terre est le fruit de l’imagination de l’agence de publicité australienne Clemenger BBDO en collaboration avec des chercheurs de l’Université de Tasmanie.

Il y a quelques jours, la Chine a annoncé la création de "China Rare Earth Group", une entreprise directement attachée à l’État, qui rassemble trois acteurs majeurs de l’extraction des terres rares. Une annonce qui n’étonne pas : le pays est, depuis dix ans, le leader dans ce marché : il assure près de 95% des terres rares dans le monde, s’assurant par là d’être un acteur incontournable dans le développement des technologies.

La restructuration du secteur des terres rares en Chine avance à grands pas. Ce jeudi, les autorités chinoises ont publié un décret annonçant la création du China Rare Earth Group, avec la fusion de China Minemetals Corp, Chinalco et Ganzhou Rare Earth Group. La nouvelle société sera sous le contrôle direct de lEtat.

Earth scientist David Hughes—who is out with a new skeptical report on the future of U.S. shale oil and gas—has two very important things in common with Michael Burry. Burry is the investor made famous by The Big Short, the book that was later turned into a movie of the same name about the 2008 housing crash.

A Abisko, dans l’extrême-nord suédois, le sol est déjà quasiment recouvert de neige en ce mois de novembre. Mais qu’on ne s’y trompe pas : c’est mauvais signe pour le climat. Car sous la neige, le sol est dégelé depuis l’été. "Ce que vous voyez qui est blanc, c’est en fait des zones d’accumulation de neige liées à un effondrement du sol à cause du dégel en profondeur", explique Sophie Opfergelt, chercheuse FNRS et professeure à l’Institut Earth and Life de l’UCLouvain, actuellement en mission d’observation dans la station d’Abisko.

Five times in the last 500m years, more than three-fourths of marine animal species perished in mass extinctions. Each of these events is associated with a major disruption of Earth’s carbon cycle. How such catastrophes occur remains mysterious. But recent research increasingly points to the possibility that the Earth system – that is, life and the environment – may experience a cascade of disruptions when stressed beyond a tipping point.

Covid-19 may well have been one attempt by the Earth to protect itself. Gaia will try harder next time with something even nastier

L'agriculture est prise dans une boucle vicieuse, car l'agriculture industrielle est à la fois le moteur du changement climatique et en souffre. Pour nous aider à sortir de la crise climatique et à maintenir la production alimentaire, les entreprises de biotechnologie prétendent avoir la réponse : de nouveaux organismes génétiquement modifiés (OGM) . Ce nouveau briefing des Amis de la Terre Europe démystifie cette fausse promesse qui fait obstacle à des solutions réelles et déjà éprouvées comme l'agroécologie.

"On ne peut pas avoir encore de beaux discours, de belles paroles et pas assez d'action", a déclaré cette semaine le prince William à la BBC. "J'espère que le prix encouragera beaucoup de gens en position de responsabilité à aller plus loin" et "commencer effectivement à tenir leurs promesses", a ajouté le petit-fils de la reine Elizabeth II.

A l’approche de la COP26, le prince William a remis dimanche soir la première édition du prix Earthshot, récompensant le Costa Rica, la ville de Milan ou encore une société indienne engagée contre la pollution de l’air pour leurs solutions à la crise climatique.

L'Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) a annoncé mercredi réduire les seuils d'alerte à partir desquels la pollution de l'air est dangereuse pour la santé. Les associations "Les chercheurs d'air" et Client Earth, qui militent pour un air plus sain, pressent le gouvernement bruxellois de prendre des mesures pour aligner la qualité de l'air dans la capitale aux nouvelles directives de l'OMS.

If there’s one thing we know about climate breakdown, it’s that it will not be linear, smooth or gradual. Just as one continental plate might push beneath another in sudden fits and starts, causing periodic earthquakes and tsunamis, our atmospheric systems will absorb the stress for a while, then suddenly shift. Yet, everywhere, the programmes designed to avert it are linear, smooth and gradual.

Scientists have uncovered a fascinating new insight into what caused one of the most rapid and dramatic instances of climate change in the history of the Earth.

Today, the European Court of Justice stated that EU energy companies will no longer be allowed to sue EU governments using the Energy Charter Treaty – throwing into doubt a number of ongoing billion-euro arbitrations.

As the world battles historic droughts, landscape-altering wildfires and deadly floods, a landmark report from global scientists says the window is rapidly closing to cut our reliance on fossil fuels and avoid catastrophic changes that would transform life as we know it. The state-of-the-science report from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says the world has rapidly warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius higher than pre-industrial levels, and is now careening toward 1.5 degrees — a critical threshold that world leaders agreed warming should remain below to avoid worsening impacts.

If Earth had a pulse, it might be The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) – a swirl of ocean currents that carries tropical heat north towards polar waters. Over the past century this global heartbeat has eased, slowing to a speed not seen in more than a millennium. New research based on a range of indices has now bolstered views that the weakening isn't a trivial one, and critical transition is imminent.

Au premier semestre 2021, la déforestation en Amazonie a augmenté de 17 % par rapport au premier semestre 2020. Alors que la saison sèche s’ouvre au Brésil, le nombre d’incendies dépasse déjà celui de l’année dernière à la même période. Ces chiffres laissent présager de nouveaux records d’incendies au Brésil cet été.

Stability in Earth's climate hinges on a delicate balance between the amount of energy the planet absorbs from the sun and the amount of energy Earth emits back into space. But that equilibrium has been thrown off in recent years — and the imbalance is growing, according to a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature Communications.

Abrupt disruptions to Earth's climate thousands of years ago that caused extreme sea-level rise and mass ice cap melting can serve as an early warning system for today's planetary tipping points, according to new research.

A just-published study coins a new metric: the "mortality cost of carbon." That is, how many future lives will be lost—or saved—depending on whether we increase or decrease our current carbon emissions. If the numbers hold up, they are quite high. The study was published today in the journal Nature Communications.

Vandaag, 29 juli, is “Earth Overshoot Day”, de dag van het jaar waarop we als mensheid alle hulpbronnen hebben opgebruikt waar we eigenlijk een volledig jaar mee zouden moeten toekomen. De dag valt vier weken vroeger dan vorig jaar. Maakten we tijdens het coronajaar 2020 een bescheiden ecologische winst, dan is die dus alweer uitgewist.

Dès ce jeudi 29 juillet, la population mondiale entamera le capital naturel de notre planète. Calculé par l’ONG Global Footprint Network, le jour du dépassement planétaire (Earth Overshoot Day) correspond au jour où l’humanité aura utilisé autant de ressources biologiques que ce que la Terre peut régénérer en une année.

Dans les années 1990 en Angleterre, opposés à l’écologie résignée des ONG, des dizaines de militants, notamment les membres d’Earth First ! réunis autour du slogan : « Pas de compromis dans la défense de la terre ! », ont pratiqué l’action directe.

A new report has found that by 2025, the world must remove 1 Gigatonne, or 1 billion tonnes, of carbon from the atmosphere to keep global warming within the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C. However, projects in development will remove only a fraction of this. The report says, “Without action to deliver 1 Gigatonne (Gt) of negative emissions globally by 2025, keeping global warming within the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C cannot be achieved.”

Throughout Earth's history, CO2 is thought to have exerted a fundamental control on environmental change. Here we review and revise CO2 reconstructions from boron isotopes in carbonates and carbon isotopes in organic matter over the Cenozoic—the past 66 million years. We find close coupling between CO2 and climate throughout the Cenozoic, with peak CO2 levels of ∼1,500 ppm in the Eocene greenhouse, decreasing to ∼500 ppm in the Miocene, and falling further into the ice age world of the Plio–Pleistocene. Around two-thirds of Cenozoic CO2 drawdown is explained by an increase in the ratio of ocean alkalinity to dissolved inorganic carbon, likely linked to a change in the balance of weathering to outgassing, with the remaining one-third due to changing ocean temperature and major ion composition. Earth system climate sensitivity is explored and may vary between different time intervals. The Cenozoic CO2 record highlights the truly geological scale of anthropogenic CO2 change: Current CO2 levels were last seen ar

L’eau, l’air, les sols, notre alimentation… les polluants présents dans l’environnement peuvent pénétrer le corps humain de différentes façons. Dans une nouvelle étude, des chercheurs ont étudié huit circuits par lesquels ces polluants nous affectent.

A range of studies have long indicated that attention should be paid to the effects of climate change on subsystems such as the Amazon, Greenland ice or permafrost. These effects have been debated for more than 20 years. Since then, thousands of pages have been written describing their interrelationships, warning of a coming disaster. As in this article published in Nature by key figures in climate science, or this article published in National Geographic. However, despite the seriousness of the issue, mainstream media silence remains thunderous. With Ferran Puig Vilar

"Trajectoires du Système Terre dans l'Anthropocène", une étude récente cosignée par Will Steffen, chimiste réputé, analyste des systèmes climatiques et professeur de la science du Système Terre à l'Université nationale australienne, met en garde contre des changements catastrophiques du climat de la Terre si les tendances actuelles en matière d'émissions ne sont pas immédiatement inversées.

A new study has found that if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed urgently, a third of endemic species on land and half in the sea will become extinct, causing a collapse of biodiversity. According to the study, 92% of all endemic species on land and 95% of those in the ocean will decrease in numbers or even disappear under current emissions levels, which will increase global temperatures by 3 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Outre une baisse du rayonnement solaire et un refroidissement brutal du climat, un conflit armé de grande échelle déclencherait l’apparition d’un phénomène baptisé El Niño nucléaire. C’est en tout cas ce que détaille une étude menée par des chercheurs de l’Université Rutgers (New Jersey, États-Unis). Les résultats ont été publiés dans la revue Communications Earth & Environment.

Scientists just completed one of the most comprehensive investigations of Earth’s climate history—and the findings aren’t favorable. They found that the planet could eventually warm to levels it hasn’t reached in at least 34 million years.

The climate crisis is causing ancient permafrost to thaw, which could unleash viruses and bacteria that have been dormant for thousands of years, presenting a potentially catastrophic risk to humans and ecosystems alike.

Michael Moore presents Planet of the Humans, a documentary that dares to say what no one else will — that we are losing the battle to stop climate change on planet earth because we are following leaders who have taken us down the wrong road — selling out the green movement to wealthy interests and corporate America. This film is the wake-up call to the reality we are afraid to face: that in the midst of a human-caused extinction event, the environmental movement’s answer is to push for techno-fixes and band-aids. It's too little, too late.

Parce que, pour préserver les grands équilibres planétaires, les manifestations, pétitions, élections ou blocages ne suffiront pas plus que les changements du quotidien menés de manière individualisante et culpabilisante, nous nous engageons à adopter dès à présent, selon nos possibilités, jusqu’à dix résolutions fortes, afin d’avancer ensemble vers un mode de vie soutenable.

Sophie Opfergelt, Chercheuse qualifiée FNRS au Earth and Life Institute de l'UCLouvain – Université catholique de Louvain, faisait partie de l'expédition partie en Alaska cet été pour analyser le dégel du sol. 💬 "On prédit que environ 1/3 de la surface du Permafrost va dégeler d'ici la fin de ce siècle. Et c'est en train de se produire en Alaska actuellement." Sachant qu'un 1/4 de la surface du globe est recouvert de Permafrost et que celui-ci renferme une quantité importante de CO2.

Presently, there is a scientific debate about which epoch we are in. The discussion centers around the Holocene vs Anthropocene question.

Humanity has swung a wrecking ball through the biosphere. We have chopped down over half of the world’s rainforests and by the middle of this century there may not be much more than a quarter left. This has been accompanied by a massive loss in biodiversity, such that the biosphere may be entering one of the great mass extinction events in the history of life on Earth.

ELI gathers more than 300 scientists, covering a wide range of disciplines in the Earth & Life sciences. Their objective is to understand the basic processes of the Earth & Life System at different scales and to design sustainable solutions to meet some of the major challenges for our societies. ELI is organized in 5 sections. Thanks to its critical size, the role of the institute is to promote interdisciplinarity and to stimulate the interactions between scientists of complementary expertise.

After water, concrete is the most widely used substance on Earth. If the cement industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter in the world with up to 2.8bn tonnes, surpassed only by China and the US. The material is the foundation of modern development. Concrete is how we try to tame nature...

According to a new study from the Aarhus University in Denmark, humans will continue to wipe out mammalian species for the next 50 years, so much so that Earth will need three to five million years to recover its evolutionary diversity.

Humans will cause so many mammal species to go extinct in the next 50 years that the planet's evolutionary diversity won't recover for 3 to 5 million years, a team of researchers has found.

A new scientific paper proposing a scenario of unstoppable climate change has gone viral, thanks to its evocative description of a “Hothouse Earth”. Much of the media coverage suggests that we face an imminent and unavoidable extreme climate catastrophe. But as a climate scientist who has carried out similar research myself, I am aware that this latest work is a lot more nuanced than the headlines imply. So what does the hothouse paper actually say, and how did the authors draw their conclusions?

In 1973, Australia's largest computer predicted trends such as pollution levels, population growth, availability of natural resources and quality of life on earth.

Freshwater availability is changing worldwide. Here we quantify 34 trends in terrestrial water storage observed by the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites during 2002–2016 and categorize their drivers as natural interannual variability, unsustainable groundwater consumption, climate change or combinations thereof. Several of these trends had been lacking thorough investigation and attribution, including massive changes in northwestern China and the Okavango Delta. Others are consistent with climate model predictions. This observation-based assessment of how the world’s water landscape is responding to human impacts and climate variations provides a blueprint for evaluating and predicting emerging threats to water and food security. Analysis of 2002–2016 GRACE satellite observations of terrestrial water storage reveals substantial changes in freshwater resources globally, which are driven by natural and anthropogenic climate variability and human activities.

Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.