My Climate Change News

The area of land surface affected by extreme drought has trebled since the 1980s, a new report into the effects of climate change has revealed.

Forty-eight per cent of the Earth’s land surface had at least one month of extreme drought last year, according to analysis by the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change - up from an average of 15% during the 1980s.

Almost a third of the world - 30% - experienced extreme drought for three months or longer in 2023. In the 1980s, the average was 5%.

The new study offers some of the most up-to-date global data on drought, marking just how fast it is accelerating.

The threshold for extreme drought is reached after six months of very low rainfall or very high levels of evaporation from plants and soil - or both.

It poses an immediate risk to water and sanitation, food security and public health, and can affect energy supplies, transportation networks and the economy.

The causes of individual ...

Mount Fuji is still without snow, making it the latest time in the year the mountain has remained bare since records began 130 years ago.

The peaks of Japan's highest mountain typically get a sprinkling of snow by early October, but unusually warm weather has meant no snowfall has been reported so far this year.

In 2023 snow was first seen on the summit on 5 October, according to AFP news agency.

Japan had its joint hottest summer on record this year with temperatures between June and August being 1.76C (3.1F) higher than an average.

In September, temperatures continued to be warmer than expected as the sub-tropical jet stream's more northerly position allowed a warmer southerly flow of air over Japan.

A jet stream is a fast-flowing current of air that travels around the planet. It occurs when warmer air from the south meets cooler air from the north.

Nearly 1,500 areas had what Japan's Meteorological Society classed as ...

Chris Packham has reached a settlement with the government over two legal challenges against its decision to remove or delay some environmental policies.

The TV presenter took legal action against the previous Conservative government in late 2023, arguing it acted unlawfully by delaying some policies aimed at helping the UK reaching net zero emissions by 2050.

Law firm Leigh Day said Packham had reached "a legal settlement" with the new Labour government that said the Tory administration "had acted unlawfully" by axing or watering down climate policies.

The government said it had settled both cases as it would reconsider the decisions as it updates its carbon budget delivery plan (CBDP).

The CBDP aims to outline how the UK will reach targets set out in the sixth carbon budget, which runs until 2037, as part of wider efforts to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

In 2023, the previous Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that several ...

Clean energy jobs grew more than twice the rate of the overall economy in 2023 – and every state has its own piece of the story to tell.

By the end of 2023, there were over half a million jobs in wind, solar, and energy storage in the United States, according to the Department of Energy’s 2024 U.S. Energy and Employment Jobs Report. Jobs within these sectors include design, manufacturing, trade, construction, and operation of energy systems.

Just two states hold one-third of the jobs in clean electricity generation: California and Texas. The rest of the jobs were distributed across the rest of the country in unequal and sometimes unexpected ways.

Get a high-level look at the latest clean energy jobs data in our interactive map below. Each state is ranked by the total number of jobs in solar, wind, and energy storage. Hover over or tap on any state to see the data broken down by sector as well as per capita.

Read on for key takeaways from the ...

Global efforts to tackle climate change are wildly off track, says the UN, as new data shows that warming gases are accumulating faster than at any time in human existence.

Current national plans to limit carbon emissions would barely cut pollution by 2030, the UN analysis shows, leaving efforts to keep warming under 1.5C this century in tatters.

The update comes as a separate report shows that greenhouse gases have risen by over 11% in the last two decades, with atmospheric concentrations surging in 2023.

UN Climate Change, the UN agency tasked with adressing the issue, has carried out an analysis on the carbon cutting plans that have been submitted by close to 200 countries.

The UN wants to see how much progress is being made in driving down emissions that are threatening to push global temperatures well above 1.5C this century, a level beyond which scientists say extremely damaging impacts will occur.

Right now, when the plans are added up, ...

Here are the main topics extracted from the articles, along with their publishing outlets:

Climate Change and its Impacts:

Climate Policy and Politics:

Climate Solutions and Adaptation:

Scientific Research and Reporting:

Before October 20

October 20

October 21

October 22

October 23

October 24

October 25

October 26

THE ESCALATOR (free to republish)

Former President Donald Trump took a skeptical stance on nuclear energy in his recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, warning that the source of electricity Republican voters favor and GOP lawmakers vowed to support carries “dangers” and costs too much.

While the GOP nominee for president said atomic energy “is very clean” during his three-hour conversation with the popular comedian and sports commentator, he repeatedly cited the downsides of a technology his administration supported in the past and his campaign has now vowed to promote if he’s elected again next month.

“They get too big and too complex and too expensive,” Trump said.

“There’s a little danger to nuclear,” he continued. “You know, we had some really bad nuclear.”

Trump then name-checked two proposed reactor projects that went bust during his presidency. Six months after Trump took office, South Carolina abandoned its $9 billion plan to expand the Virgil C. Summer nuclear station, ...

Wetter, more destructive hurricanes, like the back-to-back storms that pummeled Florida this fall, are pushing the state’s homeowners insurance market to the brink of collapse.

When asked by Florida Atlantic University pollsters in June who was most responsible for the high cost of insurance in the state, the largest share of surveyed voters blamed Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. But it was his Republican predecessor, Rick Scott, now a U.S. senator, who lured low-quality insurance companies to the state and left Florida’s publicly owned insurer-of-last-resort agency struggling to provide for more homeowners as private insurers went bust or refused to renew policies in hurricane-prone areas.

Now Scott’s Democratic challenger for Senate, former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is hoping voters can make the connection between Scott’s eight years as governor and the financial squeeze caused as insurers increasingly fail to pay to repair properties damaged in hurricanes ...

The UK needs to make huge cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions this decade to help the world avoid the worst impacts of rising temperatures, the government's climate watchdog has said.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says the UK has the technologies to do this, but meeting the goal would require much greater investment in renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps.

While the UK has already cut its emissions by more than 50% since 1990, the CCC says it should extend this to 81% by 2035, which would make a "credible contribution" to the international goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

A spokesperson said the government would carefully consider the CCC’s advice.

If the government commits to the suggested target, it would represent a significant advance on the UK’s current international pledge to cut emissions by 68% by 2030.

It is, however, broadly in line with the UK’s legally-binding carbon-cutting path towards net zero emissions ...

The UK needs to make huge cuts to its greenhouse gas emissions this decade to help the world avoid the worst impacts of rising temperatures, the government's climate watchdog has said.

The Climate Change Committee (CCC) says the UK has the technologies to do this, but meeting the goal would require much greater investment in renewable energy, electric cars and heat pumps.

While the UK has already cut its emissions by more than 50% since 1990, the CCC says it should extend this to 81% by 2035, which would make a "credible contribution" to the international goal of limiting global warming to 1.5C.

A spokesperson said the government would carefully consider the CCC’s advice.

If the government commits to the suggested target, it would represent a significant advance on the UK’s current international pledge to cut emissions by 68% by 2030.

It is, however, broadly in line with the UK’s legally-binding carbon-cutting path towards net zero emissions ...

Thankfully, a growing number of programs and resources have emerged to help arm US teachers with the resources and knowledge they need to teach students on climate-related topics.

This previous three sections of this four-part series focused on the dilemma of inadequate education in the US on the subject of climate change - a phenomenon that is already affecting the majority of the population around the globe - from primary school through to the post-graduate level.

In this fourth and final part of the series, we meet some of the organizations and people developing solutions to the problem.

Organizations such as the National Science Teaching Association are working to enable teachers to confidently teach climate-related subjects by offering climate science courses for educators. And initiatives including MIT’s SCALES resource, TILclimate podcast educator guides, and CATE climate curriculum; the University of Washington’s Climate Teacher Ed Collaborative and ...

According to the U.S. Geological Survey, volcanoes emit around 180-440 million tons of CO2 annually. In contrast, human activities, primarily burning fossil fuels, emitted 41.5 billion tons of CO2 in 2022—over 100 times more.

Volcanoes are part of the Earth’s slow carbon cycle, where carbon is gradually recycled between the Earth’s mantle and atmosphere over millions of years. Volcanic CO2 is eventually reabsorbed by the weathering of rocks and ocean absorption, keeping the carbon cycle in balance over long timeframes.

Human activity, however, is releasing carbon at a rate far beyond what the natural carbon cycle can handle, overwhelming the Earth’s ability to balance CO2 levels. While volcanic CO2 emissions have been stable for millions of years, human-caused emissions have rapidly accelerated since the Industrial Revolution, making human activity the dominant driver of rising atmospheric CO2.

Go to full rebuttal on Skeptical Science ...