Everyone on Earth is somehow going to be affected by climate change. Children are extremely vulnerable to climate impacts and they’ll be forced to deal with the long-lasting changes carbon emissions are driving.
From early in the morning on a workday to the wee hours after a party, from my grandmother’s home to one of the world’s finest restaurants, at every Mexican table, corn is king. It’s not just one type of corn, but numerous varieties used for different dishes. Yet climate change could threaten the diversity of maize.
The key to planning is identifying climate trends and impacts and what appropriate preparedness actions we can execute in a timely manner. For weather events like the current trend of rainy afternoons, an appropriate preparedness action would be to keep an umbrella handy. But what can we do for climate events during the hurricane season, for example?
As we enter the second half of 2014, climate forecasters continue to watch the Pacific for the development of an El Niño event. An El Niño Watch has been in place since March, but conditions still have yet to fully develop.
Climate-induced human migration makes a quiet but notable appearance in the third U.S. National Climate Assessment released this May. It comes in chapter 23, in the form of a ‘key message’ to the 100,000 or so atoll inhabitants within the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands region:
“Mounting threats to food and water security, infrastructure, and public health and safety are expected to lead to increasing human migration from low to high elevation islands and continental sites.”
Twice a year, delegates from 192 countries, along with a range of non-governmental organizations, news outfits, and for-profit groups under the guise of non-profits, descend on the small German city of Bonn for a session of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, or UNFCCC.
Tropical forests have benefits that go beyond carbon sequestration. Despite this, deforestation continues unabated around the world, contributing to massive quantities of carbon emissions. Through her internship at the United Nations Development Programme, C+S student Manishka De Mel is supporting the UN-REDD Programme to review approaches to participatory monitoring – bringing together science and society.
It was around sunrise when I stepped off the turbo-prop airplane’s worn aluminum staircase and into the thick humid air, filled with wood smoke, the smell of burning trash, and the calls of countless roosters. I had no idea what to expect on this, my first day of fieldwork on Flores Island. Flores is one of the more than two thousand islands that make up the region called Nusa Tenggara Timur or NTT for short- a region situated about four hours by air to the east of Jakarta.
The Indian Monsoon is the primary source of water for approximately one-fourth of the world’s population. Tree-ring data from India’s forests can be a perfect model to peek into the climate of the past and improve predictions for the region in the future.
Yogi Berra was right, the world isn’t perfect, and it never will be. What we love about New York often leaves us open to perils we need to shield ourselves from. Reynir Winnan discusses updating the City’s Hazard Mitigation Plan.