An international research collaboration has shed light on the impact that grass-fed animals have on climate change, adding clarity to the debate around livestock farming and meat and dairy consumption. 

On a single hot, dry day this summer, an astonishing 140 wildfires leapt to life across British Columbia. “Friday, July 7 was just crazy,” says Mike Flannigan, director of the wildland fire partnership at the University of Alberta. A state of emergency was declared. By the end of summer, more than 1,000 fires had been triggered across the Canadian province, burning a record nearly 3 million acres of forest—nearly 10 times the average in British Columbia over the last decade. As the fires got bigger and hotter, even aerial attacks became useless. “It’s like spitting on a campfire,” says Flannigan. “It doesn’t do much other than making a pretty picture for the newspapers.”

The significant scale of human impact on our planet has changed the course of Earth history, an international team of scientists led by our School of Geography, Geology and the Environment has suggested.

Palm trees have been synonymous with Los Angeles for decades, appearing on everything from tourism ads to movie posters. But now, LA’s iconic trees are dying from a fatal fungus and an invasive beetle, as well as simply from old age, and the city doesn’t have any plans to revive them, according to Los Angeles Times.

A week after Hurricane Maria rolled through Puerto Rico, the island faces a public health crisis with no power and a growing shortage of drinking water and food.

New technological interventions are needed to save coral reefs under climate change.

Tropical Storm Maria is now caught up in the Westerlies and is being affected by wind shear that is elongating the storm. Infrared imagery from NASA’s Aqua satellite revealed that Maria’s strongest storms were east of the tropical cyclone’s center because of westerly wind shear.

Currently, winter has still a firm grip on Antarctica. At this time of the year, the Weddell Sea usually is covered with a thick layer of sea ice. In spite of the icy temperatures in the region, satellite images depict a large ice-free area in the middle of the ice cover. The area of the hole in the ice is larger than The Netherlands and it fascinates climate and polar researchers worldwide. Scientists from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel are closely monitoring the developments. “For us this ice-free area is an important new data point which we can use to validate our climate models. Its occurrence after several decades also confirms our previous calculations," says Dr. Torge Martin, meteorologist and climate modeler in the GEOMAR Research Division "Oceans Circulation and Climate Dynamics".

In a study that shows the importance of climate change on critical pollinators, North Carolina State University researchers found that earlier and longer flowering seasons can have poor effects on the bumble bees that rely on these flowers to live and thrive.

This past summer Canada has been plagued with huge forest fires that have spanned most of the provinces.  British Columbia has been particularly hard hit with large portions of the landscape being decimated by fire.  In these satellite images taken by the NASA'S Aqua satellite, both the natural color and false color burn scars of left by fires can be seen.  In the natural color image it is difficult to make out the burn scars.  The false color easily identifies areas where fire has left a scar showing a brownish-red color. Currently there are 745 wildfires larger than 0.01 hectares and all wildfires of note (active or out) in British Columbia as of today, Sept. 29. (Wildfire link updates daily).  NASA's Aqua satellite collected this natural-color image with the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, MODIS, instrument on September 27, 2017.