Global Warming | featured news

Emissions continue to grow so rapidly that an international goal of limiting the warming of the planet to 3.6 degrees is on the verge of becoming unattainable, researchers said.

Sea levels are rising 60 per cent faster than the UN's climate panel forecast, scientists warn. Satellite measurements show that sea levels are actually rising at an alarming rate of 3.2 mm a year compared to the estimate of 2 mm a year in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's fourth assessment report (AR4), researchers said.

If you thought September felt a bit warmer than usual, you weren't alone. Scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday that last month tied a 2005 record for the warmest September on record worldwide. These numbers have been tracked since 1880. September's combined average temperature over land and ocean around the world was 60.21 degrees Fahrenheit -- 1.21 degrees over the 20th century average.

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times titled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Some of the weather extremes bedeviling people around the world have become far more likely because of human-induced global warming, researchers reported on Tuesday. Yet they ruled it out as a cause of last year’s devastating floods in Thailand, one of the most striking weather events of recent years.

If you want a glimpse of some of the worst of global warming, scientists suggest taking a look at U.S. weather in recent weeks. Horrendous wildfires. Oppressive heat waves. Devastating droughts. Flooding from giant deluges. And a powerful freak wind storm called a derecho. These are the kinds of extremes climate scientists have predicted will come with climate change, although it's far too early to say that is the cause. Nor will they say global warming is the reason 3,215 daily high temperature records were set in the month of June.

Scientists say the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is the highest in at least 800,000 years.

Potty humor just got prehistoric. A new study suggests that dinosaurs may have helped keep an already overheated world warmer with their flatulence and burps 200 million years ago....

Each year, the International Energy Agency puts out a study of which technological advances are needed to keep global warming below two degrees Celsius. The 2012 report is out and the grades are dismal: Aside from a recent boom in wind and solar power, the world isn’t making much progress.