Global Warming

CO2 Emissions Greening Vast Parts of the World

The ongoing accumulation of carbon dioxide from nearly two centuries of greenhouse gas emissions appears to be responsible for a recent greening of the world’s vast drylands.

Scientists from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis say they believe higher CO2 levels have increased the amount of water in drylands soil, while also diminishing the ability of some plants to exchange carbon dioxide and water vapor in and out of their leaves.

"We know from satellite observations that vegetation is greener than it was in the past," lead researcher Lixin Wang said in a press release. "We now understand why that's occurring, but we don't necessarily know if that's a good thing or not.”

Drylands are the world’s most abundant landscapes, where evaporation exceeds the amount of rainfall received by at least a third.

They are also home to more than 2 billion of the world’s human inhabitants and cover 41.3 percent of Earth's land surface.

A view of crops and fields in a mountainous drylands region of Morocco.

Environment

100 Million Suffer Food-Water Shortages From El NIño

One of the strongest El Niños on record has left nearly 100 million people in southern Africa, Asia and Latin America with acute food and water shortages since late last year.

The ocean warming has also made many populations vulnerable to diseases such as Zika, according to various governmental, U.N. and relief agencies.

UNICEF warns that nearly 1 million children in eastern and southern Africa are suffering from “severe acute malnutrition” after two years of drought, preceding the current near-record El Niño.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Famine Early Warning Systems Network said in a statement that rainfall in southern Africa “has so far been the driest in the last 35 years.”

Millions of other people in various parts of the world have suffered from heat waves, water shortages and wildfires since El Niño’s weather disruptions emerged in mid-2015.

El Niño's warmth is fading across the Pacific, but its influence on the world's weather will linger for months.

Environment

CO2 levels hit record high for 30th year in a row

Greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere reached a record high in 2014 as the relentless fuelling of climate change makes the planet more dangerous for future generations, the World Meteorological Organization said in Geneva on Monday.

Graphs issued by the United Nations agency showed levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, climbing steadily towards the 400 parts per million (ppm) level, having hit a new record every year since reliable records began in 1984.

Carbon dioxide levels averaged 397.7 ppm in 2014 but briefly breached the 400 ppm barrier in the northern hemisphere in early 2014, and again globally in early 2015. Soon 400 ppm will be a permanent reality.

It means hotter global temperatures, more extreme weather events like heatwaves and floods, melting ice, rising sea levels and increased acidity of the oceans.

The rise in carbon dioxide levels was being amplified by higher levels of water vapour, which were in turn rising because of carbon dioxide emissions, the WMO said.

Levels of the other two major man-made greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxide, also continued their relentless annual rise in 2014, reaching 1,833 parts per billion (ppb) and 327.1 ppb, respectively. Both increased at the fastest rate for a decade.

The U.N. panel of climate scientists estimates that concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are at their highest in at least 800,000 years.