Climate & Earth

A “MONSTER” hurricane has swelled into the first Category 5 storm of the year, unleashing 160mph winds as it barrels toward a tourist hotspot loved by Americans. Genevieve reached the highest level on the hurricane scale after rapidly strengthening over the Pacific, while its massive swells threaten swimmers and small boats. The powerhouse storm was churning off…

According to the ratings, India stands at 23rd position with a score of 61.31 among the countries, falling 13 places from last year’s list. India has slipped 13 places from its previous ranking to 23rd position in a latest global chart on climate change performance, brought out by a group of three organisations, mainly due to absence…

Hurricane Melissa churned toward Cuba’s second-largest city with the force of a powerful Category 4 storm on Tuesday, hours after making landfall in neighboring Jamaica as the strongest-ever cyclone on record to hit that Caribbean island nation. Melissa roared ashore near Jamaica’s southwestern town of New Hope, packing sustained winds of up to 185 mph (295 kph),…

Brazilian soy farmers are pushing further into the Amazon rainforest to plant more of their crops, putting pressure on a landmark deal signed two decades ago aimed at slowing deforestation. Many are taking advantage of a loophole in the Amazon Soy Moratorium, a voluntary agreement signed by the world’s top grain traders in 2006 that they would…

Earth’s oceans are losing light, and it’s happening so fast that scientists are calling it one of the planet’s largest unnoticed habitat collapses. Over the past 20 years, an area of underwater real estate larger than the entire continent of Africa has significantly darkened, squeezing 90% of marine life into an ever-shrinking zone near the surface. A…

The UK government’s Advanced Research and Invention Agency – known as Aria – recently announced it is funding 21 research teams to explore what it terms climate cooling. The money involved (£56 million) isn’t much in the grand scheme of things. But experts on both sides of the debate (and this issue divides climate academics more than…

Residents struggled on Thursday to absorb the scale of devastation caused by a huge slab of glacier that buried most of their picturesque Swiss village, in what scientists suspect is a dramatic example of climate change’s impact on the Alps. A deluge of millions of cubic meters of ice, mud and rock crashed down a mountain on…

NASA’s astronaut Don Pettit became a septuagenarian while hurtling towards the Earth in a spacecraft to wrap up a seven-month mission aboard the International Space Station Cake, gifts and a low-key family celebration may be how many senior citizens picture their 70th birthday. But National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)‘s oldest serving astronaut Don Pettit became a…

For nearly 90% of Earth’s history, our planet’s atmosphere contained almost no oxygen, making it completely uninhabitable for humans and most modern life forms. Then, around 2.5 billion years ago, something remarkable happened: Earth’s atmosphere began to fill with oxygen in what scientists call the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). This atmospheric revolution changed our planet’s chemistry and…

In December 2024, astronomers in Chile spotted a new asteroid streaking through the sky, which they named 2024 YR4. What’s significant about this 100-meter-wide space rock is that it has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032. Since its discovery, the asteroid’s probability of an impact with our planet has gone all over the place. At…

CHILLING new telescope photos of the “city killer” asteroid hurtling towards earth at 30,000mph have been released. The chance of the space rock smashing into Earth when it loops around in 7 years’ time is estimated at a 1-in-48 chance – or just over two per cent. The striking new images of asteroid YR4 2024 were captured…

Holding long-term global warming to two degrees Celsius — the fallback target of the Paris climate accord — is now “impossible,” according to a stark new analysis published by leading scientists. Led by renowned climatologist James Hansen, the paper appears in the journal “Environment: Science and Policy for Sustainable Development” and concludes that Earth’s climate is more…

Expert panel formed by state govt has warned that several pockets of the town are sinking due to man-made and natural causes. Locals say report did not factor in Tapovan tunnel. Dehradun: An expert panel set up by the Uttarakhand government has found that several pockets of Chamoli district’s Joshimath town — a gateway to the Badrinath…