Posts tagged with 'wildfire'
Countries Have Been Overlooking Their Biggest Climate Allies: Local and Regional Governments
Countries Have Been Overlooking Their Biggest Climate Allies: Local and Regional Governments
Cities are home to more than half the world’s population: 4.4 billion people commuting, working, eating, shopping, and using light, heat and air conditioning. As a result, cities collectively produce over 70% of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions warming the planet. They ...
Amidst Record-Breaking Fires, Will Brazil Confront Its Climate Challenges?
Amidst Record-Breaking Fires, Will Brazil Confront Its Climate Challenges?
Brazilians are currently living in a dystopian landscape. Thick smoke, oppressive heat and eerily orange sunsets blanket both major cities and small villages. Hundreds of cities are exposed to dangerous levels of air pollution while thousands of hectares of forest burn. ...
What Would Cities Look Like With 3 Degrees C of Warming vs. 1.5? Far More Hazardous and Vastly Unequal
What Would Cities Look Like With 3 Degrees C of Warming vs. 1.5? Far More Hazardous and Vastly Unequal
The world recently experienced a 13-month streak of record-breaking global temperatures. And as blistering heat waves punish communities across several continents, 2024 is on track to be the hottest year on record. Global average temperatures are now perilously close to exceeding 1.5 ...
What Happens When Extreme Heat and Air Pollution Collide
What Happens When Extreme Heat and Air Pollution Collide
On July 22, the world experienced its hottest day in recorded history. The global average temperature reached 17.2 degrees C (62.9 degrees F), prompting UN Secretary-General António Guterres to issue a global call to action on extreme heat. The problem of extreme ...
The Impacts of El Niño Go Far Beyond Water
The Impacts of El Niño Go Far Beyond Water
Over the past several months, the climate pattern El Niño has disrupted different regions and sectors across the world. Zimbabwe recently declared a state of disaster, due largely to El Niño-induced drought. The city government in Bogotá, Colombia, announced water rationing as reservoir levels ...
Next-Generation Climate Targets: A 5-Point Plan for NDCs
Next-Generation Climate Targets: A 5-Point Plan for NDCs
By early 2025, countries are due to unveil new national climate commitments under the Paris Agreement, known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs). These commitments form the foundation of international climate action, establishing emissions-reduction targets and other measures that countries promise ...
4 Climate Stories That Will Define 2024
4 Climate Stories That Will Define 2024
Last year shattered global heat records. The world witnessed the effects of rising temperatures in the form of devastating wildfires, severe flooding, extreme heatwaves and more. Poor countries and communities who have contributed the least to causing the climate crisis ...
How Data and Integrated Planning Approaches Can Help Cities Fight Air Pollution 
How Data and Integrated Planning Approaches Can Help Cities Fight Air Pollution 
In Bogotá, Colombia, over 3,000 people die prematurely each year due to exposure to air pollution—namely from PM2.5, a fine particulate matter produced by vehicle exhaust, burning and industrial outputs. Bogotá is not alone: According to 2021 data, of 174 ...
What Exactly Are 'Nature-based Solutions'?
What Exactly Are ‘Nature-based Solutions’?
In the Seychelles archipelago in east Africa, flooding and erosion caused by rising sea levels pose an imminent threat to the country’s many low-lying islands. At the same time its mangrove forests, which serve as a vital buffer against these ...
The Future of Extreme Heat in Cities: What We Know — and What We Don’t
The Future of Extreme Heat in Cities: What We Know — and What We Don’t
The past year registered record-shattering global temperatures. People around the world are already witnessing epic heat waves, wildfires and drought at 1.1 degrees C (2 degrees F) of global warming, compared to pre-industrial averages. With current policies putting the world on ...
Tracking Climate Action: How the World Can Still Limit Warming to 1.5 Degrees C
Tracking Climate Action: How the World Can Still Limit Warming to 1.5 Degrees C
Today’s climate change headlines often seem at odds with each other. One day, it’s catastrophic wildfires wreaking havoc around the world; the next, it’s an optimistic piece on the rapid scale-up of solar and wind power. Taken together, such stories ...
Poor Air Quality Isn’t the Only Way Wildfires Affect Cities
Poor Air Quality Isn’t the Only Way Wildfires Affect Cities
Thousands of people in Quebec, Canada evacuated their homes this month due to raging wildfires. More than 400 miles away, New York City experienced its worst air quality in history, and briefly had the worst air quality of any city in the ...
6 Big Findings from the IPCC 2022 Report on Climate Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
6 Big Findings from the IPCC 2022 Report on Climate Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability
The newest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) paints a troubling picture: Climate change is already impacting every corner of the world, and much more severe impacts are in store if we fail to halve greenhouse gas emissions this ...
How California Can Use Electric Vehicles to Keep the Lights On
How California Can Use Electric Vehicles to Keep the Lights On
In 2016, the U.S. Air Force offered a vision of the future for the transportation and energy sectors when the Los Angeles Air Force Base became the first federal facility to replace its entire ground vehicle fleet with plug-in electric vehicles (EVs). ...
India's Environmental Challenges in 10 Images
India’s Environmental Challenges in 10 Images
The last two decades have seen a rampant rise in environmental challenges being faced by cities and countries globally. In India, too, challenges related to air pollution, waste management, scarcity of water, conservation of natural resources, and loss of biodiversity, ...
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