11 June 2020 (Institute for Economics and Peace) – This is the 14th edition of the Global Peace Index (GPI), which ranks 163 independent states and territories according to their level of peacefulness. In addition to presenting the findings from the 2020 GPI, this year’s report includes an analysis of the effect of the COVID-19 […]
By Alejandra Borunda 9 December 2019 (National Geographic) – High in the Himalaya, near the base of the Gangotri glacier, water burbles along a narrow river. Pebbles, carried in the small river’s flow, pling as they carom downstream. This water will flow thousands of miles, eventually feeding people, farms, and the natural world on the vast, […]
By Ashraf Khan 7 September 2019 (AFP) – Swarms of flies are descending on Pakistan’s commercial capital in what residents say are record numbers this rainy season, adding to the misery of Karachi’s monsoon “hell”. Heavy rains have inundated the sprawling port city of nearly 20 million people for weeks, overwhelming shoddy drainage systems clogged […]
By Somini Sengupta and Weiyi Cai 6 August 2019 BENGALURU, India (The New York Times) – Countries that are home to one-fourth of Earth’s population face an increasingly urgent risk: The prospect of running out of water. From India to Iran to Botswana, 17 countries around the world are currently under extremely high water stress, […]
By Hayley Dunning 30 January 2019 (Imperial College London) – Extreme rainfall – defined as the top five percent of rainy days – often forms a pattern at the local level, for example tracking across Europe. But new research, published today in Nature, reveals that there are also larger-scale global patterns to extreme rainfall events.These […]
14 December 2018 (RSF) – A total of 80 journalists were killed this year, 348 are currently in prison, and 60 are being held hostage, according to the annual worldwide round-up of deadly violence and abusive treatment of journalists released today by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which shows an unprecedented level of hostility towards media […]
By Jonathan Watts and Elle Hunt 13 August 2018 (The Guardian) – Imagine a city at 50C (122F). The pavements are empty, the parks quiet, entire neighbourhoods appear uninhabited. Nobody with a choice ventures outside during daylight hours. Only at night do the denizens emerge, HG Wells-style, into the streets – though, in temperatures that […]
By Somini Sengupta, Tiffany May, and Zia ur-Rehman 30 July 2018 (The New York Times) – Expect more. That’s the verdict of climate scientists to the record-high temperatures this spring and summer in vastly different climate zones. The continental United States had its hottest month of May and the third-hottest month of June. Japan was […]
By Christopher C. Burt 13 July 2018 (Weather Underground) – The first five months of 2018 were the fourth warmest in global records going back to 1880, according to NOAA. Along the way, a number of extreme heat events have occurred already this year. In recent weeks across the Northern Hemisphere, these records have included […]
By Laurel Hamers 9 July 2018 (Science News) – Air pollution caused 3.2 million new cases of diabetes worldwide in 2016, according to a new estimate. Fine particulate matter, belched out by cars and factories and generated through chemical reactions in the atmosphere, hang around as haze and make air hard to breathe. Air pollution […]
