New research finds that a record Arctic sea ice melt season in 2007 initiated a “regime shift” to thinner, more transient ice that may be “irreversible”; another study shows that atmospheric rivers from the south are warming the Arctic in winter.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — A misty rain blows against my face as I follow Farah Obaidullah along Scheveningen Beach in the northwest part of The Hague. Despite the wind and…
KATHMANDU — The South Col in the Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) region faces blasts of unrelenting winds that sweep away almost everything in their path, including snow. Located nearly 8,000 meters (26,000…
Humans must make “deep, rapid, and sustained” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
Temperate peatlands sequester tremendous amounts of carbon, but many have experienced extensive harm. Now, as climate change worsens, land managers are urgently moving to restore these vital ecosystems.
Collecting core samples from the Greenland ice sheet is no easy task. During a recent expedition, scientists and drilling experts boarded a ski-equipped aircraft and flew to a site at…
Scientists remember the years between 2014 and 2017 as a particularly bad time for coral reefs. Elevated temperatures fueled by an El Niño climate pattern harmed about three-quarters of the…
As human activities have pushed many animal species to the margins of former habitats, some protected areas may not be located in the right places, especially as frequent extreme temperatures shrink their ranges further.
Last July, as the Ukraine war raged, the EU barred all Russian woody biomass imports; even as South Korea took in Russia’s supply. Illicit woody biomass may also still be flowing to the EU from Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.
Not quite aquatic but not fully terrestrial, mangrove forests are uniquely adapted to inhabit the interface between land and sea in the warmer parts of the world. Compared to the…
A stone causeway connects an islet, the famed Aragonese Castle perched atop it, to the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples in southern Italy. Below water, along the…
A Mongabay story featuring a whistleblower who debunked the green claims of Enviva — the world’s largest wood pellet maker — has prompted the Dutch to ban subsidies to biomass firms who make false sustainability claims.
An existing regulation designating the burning of forests to make energy as being renewable has been reversed in Australia. That decision seems unlikely to alter the EU’s heavy commitment to biomass burning.
BONTHE, Sierra Leone — As the sun rises over Bonthe, a small city on the coastline of Sierra Leone’s remote Sherbro Island, echoes of a not-so-distant colonial past bathe in…
Policymakers could finalize revisions to the EU’s Renewable Energy Directive by year end, even as forest activists offer new evidence denouncing wood pellets as an energy source, and calling for an end to subsidies.
A biomass industry insider tells Mongabay in exclusive interviews that Enviva, the world’s largest maker of wood pellets for energy, is disingenuous in its green, eco-friendly claims to the public and stockholders.
Likely the world’s most popular garment, jeans use huge amounts of water to grow irrigated cotton, a major factor in destroying the Aral Sea. Today, the industry, though making sustainability pledges, still does much harm.
Funders of a $1.7 billion pledge announced at the 2021 U.N. climate conference say they disbursed around 19% of the money to bolster the land rights of Indigenous and local…
As Arctic sea ice begins melting out fully in summer, the frequency of strong El Niños could increase by 35% by century's end, causing extreme weather events to increase, says recent modeling study.
In April 2009, ocean explorer Enric Sala and a team of marine biologists dove into the waters around the southern Line Islands, an uninhabited archipelago in the central Pacific that…
Jean Wiener should be elated. The organization he leads, FoProBim, has just won a series of grants to help protect mangroves in Haiti. In the coming months, he and his…
Discussions about the Greenland ice sheet often focus on what it’s losing. But from around the edges of the rapidly melting Greenland ice sheet, a global commodity is being created.…
Sea ice extent didn’t reach record lows this summer, but air temps over Greenland and ocean temps in some Arctic seas were extraordinarily high. Polar warming also likely continues influencing global extreme weather events, scientists say.
While forest advocates had high hopes, the EU parliament voted this week not to declassify woody biomass as a renewable energy source, paving the way for more EU, U.S., and Canadian forests to be turned into wood pellets and burned.
Heat waves are reshaping life in the Mediterranean, with few of the sea’s coves, bays and shorelines untouched, according to a recent study looking at the impact of marine heat…
A new study conveys a dire warning for the future: multiple tipping points could be triggered if global warming exceeds the critical threshold of 1.5°C. Published this week in Science,…
A new analysis of satellite data finds the Western Indian Ocean region lost around 4% its mangrove forests over the past quarter-century. In a report that discusses the state of…
The death knell of coal has been proclaimed, but policy loopholes in Asia allow for cofired power plants, where coal and wood are combined as fuel. Both fuels produce lots of carbon emissions, but those from wood aren’t counted.
Climate scientists say there’s a 0.1% chance of keeping warming below 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) by 2100, as called for in the Paris Agreement. Even the less ambitious target of…
OLENGURUONE, Kenya — Mau Forest covers some 2,700 square kilometers (1,042 square miles) in western Kenya, making it the largest native montane forest in East Africa. The forest is also…
