Impact of climate change News

RSS
1648 stories

When the sea takes over: Voices from a climate-displaced community in Mexico

Sam Lee 1 Aug 2025
Isidrio Hernandez-Ruiz and his son are participants of the collaborative reforestation trial with Smithsonian and Traditional Leadership.

Indigenous leadership and science revive Panama’s degraded lands

Mongabay.com 31 Jul 2025
Person standing in front of a fallen tree.

Global warming is altering storms lightning, impacting tropical forests

Sean Mowbray 28 Jul 2025
Mangroves in Raja Ampat.

Reversing damage to the world’s mangrove forests

Kristine Sabillo 25 Jul 2025
Heavy rainfall in Colombia and Venezuela caused deadly landslides and widespread flooding in June. A new analysis now points to rapid urbanization, deforestation, mining and overgrazing as having reduced the region’s climate resilience. 
 “The rapid growth of population and informal settlements in areas prone to landslides, particularly in Colombia, puts people and infrastructure at risk,” the World Weather Attribution (WWA), a network of scientists evaluating extreme weather events, said in its latest rapid analysis. It said the informal communities are growing as people seek livelihoods in cities or are displaced due to conflict. Roop Singh, report co-author from the Netherlands-based Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, said at a media briefing that pasture- and agriculture-driven deforestation rose over the past two decades, increasing “the risk of landslides because tree roots are no longer binding and anchoring the soils.”
 The heavy rains during the last week of June triggered widespread flooding and damage in Colombia; a landslide in Antioquia department killed 27 people. In Venezuela, rivers overflowed, and smaller landslides cut off rural communities. WWA said in its report that rains in these regions had persisted since April, and that the June rain fell on already saturated ground where the deadly landslide occurred, and in rivers with already high levels of water. The scientists examined the total rainfall from April-June this year over the Magdalena River catchment in Colombia and the Falcón and Maracaibo basins in Venezuela. They also studied data on the accumulated rainfall from June 20-24 in the affected states in the Venezuelan Llanos, a grassland plain. “Neither events were particularly extreme,” Mariam Zachariah, co-author and research associate at Imperial College London, said at the briefing. The WWA analysis showed the heavy rain that fell in June is common, expected every 10 years in Colombia and every three years in Venezuela. The scientists also used climate models to understand the influence of human-induced climate change on the rains, but the findings were inconclusive. Instead, the models projected a drying trend for Colombia and mixed results for Venezuela. Friederike Otto, co-author and climate science professor at Imperial College London, said not being able to show clear linkages to climate change doesn’t mean there’s no influence. The researchers attributed some of the uncertainty to a lack of long-term observational weather data and weather stations in the region. “Unfortunately, extreme weather is not well understood in northern South America,” Paola A. Arias, a professor at the University of Antioquia, said in a statement. “We urgently need more investment in climate science to understand shifting risks and prepare for what’s ahead. More science will save lives." Zachariah said Colombia and Venezuela must prepare for both rainfall and drought, and build resilience to extreme weather. Banner image: People look at their destroyed home after a deadly landslide was triggered by heavy rain in Colombia’s Antioquia department on June 25, 2025. Image by AP Photo/Fredy Amariles.

Deadly landslide and flooding in Colombia and Venezuela linked to rapid urbanization

Kristine Sabillo 18 Jul 2025
Sunset at Joshua Tree National Park

In a warming world, can California save its Joshua trees?

Maya L. Kapoor 17 Jul 2025

The world’s children suffer brunt of wildfire smoke health impacts

Anna Dulisse 14 Jul 2025
Most of the lightning strike victims tend to be farmers and fishers.

Study links surge in lightning disasters in Bangladesh to transboundary air pollution

Mahadi Al Hasnat 11 Jul 2025

Suspicions surround international legal trade in Galápagos iguanas

Spoorthy Raman 10 Jul 2025
Using the law to save the planet | Against All Odds

Youth and women find success in taking climate cases to court

Mongabay.com 9 Jul 2025
Banner image of a flare stack by Yerevan Malarerva via Pexels.

UN rapporteur calls for ban on fossil fuel ads and criminalizing of disinformation

Kristine Sabillo 7 Jul 2025
Marbled white butterflies (Melanargia galathea)

Assisted colonization could be our ally in adapting to climate change, study suggests

Spoorthy Raman 2 Jul 2025
Banner image of buildings in New York, U.S., by Dietmar Rabich via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

104 companies linked to 20% of global environmental conflicts, study finds

Kristine Sabillo 30 Jun 2025
researcher glacier

Communities and ecosystems in Venezuela learn to adapt to life after glaciers

María Fernanda Rodríguez and Jeanfreddy Gutiérrez Torres 30 Jun 2025
For the Maya people, fire has always been a sacred element, central in ancestral Mother Earth celebration ceremonies.

Fire is both destruction and rebirth for Maya communities of Belize

Monica Pelliccia 27 Jun 2025
A ray swims over seagrass in Australia.

As ocean acidification ramps up, experts call for speedy ocean protection

Sean Mowbray 26 Jun 2025
Fungi are our climate allies | Against All Odds

Of mushrooms and mycelium: How fungi are powering eco-friendly solutions

Mongabay.com 24 Jun 2025
Banner image of drought in Brazil in 2023. Image by AP Photo/Edmar Barros.

Vatican-backed report calls for global debt relief amid climate crisis

Kristine Sabillo 20 Jun 2025
Clown anemonefish live symbiotically with anemone

When heat waves hit, clownfish shrink to survive, study finds

Keith Anthony Fabro 18 Jun 2025
Banner image of the waters around Maupiti Island in French Polynesia by Sophie Hurel via Wikimedia Commons (CCBY3.0).

French Polynesia creates world’s largest marine protected area

Kristine Sabillo 12 Jun 2025
California Wildfires in August 2018.

Climate futures: What’s ahead for our world beyond 1.5°C of warming?

Claire Asher 12 Jun 2025
Banner image of a glacier in Greenland from NASA Earth Observatory via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain).

Record-breaking heat wave due to climate change hits Iceland & Greenland: Scientists

Kristine Sabillo 11 Jun 2025
Students in Afghanistan walk to school in a sand storm during a drought in 2019.

Climate futures: World leaders’ failure to act is pushing Earth past 1.5°C

Claire Asher 11 Jun 2025
A seaweed farmer on Nusa Lembongan flashes a warm, cheeky smile as she moves through her daily harvesting routine.

Indonesian women sustain seaweed traditions in a changing climate

Maddy Bolt 10 Jun 2025
Community-led urban gardens have long existed in the city of Salvador in Brazil.

Real-world return on climate adaption investments wildly underestimated, report finds

Justin Catanoso 10 Jun 2025
A snapper hunting silver fish in a mangrove patch.

One-two punch for mangroves as seas rise and cyclones intensify

Elizabeth Fitt 9 Jun 2025
Rescuers evacuate people from a flooded hospital following landslides and flash flooding in India's northeast state of Manipur, Sunday, June 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Donald Sairem)

Heavy rains inundate northeast India

Kristine Sabillo 6 Jun 2025
Banner image of Mokwa after the flooding, by the Nigerian National Emergency Management Agency via X.

Hundreds die after flash floods tear through Nigerian market town

Kristine Sabillo 5 Jun 2025

Is rising CO2 really bad for the world’s drylands? Mongabay podcast probes

Mongabay.com 4 Jun 2025
White rhyolite spires on the shores of Jodogahama Beach in Miyako, Japan. Iwate prefecture. These spires are estimated to be around 45 million years old, and form a natural version of a Japanese garden. This beach is part of the Sanriku Fukkō National Park. It was incorporated into this national park as a reconstruction effort following the Tōhoku Earthquake and Tsunami in 2011. Photo by Mike DiGirolamo/Mongabay.

Kim Stanley Robinson on how his novel ‘Ministry for the Future’ holds lessons for the present

Mike DiGirolamo 3 Jun 2025
Banner image: Schoolchildren walk to school in Niamey, Niger in 2013.

Urban forests in Niger’s schoolyards serve climate resilience and education

Victoria Schneider 26 May 2025
A Schrenck’s bumblebee (Bombus schrencki) in Estonia.

Climate change now threatens thousands of species on Earth

Spoorthy Raman 22 May 2025

you're currently offline