Environment

Weather Disasters Costing U.S. Billions This Year

Author: 

Mary Wisniewski
Weather Disasters Keep Costing U.S. Billions This Year
Show

Blizzards. Tornadoes. Floods. Record heat and drought, followed by wildfires.

The first eight months of 2011 have brought strange and destructive weather to the United States.

From the blizzard that dumped almost two feet of snow on Chicago, to killer tornadoes and heat waves in the south, to record flooding, to wildfires that have burned more than 1,000 homes in Texas in the last few days, Mother Nature has been in a vile and costly mood.

Level: 

Story category: 

Year: 

Category: 

Geographic Area: 

Time to Start Work on a Panic Button?

Author: 

JUSTIN GILLIS
Show

For two decades, the world’s governments have failed to meet their own commitment to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main heat-trapping gas. As frustration builds among scientists, some of them have begun to argue for research on a potential last-ditch option in case global warming starts to get out of control. It is called geoengineering — or directly manipulating the Earth’s climate.

The idea sounds like science fiction, but it is not.

Level: 

Story category: 

Year: 

Category: 

Map tracks Antarctica on the move

Author: 

Jonathan Amos
Map tracks Antarctica on the move
Show

Scientists have produced what they say is the first complete map of how the ice moves across Antarctica.

Built from images acquired by radar satellites, the visualisation details all the great glaciers and the smaller ice streams that feed them.

The map has been published online by Science magazine.

Level: 

Story category: 

Year: 

Category: 

Geographic Area: 

Fukushima radiation alarms doctors

Show

Scientists and doctors are calling for a new national policy in Japan that mandates the testing of food, soil, water, and the air for radioactivity still being emitted from Fukushima's heavily damaged Daiichi nuclear power plant.

 

"How much radioactive materials have been released from the plant?" asked Dr Tatsuhiko Kodama, a professor at the Research Centre for Advanced Science and Technology and Director of the University of Tokyo's Radioisotope Centre, in a July 27 speech to the Committee of Health, Labour and Welfare at Japan's House of Representatives.

 

Year: 

Category: 

Story category: 

Level: 

Geographic Area: 

UN Establishes a Committee on Global Geospatial Information

Author: 

Matt Ball
UN Establishes a Committee on Global Geospatial Information
Show

The United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) voted to establish a committee on global geospatial information management in order to enhance international dialogue and cooperation on spatial data infrastructures. The UN recognizes the benefits of geospatial information for application to humanitarian, peace and security, environmental and development challenges as well as to responses to climate change, natural disasters, pandemics, famines, population displacement, and food and economic crises.

Category: 

Story category: 

Level: 

Pathways to Sustainabaility WBCSD

Show

Vision 2050:  The new agenda for business

Under the WBCSD's Vsion 2050 Project, twenty-nice WBCDSD member companies developed a vision of a world well on the way to sustainablility by 2050 and the pathways leading to that world.

This mural is a basis for visualizing the possible pathways.  The mural is meant to provide a tool for strategic planning, prioritizing, and monitoring progeress to help countires, businesses, NGOs , international organization and individuals assess the degree to which we are on track to accomplishing the vision.

Year: 

Story category: 

Level: 

Category: 

Delayed action on climate to result in irreversible change and high costs

Delayed action on climate to result in irreversible change and high costs
Show

The physics of Earth’s natural systems show that a delay—of even a decade—in reducing CO2 emissions will lock in large-scale, irreversible changes. If carbon dioxide emissions do not begin to trend down this decade, it will be nearly impossible to stabilize the climate at any acceptable level.

Category: 

Story category: 

Level: 

A view of Horn of Africa's drought from space

A view of Horn of Africa's drought from space
Show

The worst drought in 60 years has hit the Horn of Africa region, an area in east Africa that includes Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya.

A recent satellite-derived animation from the European Space Agency illustrates the crisis as it worsened over the summer. The images above show soil moisture in the region from April to mid-July of this year. Green and blue depict higher levels of soil moisture while the increasing spread of orange and yellow illustrates areas with little to no moisture.

Geographic Area: 

Level: 

Story category: 

Category: 

Pages