Climate Change
What You Need To Know About Davos 2020: How To Save The Planet
As the year began, vast tracts of Australia were burning, Jakarta was under water, while Norway recorded its warmest January day ever. Extreme weather events have long been forecast as the result of global climate change, caused by emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere. What’s happening now is the result of a 0.9C increase in global temperatures …
Asians Most Likely to Believe in Man-Made Climate Change
Eight out of the ten countries with the biggest share of inhabitants who believe in man-made climate change are Asian countries, a survey from YouGov reveals. The following list shows the top 10 countries when it comes to the percentage of citizens believing that climate change is happening and that us humans are responsible for …
Hungry For Data, Starving The World
There are 5.9 million Instagram posts tagged #EcoFriendly. There’s no doubt that people all over the world, online and off, are waking up to the devastating impact that we are having on the planet. Never before has there been such a push to reduce plastic consumption, slow global warming and stop deforestation. Recently, naturalist David …
Global Bank Urges Cities To Invest In New Infrastructure To Adapt To Climate Change
The impacts of climate change on weather, sea levels, food and water supplies should be seen as an investment opportunity for our cities, says global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs. In a report out last month the bank says cities need to adapt to become more resilient to climate change and this could “drive one …
Singapore’s First Virtual Power Plant To Optimise Energy Distribution
Globally, the energy sector is evolving, driven by technological advances and climate change. Distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar and energy storage systems today complement traditional power plants which generate electricity centrally. Electricity produced from these energy resources at end users’ premises can be coordinated intelligently like a “single utility-scale power station”. Such a …
What It Takes To Put Out Forest Fires
In Brazil, the world’s largest tropical rainforest is burning. Indonesia is home to the third-largest tropical forest and this too is burning in parts of Sumatra and Kalimantan. Recently, a member of the Environment and Forestry Ministry Fire Fighter Task Force, or Manggala Agni, was killed by a falling tree while trying to extinguish fires …
Seaweed Farming Could Really Help Fight Climate Change
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), addressing carbon emissions from our food sector is absolutely essential to fight climate change. While land and agriculture took center stage in the panel’s most recent report, how the oceans at large could help in that fight was largely missing. For their study, researchers investigated the carbon offsetting …
We Built An App To Detect Areas Most Vulnerable To Life-Threatening Haze
Forest and land-use fires are ravaging Indonesia’s Sumatra and Kalimantan islands. Haze from these fires threatens lives as inhaling smoke can cause heart and respiratory diseases, leading to premature deaths. We study the intersection of land use, fires and air pollution. Based on our latest study, smoke exposure would lead to about 36,000 premature deaths …
3 Dangers Of Rising Temperatures That Could Affect Your Health Now
I read the news about the urgency of addressing climate change, and as a mathematician who studies climate change, I was not surprised. Very worried, but not surprised. A few days before Christmas last year, I took a picture of a blooming cherry tree along the Charles River in Boston. As a scientist at Tufts …
Why We Need New Climate Models
In 1950, meteorologists Jule Charney and Ragnar Fjørtoft joined with mathematician John von Neumann and other researchers to create the first computer simulation of the weather. Back then, it took 24 hours of calculations to forecast 24 hours’ worth of weather. In other words, practically as soon as the paltry forecast was finished, reality had …