News

This year's Arctic heatwave has had far-reaching consequences, writes the Economist, from shrinking sea ice, to wildfires, to a massive oil spill. Friederike Otto, co-lead of the World Weather Attribution initiative, discusses the game-changing impact of climate change on this extreme weather.

Andrew McConnell has been awarded 1000 EUR and will present to the Advisory Board of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Post-Carbon Transition after his idea was chosen as the most promising 'sensitive intervention point' that could tip the balance on climate change. His proposal is for central banks to reduce their valuation of the worth of carbon-intensive assets posted as collateral for credit. The competition was run in partnership with the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment and led by Dr Matthew Ives.

Jim Hall comments on a new study that finds coastal flooding is set to rise by about 50 per cent over the next 80 years and could threaten assets worth 20 per cent of global GDP. He cautions that the thorny questions of what standard coastal communities will need to be protected in future, and whether that is affordable, are not yet addressed.

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam - Africa's biggest hydropower project - has fuelled tensions with downstream nations for nearly a decade. Ethiopia's neighbours, including Egypt and Sudan, worry the dam will restrict vital water supplies. This article from AP includes comment from Dr Kevin Wheeler, who studies the dam and supports development in the region. [Extensive coverage elsewhere]

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the April 2020 meeting of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was held online for this first time. Lisa Schipper, social scientist at the ECI and coordinating author of an IPCC report chapter about climate resilient development options, spoke to NPR about the challenges associated with working from home, particularly for female researchers.

New data from Brazil's space research agency INPE has revealed that there were 28 percent more fires in the Amazon rainforest this July compared with the same time last year. Commenting on this study for NBC news, ecosystems researcher Erika Berenguer said that since July is just the start of the usual burning season, the rest of the season is likely to very intense. [Extensive coverage elsewhere]

The tropical forest canopy is one of the Earth's underexplored frontiers. To understand how these unique environments respond to climate change a team from the Ecosystems Lab at the University of Oxford and partner institutes in Ghana gathered evidence from the treetops, finding drier forests are at greater risk. This University of Oxford science blog post explores what it's like to do research and fieldwork in this unique part of the world.

Dry tropical forests are more vulnerable to the impacts of global warming than had been thought, according to new research from ECI's Ecosystems group, with wildlife and plants at severe risk of harm from human impacts. A new study, published in Nature Communications, found that areas with a drier climate have seen greater loss of biodiversity from global warming, the Guardian reports.

2020's record-breaking 38 degree heatwave in Siberia would have been all but impossible without human influence on climate change, reports the New York Times. Dr Friederike Otto and the World Weather Attribution team found that global warming made this year's long hot spell 600 times more likely. [Extensive media coverage included BBC, CNN, Guardian, Economist, FT, Washington Post, Daily Mail, Metro UK, USA Today]

Dr Juan Pablo Orjuela has been working with low-income women in Itagüí, part of the Medellin metropolitan area (Colombia), but COVID-19 has brought new challenges on how to engage with communities in the midst of lockdown measures. Read his blog entry on the PEAKUrban website on how the co-creation of a group name and image has helped in the process.