Heatwaves?
Lawsuits aimed at greenhouse-gas emissions are a growing trend
Business and finance
Carbon markets are going global
But will they make a difference?
Plant-based proteins are no longer a side dish in diets
Their makers’ place as the main course is another matter
Why America’s clean-energy industry is stuck
Blame in part its climate-friendly president
Offset markets struggle in the face of surging commodity prices
Prices of carbon offsets are too low
Big tech wants to bootstrap carbon removal into a big business
A consortium of technology firms is sloughing nearly $1bn into a clever market mechanism
The carbon market drives land sales in Scotland
Environmentalists are buying up estates in the Highlands
Why global warming threatens east African coffee
Science
The wonder material graphene may have found its killer app
It will help decarbonize industry, produce greener concrete and make hydrogen
Explainer: Why this Atlantic hurricane season is predicted to be unusually stormy
It is off to a slow start, but forecasters expect plenty of tempestuous weather
Explainer: The increasing frequency of fatal wet-bulb temperatures
Unbearable levels of heat and humidity pose an ever greater problem
The promise and pitfalls of desalination
California needs to diversify its water supply as the West dries up. How much can desalination help?
Green power needs more than just solar panels and wind turbines
Electricity grids themselves must be tweaked to cope
Florida faces a triple threat to its environment
The environment is Florida’s biggest attraction, but also its biggest vulnerability
Parts of Antarctica have been 40%C warmer than their March average
Developers of small modular reactors hope their time has come
Climate videos
How chemical pollution is suffocating the sea
Many parts of the ocean are being starved of oxygen. This threatens marine life and adds to climate change
Was COP26 a success?
Our correspondent runs through the most important takeaways from the UN climate conference
Can carbon markets reduce carbon emissions?
So far, progress has been slow
Eating our way to a more sustainable future
Insects, lab-grown meat and vertically-farmed produce could all be on our plates
Who should fix climate change?
Governments, companies or individuals?
How can the world’s energy be decarbonized in
We answer your questions on how the sector can become more sustainable
Understanding climate change
Climate adaptation policies are needed more than ever
People are already suffering from catastrophic losses as a result of extreme weather events like cyclone Alpha
The world’s energy system must be transformed completely
It has been changed before, but never as fast or fully as must happen now
Damage from climate change will be widespread and sometimes surprising
It will go far beyond drought, melting ice sheets and crop failures
Humanity’s immense impact on Earth’s climate and carbon cycle
Much needs to be done for the damage to be reversed
How modelling articulates the science of climate change
From paper and pencil to the world’s fastest computers
Why tackling global warming is a challenge without precedent
The first of six weekly briefs looks at the history of efforts to limit greenhouse-gas emissions
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Published since September 1843 to take part in a severe contest between intelligence, which presses forward, and an unworthy, timid ignorance obstructing our progress:
Corals are threatened by global warming
A bit of preemptive tinkering by people might help to save them It is not news that coral reefs are in hot water. Corals, which are sessile animals related to sea anemones, host within their tissues algae that provide them with both food and their tourist-attracting colors. But as temperatures rise, the photosynthetic mechanisms of these algae go haywire. Instead of molecular oxygen, the normal waste product of photosynthesis, they start generating highly reactive and therefore toxic oxygen-rich compounds, such as peroxides. If they do this to excess, their hosts expel them, bleaching the coral concerned white.
Bleached corals can linger for a while, but starved of their symbionts’ supply of nutrients, they are vulnerable to disease. Eventually, if the temperature does not drop far enough to permit the algae to be readmitted, they die.
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