Climate | featured news

Climate Central points out what should already be obvious: As it’s getting hotter, we’re seeing more wildfires — and the wildfires are getting bigger. Even as the 2012 wildfire season continues — there are nearly 1 million acres actively burning right now — the site parsed the data to pick out long-term trends linking fires, size, and heat. Here are some of the key findings from its report...

Carbon dioxide emissions hit an unexpected 20-year low earlier this year, mainly because utilities have switched from coal to natural gas.

The relentless, weather-gone-crazy type of heat that has blistered the United States and other parts of the world in recent years is so rare that it can't be anything but man-made global warming, says a new statistical analysis from a top government scientist.

In an opinion piece in Saturday’s New York Times titled “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Muller writes: “Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Polar bears first appeared 4-5 million years ago - but the animals have interbred with brown bears as Earth has warmed and cooled, say Penn State researchers.

Greenland’s surface ice cover experienced a broader thaw during a three-day period this month than in nearly four decades of satellite record-keeping, according to three independent satellite measurements analyzed by NASA and university scientists.

A new university-led study with NASA participation finds ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously suspected. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation -- including stunted trees -- along the edges of the frozen continent.

A U.N. climate conference reached a hard-fought agreement Sunday on a far-reaching program meant to set a new course for the global fight against climate change.

Global emissions of carbon dioxide from fossil-fuel burning jumped by 5.9 percent, upending the notion that the brief decline during the recession might persist.

More hot days? "Virtually certain." Heat waves? "Ninety to 100 percent probability." And as the 21st century unfolds, more heavy precipitation and more intense hurricanes are "likely." The forecast comes from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global body of scientists who make periodic pronouncements on global warming and its likely effects.