• Sea-Level Rise “May Cross Two Meters by 2100”

    Land subsidence could worsen sea-level rise effects in the Asia Pacific region. Most islands in the Pacific are subsiding, presenting a challenge to infrastructure. Pacific Island Countries have low adaptative capacity to climate change.

  • A Decade After Sandy, Manhattan’s Flood Barrier Is Finally in Sight — Sort of

    In the wake of the October 2012 Superstorm Sandy, an ambitious project, called the “Big U,” was launched, aiming to wrap the island of Manhattan in miles of berms and artificial shorelines, creating a huge grassy shield that would both increase urban green space and defend the city from storm surge. The “Big U” shows how climate adaptation can succeed. It also shows how hard it is.

  • As the Planet Warms, Risks of Geoengineering the Climate Mount

    Because a climate-disrupted future remains possible, another danger needs our attention. As the impacts of warming become more extreme, countries are more likely to turn to riskier measures to combat them, including geoengineering.

  • Managing Water Resources in a Low-to-No-Snow Future

    With mountain snowpacks shrinking in the western U.S., new Berkeley Lab study analyzes when a low-to-no-snow future might arrive and implications for water management.

  • Extreme Weather Events Do Not Lead to Policy Change

    Extreme weather events and natural disasters, which result in hundreds of billions of dollars in damages and thousands of lives lost, are not associated with climate policy reforms.

  • Texas’ Plan to Provide Water for a Growing Population Ignores Climate Change

    Texas’ biggest single solution to providing enough water for its soaring population in the coming decades is using more surface water, including about two dozen new large reservoirs. But climate change has made damming rivers a riskier bet.

  • Climate Change-Driven Heat Waves Have Cost Global Economy Trillions Since the 1990s

    Massive economic losses due to sweltering temperatures brought on by human-caused climate change are not just a problem for the distant future. A new study has found that more severe heat waves resulting from global warming have already cost the world economy trillions of dollars since the early 1990s. The study says that measures protecting people on hottest days are needed now.

  • Hydropower Delivers Electricity, Even During Lengthy Droughts

    The megadrought in the Southwestern United States is the driest—and longest—in the last 1,200 years, depleting water reservoir levels to critically low levels over the past 22 years. Droughts particularly impact hydroelectric power dams as well as some thermoelectric power plants that require large amounts of water for cooling. But a new report suggests that the relationship between drought and hydroelectric power is more nuanced than it might seem. Drought-strained hydropower sustains 80 percent average power generation capacity.

  • Faster-Developing, Wetter Hurricanes to Come

    Climate change sets the stage for hurricanes to rapidly intensify faster, bringing wetter storms to the U.S. Atlantic Coast and other coastlines. A warmer world heightens the risk of flooding.

  • Assessment of Ocean Warming Highlights Future Climate Risks

    More than 90 percent of heat generated by global warming is absorbed by the oceans, and the Atlantic Ocean and southern oceans are warming much faster than the Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean. A warmer ocean leads to more intense storms, more deadly rainfall and flooding, and more powerful typhoons and hurricanes.

  • Hurricane Ian Shows That Coastal Hospitals Aren’t Ready for Climate Change

    As rapidly intensifying storms and rising sea levels threaten coastal cities from Texas to the tip of Maine, Hurricane Ian has just demonstrated what researchers have warned: Hundreds of hospitals in the U.S. are not ready for climate change.

  • Extreme Heat Could Make Parts of Asia, Africa Uninhabitable

    Extreme heat events foreshadow a less habitable world. In the coming decades, heatwaves are predicted to meet and exceed human physiological and social limits in regions such as the Sahel, the Horn of Africa and South and South-West Asia.

  • Climate Change Puts Energy Security at Risk

    Climate change, and the more extreme weather and water stress that it causes, is undermining global energy security by directly affecting fuel supply, energy production, and the physical resilience of current and future energy infrastructure. In 2020, 87 percent of global electricity generated from thermal, nuclear, and hydroelectric systems directly depended on water availability. Meanwhile, 33 percent of the thermal power plants that rely on freshwater availability for cooling are in high water stress areas. This is also the case for existing nuclear power plants, 25 percent of which will soon find themselves in high water stress areas.

  • The “Hurricane Tax”: Ian Is Pushing Florida’s Home Insurance Market Toward Collapse

    Hurricane Ian has dissipated, but it will bring even more turmoil to the Sunshine State in the coming months. This damage will be financial rather than physical, as ratings agencies and real estate companies have estimated the storm’s damages at anywhere between $30 and $60 billion. The storm is poised to be one of the largest insured loss events in U.S. history.

  • The Cost of Rising Temperatures

    From crop damage to cooling failures at cloud-based data centers, climate change affects a wide variety of economic sectors. The study found that economies are sensitive to persistent temperature shocks over at least a 10-year time frame.