Tag Archives: climate-change

It’s a perennial question at WIRED: Tech got us into this mess, can it get us out? That’s particularly true when it comes to climate change. As the weather becomes more extreme and unpredictable, there are hopes that artificial intelligence—that other existential threat—might be part of the solution. DeepMind, the …

Salmon are legendary for their commitment to procreation. You know the drill: They wander the ocean before returning to rivers where they hatched, fire themselves upstream to spawn, and then drop dead. It’s not such a rigid life cycle, though. In fact, it’s a system that’s allowed a species like …

This article was syndicated from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which has covered human-made threats to humanity since 1945. The main artery in Montreal’s Little Italy is lined with cafés, wine bars, and pastry shops that spill into tree-lined, residential side streets. Generations of farmers, butchers, bakers, and fishmongers sell …

Whether you love lagers or extra-bitter IPAs, you love alpha acids and just don’t know it. These are the compounds in hops that impart that bitter taste, which can be subtle or intense, depending on the cultivar. For centuries, farmers who produce hops for traditional European beer making—particularly in Germany, …

It’s been one of the wettest years in California since records began. From October 2022 to March 2023, the state was blasted by 31 atmospheric rivers—colossal bands of water vapor that form above the Pacific and become firehoses when they reach the West Coast. What surprised climate scientists wasn’t the …

With little fanfare, the European Union has launched a huge climate experiment. On October 1, the EU kicked off the initial phase of a Europe-wide tax on carbon in imported goods. This marks the first time a carbon border tax has been tried at this scale anywhere in the world. …

Unless you’re running around barefoot, you experience heat waves through air temperature. For the most part, that’s how scientists track them too. “Heat extremes have been always studied based on air temperature, in part because we have a lot of observations of air temperatures,” such as from meteorological stations, says …

The global temperature numbers for September are in, and they are not good. “This month was, in my professional opinion as a climate scientist—absolutely gobsmackingly bananas,” Zeke Hausfather posted Tuesday on X (formerly known as Twitter).  Kristina Dahl, principal climate scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, read that post …

This story originally appeared on Grist and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Under the relentless sun in Africa, the birthplace of humanity, every living thing had to find a way to beat the heat. Lions rested in the shade, termites built giant ventilation mounds, and elephants evolved giant …

Two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ian dumped up to 10 inches of rain on New York City in just two hours, the metropolis is once again inundated today by extreme rainfall. It is one of the many cities worldwide grappling with a counterintuitive effect of climate change: Sometimes, …