Tag Archives: environment

Kamal Sonavane knew she’d pass out if she chewed smokeless tobacco one more time. It was a scorching April afternoon in the middle of another of India’s brutal heat waves, and with no job to go to, the farmworker had already chewed tobacco five times that day. “Even an addicted …

One of the weirder side effects of climate change is what it’s doing to rainfall. While most people think about global warming in terms of extreme heat—the deadliest kind of natural disaster in the United States—there is also an increasing risk of extreme precipitation. On average, it will rain more …

The original version of this story appeared in Quanta Magazine. Scientists have come to realize that in the soil and rocks beneath our feet there lies a vast biosphere with a global volume nearly twice that of all the world’s oceans. Little is known about these underground organisms, who represent …

This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Parasitic, elusive, and emitting an overwhelming odor of putrefying flesh, Rafflesia—often called the corpse flower—has intrigued botanists for centuries. Now, scientists are warning that it is at risk of extinction and calling for action to …

On the morning of September 11, critical care specialist Anoop Kumar was presented with an unusual situation. Four members of the same family had been admitted to his hospital—Aster MIMS in Kozhikode, Kerala—the previous day, all similarly sick. Would he take a look? He gathered his team of doctors to …

Climate change is the greatest threat humanity has ever faced, and the United States has begun mobilizing an army to fight it: the American Climate Corps. Formerly conceptualized as the Civilian Climate Corps, the new initiative will “put more than 20,000 young people on career pathways in the growing fields …

Last month, a strange atmospheric phenomenon spread over the central United States: a brutal, self-perpetuating “heat dome.” Hot air descended onto the region, sucking the moisture out of soils and plants, and raising ground temperatures higher and higher. On August 23, Chicago hit a heat index (temperature combined with humidity) …

Over the years, archaeologists have unearthed many offerings at the Templo Mayor, located at the heart of the ancient Aztec, or Mexica, capital of Tenochtitlán and adjacent to contemporary Mexico City’s cathedral. The most recent, the 186th to date, was announced in August: a stone chest filled with objects from …

It’s late August, and Italy is in the middle of its third record-setting heat wave of the summer, but at the bottom of the slopes in Fai della Paganella, a small ski resort in the Dolomites, a queue is forming for the chairlift. Instead of ski jackets and bobble hats, …

Given the ceaseless procession of disasters this summer—from heat domes to hurricanes to the fiery destruction of Lahaina—the slow-motion disaster of plastic pollution may not be top of mind. But the United Nations recently released a “zero draft,” or the principles under consideration, of what could become one of the …