Climate scientist Tapio Schneider is delighted that machine learning has taken the drudgery out of his day. When he first started modelling how clouds form, more than a decade ago, this mostly involved painstakingly tweaking equations that describe how water droplets, air flow and temperature interact. But since 2017, machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) … Read more
When I took over as the director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, I inherited a project that tracks temperature changes since 1880. Using this trove of data, I’ve made climate predictions at the start of every year since 2016. It’s humbling, and a bit worrying, to admit that no year has confounded climate … Read more
How doomed are we? It’s a question I have been asked as a climate scientist many times over the years, sometimes with “doomed” replaced by less printable synonyms. I struggle to answer it every time. It’s not a scientific question, because the terms are not well defined. What does it mean to be “doomed”? And … Read more
John Kerry and Xie Zhenhua’s friendship kept US–China climate negotiations rolling even when the two countries disagreed on other matters.Credit: Fadel Dawod/Getty Researchers are regarding the parallel retirements of the US and Chinese climate envoys with apprehension, saying that the change could rattle the current co-operative spirit between the world’s two biggest carbon emitters. John … Read more
This year, voters in five of the world’s biggest carbon-emitting territories go to the polls. These regions — the United States, India, Indonesia, Russia and the European Union — represent one-third of the world’s population and about the same proportion of human-made carbon emissions. How the political wind blows from these elections will be crucial … Read more
In February, megafires ripped through the Chilean central coastal hills, killing at least 132 people, injuring hundreds and destroying 7,000 homes. At the time of writing, more than 300 people remain missing. These wildfires are not a one-off calamity. You only need watch the news to know that wildfires are becoming more frequent and more … Read more
In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species most at risk today from human-driven climate change. The findings have been published today in the journal Science. Past climate change (often caused by … Read more
Environmental organizations issued a report on Wednesday that rated social media platforms based on their reaction to climate change misinformation. Elon Musk’s X app was harshly criticized in the study. X, formerly known as Twitter, received the lowest grade since it is unknown whether or not the app has restrictions against the dissemination of erroneous … Read more