January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires: A wake-up call as 'once-in-a-generation' events become frequent
Reports and Proceedings
Updates every hour. Last Updated: 29-Jul-2025 12:11 ET (29-Jul-2025 16:11 GMT/UTC)
Climate change had a role but did not cause the LA wildfires, says the new study by UN University
When formulating climate policy, too little attention is paid to social factors and too much to technological breakthroughs and economic reasons. Because citizens are hardly heard in this process, European governments risk losing public support at a crucial moment in the climate debate. This is the conclusion of several researchers from Radboud University in a paper published this week in Earth System Governance.
In several industrialised countries, governments are backing away from controversial building energy legislation that sought to ban oil and gas heating and replace them with fossil-free systems. An article co-authored by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Nature Climate Change now offers guidance on achieving the switch to climate-friendly technology without political uproar. Based on recent economic findings, the article provides criteria and a political roadmap for moderate, targeted regulation to complement the gradual increase in carbon pricing.
A new study warns that climate change will significantly reshape wind energy potential across the Middle East. While surface winds may intensify in some regions, wind speeds at turbine height are projected to decline—posing challenges for energy planners across the region. Using high-resolution climate modeling, the research highlights the urgent need to factor future wind dynamics into sustainable energy strategies.
Plankton may be tiny, but they play an important role in the ocean. As the foundation of marine ecosystems, they support ocean food webs and help regulate Earth’s climate by storing carbon. While lab studies have shown plankton can adjust their chemistry in response to environmental changes, a new global study reveals how these adaptations occur in the real ocean. The study will be published on May 23, 2025, in the journal Science Advances.
As sea levels climb and weather grows more extreme, coastal regions everywhere are facing a creeping threat: salt.
Salinization of freshwater and soils adversely affects 500 million people around the world, especially in low-lying river deltas.
A new study led by researchers at the University of Portsmouth, in partnership with Dhaka University and Curtin University, sheds light on how rising oceans are pushing saltwater into freshwater rivers and underground water sources in the world’s largest river mouth - the Bengal Delta in Bangladesh.