New research led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) shows how many tropical cities are predicted to warm faster than expected under 2°C of global warming.

Cities are often warmer than rural areas due to a phenomenon known as the urban heat island, which can be influenced by various factors, such as regional climate and vegetation cover. This can lead to increased heat-related health risks for some urban populations.

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the study combined state-of-the-art climate change projections with machine learning models to show how these urban heat islands can be amplified in many tropical and subtropical cities under climate change - mostly in monsoon regions such as India, China and Western Africa.

Research led by the University of Liverpool has identified magnetic evidence that two immense, ultra-hot rock structures located at the base of Earth’s mantle, around 2,900 kilometres beneath Africa and the Pacific, affect the underlying liquid outer core. The study shows that these enormous blobs of solid, superheated material — encircled by a pole-to-pole ring of cooler rock — have been shaping Earth’s magnetic field for millions of years.

Scientists at the University of California, Irvine have discovered that climate change is causing nitrous oxide, a potent greenhouse gas and ozone-depleting substance, to break down in the atmosphere more quickly than previously thought, introducing significant uncertainty into climate projections for the rest of the 21^st century.