New research finds that forests play a far greater role in protecting people from climate change than previously recognized.

Forests regulate global and local climates in ways that impact human well-being. In this Review, we discuss the scale-dependent mechanisms through which forests regulate climate, highlighting their co...

TNC-led study stresses urgency of directing climate adaptation funding to the places that need it most.

We assess geographic disparities in heat exposure for more and less socially vulnerable areas in the contiguous United States (CONUS) High-social vulnerability areas are disproportionately expose...

The Trump Administration has vowed to dissolve the center that provides critical extreme weather and climate data for our nation.

Accelerating NCS in the United States

Climate researchers have examined many impacts of climate change on energy supply and demand under various scenarios. However, the effect of changing particulate deposition onto solar panel surfaces on solar power production efficiency (i.e., soiling) has not been studied. We therefore characterize probabilistic outcomes across multiple climate models and scenarios. We find large current regional losses (up to 40% without manual cleaning, up to 20% with monthly cleaning and rain removal) in generation that grow slightly under a high-emission scenario, largely due to regional increases in windblown dust. In contrast, under a low-emissions scenario, potential production increases significantly (2–8% interquartile range with only rain removal) due to reduced soiling, especially in regions of Asia and Africa where anthropogenic aerosols are major contributors to soiling. Projected changes vary widely across models in many dusty areas outside of the Sahara and Arabia. Differences can also be large in regions dominated by anthropogenic aerosols, such as Nigeria, eastern China, and northern India, where the full range across modeled potential power production changes extends from −1 to +11% for the end of the century (without manual cleaning), underscoring the need to consider multiple climate models. With large increases in projected solar power deployment, the relatively small potential production increases reported here could nevertheless represent a large dividend in additional energy production. Hence, reductions in air pollution attributable to decarbonization could provide positive feedback under which a greater deployment of solar power (or other renewables) increases the production of solar power, facilitating the transition to renewable energy.

In the face of intense heat, experts say small daily actions — from the food, drinks or medications we ingest to how we attempt to cool down — could affect how our bodies dissipate heat.

1°C of additional warming could pose serious challenges for around one-eighth of the tropical population, but researchers also explore ways to mitigate against these dangers