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CLARK, Philippines, Feb 9, 2024 (AFP) – NASA has kicked off a series of marathon flights in Asia with the world’s biggest flying laboratory, in an ambitious mission to improve the models that help to forecast and fight air pollution. Millions of deaths each year are linked to air pollution, and improving the ability to identify its sources and behaviour can lead to more accurate warning systems for the public. Starting this week in the […]
By Kelly MACNAMARA PARIS, Feb 8, 2024 (AFP) – Earth has endured 12 months of temperatures 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial era for the first time on record, Europe’s climate monitor said Thursday, in what scientists called a “warning to humanity”. Storms, drought and fire have lashed the planet as climate change, supercharged by the naturally-occurring El Nino phenomenon, stoked record warming in 2023, making it likely the hottest in 100,000 years. The extremes have […]
Population numbers of endangered monarch butterflies have fallen sharply at their wintering sites in Mexico, experts said Wednesday, blaming the “sobering” drop primarily on climate change and the use of pesticides. The orange, black and white-spotted insects covered 0.90 hectares (2.2 acres) of forest in the 2023-2024 season, Gloria Tavera, conservation director at the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas, said. That marked a decline of 59 percent from the previous year, she told a […]
By Axl HERNANDEZ con Héctor VELASCO en Santiago Firefighters said Wednesday they had extinguished all wildfires in Chile’s coastal region of Valparaiso, where flames razed entire communities and left 131 dead. “The forest emergency that began on February 2 is considered to have been overcome,” said the fire department in the seaside resort town Vina del Mar, one of the worst-hit areas. Under a summer heatwave, almost 2,000 firefighters fought the blaze, finally quenching the […]
By Juan RESTREPO et Juan BARRETO GERLACHE STRAIT, Antarctica, Feb 7, 2024 (AFP) – In remote Antarctica, Colombian marine biologist Paulo Tigreros dips a net into the icy waters in his hunt for microplastics in what should be one of the best-preserved ecosystems in the world. Like a sieve, the net lets water pass through as it retains the small solid particles that float in the Gerlache Strait, a natural corridor approximately 160 kilometers (99 […]
By Mahesh PANDEY with Sailendra SIL in Kolkota DEHRADUN, India, Feb 6, 2024 (AFP) – Tigers in India have been photographed in high-altitude mountains rarely seen before, with experts suggesting relentless human pressure and a heating climate are driving them from traditional hunting grounds. Researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) said they were surprised to find “multiple pictures” of tigers in the mountains of Sikkim — the Indian state squeezed between Nepal, Bhutan […]
Afghan authorities captured a rare snow leopard in the country’s mountainous northeast and were preparing to release it back into the wild after it reportedly killed dozens of livestock animals, a conservation group said Sunday. The endangered leopard was captured on Thursday night after becoming trapped in a livestock enclosure in the rural Zibak district of Badakhshan province, savaging some 30 animals, the district’s deputy governor Abdulrahman Kasra told AFP on Saturday. The juvenile leopard […]
Santiago, Feb 5, 2024 (AFP) – The confirmed death toll from ferocious wildfires in central Chile has risen to 112, an Interior Ministry official said Sunday. Undersecretary Manuel Monsalve told a press conference that the medical examiner has received “112 people dead, 32 bodies identified,” adding that there were still “40 active fires” in the country. Responders continued to battle fires in the coastal tourist region of Valparaiso amid an intense summer heat wave, with […]
LAHORE, Pakistan, Feb 2, 2024 (AFP) – In a Pakistan paediatric ward, a chorus of infant coughs and straining lungs is the toll of a frigid winter, compounded by choking smog and lagging vaccination rates. “Please pray for him,” the mother of four-month-old pneumonia patient Ibrahim begs a nurse in Lahore, delicately arranging a blanket around ventilator tubes piping air in and out of his heaving chest. The eastern megacity is blanched every winter by […]
Last year’s massive earthquake in southeastern Turkey killed 53,537 people in the country, the interior minister said Friday, bringing the overall death toll to nearly 60,000. The government in neighbouring Syria has said 1,414 people died in areas under its control in the predawn disaster on February 6, 2023. Turkish-backed officials in northern Syria have put the toll in rebel-held regions at 4,537. The combined official death toll of 59,488 people makes last year’s quake […]
By Rosa SULLEIRO BARCELONA, Feb 1, 2024 (AFP) – Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region declared a drought emergency for Barcelona on Thursday and the surrounding area, which will now face tighter water restrictions following three years without significant rain. The head of the regional government of Catalonia, Pere Aragones, announced the step after reservoirs in the Mediterranean region saw their water levels falling to below 16 percent of full capacity. That is the benchmark set by […]
Greenland absorbs more of the greenhouse gas methane than it emits, according to a new study from the University of Copenhagen released Wednesday. “On average and since 2000, dry landscapes of the ice-free part of Greenland have consumed more than 65,000 tons of methane annually from the atmosphere, while 9,000 tons of methane have been released annually from its wet areas,” the university said in a statement. The findings, which were published in the journal […]
