The melting of glaciers and ice caps by the climate crisis could unleash a barrage of explosive volcanic eruptions, a study suggests.

The loss of ice releases the pressure on underground magma chambers and makes eruptions more likely. This process has been seen in Iceland, an unusual island that sits on a mid-ocean tectonic plate boundary. But the research in Chile is one of the first studies to show a surge in volcanism on a continent in the past, after the last ice age ended.

Global heating caused by the burning of fossil fuels is now melting ice caps and glaciers across the world. The biggest risk of a resurgence of volcanic eruptions is in west Antarctica, the researchers said, where at least 100 volcanoes lie under the thick ice. This ice is very likely to be lost in the coming decades and centuries as the world warms.

Volcanic eruptions can cool the planet temporarily by shooting sunlight-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. However, sustained eruptions would pump significant greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, including carbon dioxide and methane. This would further heat the planet and potentially create a vicious circle, in which rising temperatures melt ice that leads to further eruptions and more global heating.

https://archive.ph/I4CHs

By 2040, the energy demands of the tech industry could be up to 25 times higher than today, with unchecked growth of data centers driven by AI expected to create surges in electricity consumption that will strain power grids and accelerate carbon emissions.

This is according to a new report from the University of Cambridge's Minderoo Center for Technology and Democracy, which suggests that even the most conservative estimate for big tech's energy needs will see a five-fold increase over the next 15 years.

Environment and Climate Change Canada’s forecast predicts a warmer-than-usual summer with uncertain precipitation levels. Bill Merryfield, a research scientist with the weather office, recently said human pollution has been a key influence on hotter summers.

Tinder dry conditions have also created the fuel needed to start hundreds of wildfires across the country, forcing thousands in Manitoba and Saskatchewan to flee their communities earlier this spring.

As of Friday, Manitoba has reported 60 active wildfires, with residents of Lynn Lake now being told they’ll have to evacuate for a second time. Saskatchewan has reported 65 active fires, with five communities under evacuation.

archived (Wayback Machine)

A proposal by the Marshall Islands and Colombia calling on countries to transition away from fossil fuels had to be dropped from the final UNHRC resolution

Kabul, a city of over six million people, could become the first modern city to run out of water in the next five years, a new report has warned.

Groundwater levels in the Afghan capital have dropped drastically due to over-extraction and the effects of climate change, according to a report published by nonprofit Mercy Corps.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/38081729

Archived

[...]

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights (IACHR) on Thursday handed down an advisory opinion requested in 2023 by Chile and Colombia to clarify state obligations related to the climate crisis.

In a public hearing held at the court’s headquarters in the Costa Rican capital of San José, Judge Nancy Hernández read out the trailblazing decision on climate change, which for the first time in IACHR history stated a clear link between the “climate emergency” and human rights. The opinion also recognises that states and companies have an obligation to mitigate global warming and its impacts.

“The evidence we saw during the hearings and written submissions shows us that there is no more margin for indifference,” said Judge Hernández. “This is a contribution from law, but law alone is not enough. Success depends on what each one of us can do.”

The Inter-American Court of Human Rights holds jurisdiction over 20 Latin American and Caribbean states, where its advisory opinions are binding. But the strongly-worded climate ruling states that it is binding for all signatories of the Organization of American States, including the US and Canada.

[...]

The landmark 230-page ruling mentions for the first time a subcategory of the human right to a healthy environment, by introducing a “right to a healthy climate”. Court judges said that this is defined as a climate system “free of anthropogenic interference dangerous” for nature and people.

According to the court ruling, states are also expected to cooperate to take actions to reduce emissions that are “as ambitious as possible”, and are obliged to prevent harm by carrying out environmental impact studies.

[...]

Conflicts and related fatalities have more than tripled since the early 2000s, fuelling extreme poverty, the World Bank said on June 27.

Economies in fragile and conflict-affected regions have become “the epicentre of global poverty and food insecurity, a situation increasingly shaped by the frequency and intensity of conflict”, the bank added in a new study.

In 2025, 421 million people get by on less than $3 a day in places hit by conflict or instability – a situation of extreme poverty – and the number is poised to hit 435 million by 2030.

All further melting between now and October will see the size of glaciers in the Swiss Alps shrink, according to Glacier Monitoring in Switzerland (GLAMOS).

This century, the tipping point, on average, has been reached in mid-August -- itself already bad news for the nation's 1,400 glaciers, which are shrinking at a staggering rate.

Its arrival several weeks earlier on July 4 is "another alarm call", GLAMOS chief Matthias Huss told AFP.

Glaciers in the Swiss Alps began to retreat about 170 years ago.

The retreat was initially modest but in recent decades, melting has accelerated significantly as the climate warms.

The volume of Swiss glaciers shrank by 38 percent between 2000 and 2024.

A polar air mass has brought record low temperatures to Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, causing at least 15 deaths and forcing governments to restrict gas supplies and activate emergency shelters.

The three South American countries have all recorded sharply below-zero temperatures as the polar air originated from Antarctica and swept across the region.

In Argentina, at least nine homeless people have died from the cold this winter, according to NGO Proyecto 7.

The capital Buenos Aires recorded its lowest temperature since 1991 at -1.9 deg C on July 2, while the coastal city of Miramar saw snow for the first time in 34 years. Further south, the town of Maquinchao recorded –18 deg C on July 1.

Electricity demand caused cuts across Buenos Aires, leaving thousands without power for over 24 hours in some areas.

As European countries struggle with heat waves, some LATAM countries are facing polar air mass from South Pole.

and there is a video of heavy snowfall in the Atacama Desert

https://xcancel.com/BuenosDiasTVN/status/1938595103146168376

The number of tourists heading to Antarctica has been skyrocketing. From fewer than 8,000 a year about three decades ago, nearly 125,000 tourists flocked to the icy continent in 2023–24. The trend is likely to continue in the long term.

Unchecked tourism growth in Antarctica risks undermining the very environment that draws visitors. This would be bad for operators and tourists. It would also be bad for Antarctica – and the planet.

Over the past two weeks, the nations that decide what human activities are permitted in Antarctica have convened in Italy. The meeting incorporates discussions by a special working group that aims to address tourism issues.

About two-thirds of Antarctic tourists land on the continent. The visitors can threaten fragile ecosystems by:

• compacting soils
• trampling fragile vegetation
• introducing non-native microbes and plant species
• disturbing breeding colonies of birds and seals.

Even when cruise ships don’t dock, they can cause problems such as air, water and noise pollution – as well as anchoring that can damage the seabed.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/37895954

Archived

In recent years, China has been grappling with severe flood crises that have displaced millions, caused heavy economic losses, and exposed vulnerabilities in its infrastructure and disaster management systems. The China flood crisis is not just a national emergency—it is a reflection of global climate patterns that are becoming increasingly unpredictable and devastating. With torrential rains now an annual occurrence during the summer monsoon, especially in provinces like Henan, Sichuan, and Guangdong, the nation faces a daunting environmental challenge. This article explores the roots, repercussions, and remedies of China’s ongoing flood dilemma.

[...]

Floods in China are not new; the country has a long history of river-based civilizations, particularly along the Yangtze, Yellow, and Pearl Rivers. However, climate change has intensified the severity and frequency of floods, turning seasonal rains into life-threatening disasters.

[...]

At the start of July 2025, China's north and west is again on alert after sweeping rains trigger deadly floods.

China's north and west braced for more flash floods and landslides on Thursday as annual 'Plum Rains' left a trail of destruction and prompted the mobilisation of thousands of rescue workers to pull people from floodwaters.

Red alerts were issued tracing the rains as they moved from the southwestern province of Sichuan through the northwestern province of Gansu, and up to the northeastern province of Liaoning [...]

Extreme rainfall and severe flooding, which meteorologists link to climate change, increasingly pose major challenges for policymakers as they threaten to overwhelm ageing flood defences, displace millions and wreak havoc on China's $2.8 trillion agricultural sector.

Economic losses from natural disasters exceeded $10 billion last July, when the 'Plum Rains' - named for their timing coinciding with plums ripening along China's Yangtze River during the East Asia monsoon - typically reach their peak.

[...] According to Climate Analytics, a global climate science and policy institute engaged around the world in driving and supporting climate action, China not on track for a 1.5°C-aligned pathway to align with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C goal.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget seeks to shut down the laboratory atop a peak in Hawaii where scientists have gathered the most conclusive evidence of human-caused climate change since the 1950s.

The president’s budget proposal would also defund many other climate labs, including instrument sites comprising the US government’s greenhouse gas monitoring network, which stretches from northern Alaska to the South Pole.

But it’s the Mauna Loa laboratory that is the most prominent target of the President Donald Trump’s climate ire, as measurements that began there in 1958 have steadily shown CO2’s upward march as human activities have emitted more and more of the planet-warming gas each year.

The curve produced by the Mauna Loa measurements is one of the most iconic charts in modern science, known as the Keeling Curve, after Charles David Keeling, who was the researcher who painstakingly collected the data. His son, Ralph Keeling, a professor at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, now oversees collecting and updating that data.

The proposal to shut down Mauna Loa had been made public previously but was spelled out in more detail on Monday when NOAA submitted a budget document to Congress. It made more clear that the Trump administration envisions eliminating all climate-related research work at NOAA, as had been proposed in Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for overhauling the government.

It would do this in large part by cutting NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research entirely, including some labs that are also involved in improving weather forecasting.

https://archive.ph/caA1y

Drought is pushing tens of millions of people to the edge of starvation around the world, in a foretaste of a global crisis that is rapidly deepening with climate breakdown.

More than 90 million people in eastern and southern Africa are facing extreme hunger after record-breaking drought across many areas, ensuing widespread crop failures and the death of livestock. In Somalia, a quarter of the population is now edging towards starvation, and at least a million people have been displaced.

cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/24158944

What a world :) Literally plumes of superheated toxic "shitwater" coming from the ground.

I wonder why it's so hot /s

https://archive.md/qmqsm

Links to the nation's most comprehensive climate reports disappeared from the internet on Monday — along with the official government website that houses them.

The White House did not respond Monday to questions from POLITICO's E&E News on what happened to the reports or to the website for the U.S. Global Change Research Program, which coordinates federal climate research. An archived version of the USGCRP site confirms it was still active as of Sunday.

But the removal of the USGCRP website and the accompanying reports tracks with recent actions by the Trump administration as it relates to climate research.

The missing reports are known as the National Climate Assessments, which are mandated by Congress and are published periodically by the USGCRP. For years, they have outlined the dangers that climate change poses to the United States, and the most recent version — released in 2023 — warned of “potentially catastrophic outcomes” for the U.S. as global temperatures rise and extreme weather worsens.

New research sheds light on how rising temperatures are squeezing farmers and raising prices for consumers.

Two recent studies — one historical and the other forward-looking — examine how rising temperatures have made and could continue to make agricultural production less efficient, fundamentally reshaping the global food system as producers try to adapt to hotter growing seasons.

The Himalayan village of Samjung did not die in a day.

Perched in a wind-carved valley in Nepal’s Upper Mustang, more than 13,000 feet (3,962 meters) above sea level, the Buddhist village lived by slow, deliberate rhythms — herding yaks and sheep and harvesting barley under sheer ochre cliffs honeycombed with “sky caves” — 2,000-year-old chambers used for ancestral burials, meditation and shelter.

Then the water dried up. Snow-capped mountains turned brown and barren as, year after year, snowfall declined. Springs and canals vanished and when it did rain, the water came all at once, flooding fields and melting away the mud homes. Families left one by one, leaving the skeletal remains of a community transformed by climate change: crumbling mud homes, cracked terraces and unkempt shrines.

The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain regions — stretching from Afghanistan to Myanmar — hold more ice than anywhere else outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Their glaciers feed major rivers that support 240 million people in the mountains — and 1.65 billion more downstream.

Such high-altitude areas are warming faster than lowlands. Glaciers are retreating and permafrost areas are thawing as snowfall becomes scarcer and more erratic, according to the Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development or ICMOD.

Kunga Gurung is among many in the high Himalayas already living through the irreversible effects of climate change.

“We moved because there was no water. We need water to drink and to farm. But there is none there. Three streams, and all three dried up,” said Gurung, 54.