Search
Results for " "
Displaying 15 of about 3524 resultsWhen the power goes out on a cold winter night, some people head to a hotel. Others huddle around a fireplace bundled up in hats and blankets.But after a blizzard knocked out the power at Katrin Klingenberg’s home in Illinois, her house stayed warm and comfortable.Klingenberg: “I was sitting in my living room in a T-shirt, and outside it was negative 40…
Deadline: 28 March 2024World Cities Report 2024: Cities and Climate ActionsUN-Habitat is calling for case studies of actions implemented by cities to tackle climate change and its impacts. The selected case studies will be presented in the Annex of the World Cities Report 2024, and will illustrate comprehensive sets of measures that cities can implement…
Reducing disaster risk is seemingly never-ending in a country like the Philippines, which is exposed to a multitude of natural hazards.Increasing urbanization also increases the risk of disasters in cities. New patterns of hazards, exposure and vulnerability are emerging. In this context, local authorities play a dual role. They are the first responders…
Heatwaves are a major public health hazard. Socially disadvantaged people are especially exposed to extreme heat and other impacts of climate change. Many people experiencing homelessness – more than 120,000 on any given day in Australia – are exposed to extreme temperatures sleeping on the street, in cars or tents, or in overcrowded and substandar…
The heat dome that descended upon the Pacific Northwest in late June 2021 met a population radically unprepared for it.Almost two-thirds of households earning US$50,000 or less and 70% of rented houses in Washington’s King, Pierce and Snohomish counties had no air conditioning. In Spokane, nearly one-quarter of survey respondents didn’t have in-home air…
Thailand has made considerable progress towards improving urban resilience through the ‘Making Cities Resilient 2030’ (MCR2030) initiative, a collaborative effort involving United Nations agencies, local governments, academia and other partners, under the lead of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). The initiative’s prim…
The Environment Agency has published a plan for the Thames Estuary to prevent the kind of devastation caused by the North Sea Flood 70 years ago, but experts are concerned that the plan does not move fast enough, given the increasing effects of climate change.“People have this idea about the River Thames, the sheer beauty of it, the sparkling sunshine o…
Prof. Chen Mingxing's team at the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has revealed the increasing inequality of the compound risk of aging and extreme heat wave exposure of global cities under future scenarios. This work was published in npj Urban Sustainability.Extreme high temperatur…
As locals continue to mourn the loss of more than 2,100 people, a mammoth search and rescue effort is underway in quake-struck Morocco.The 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck at 11:11 pm on Friday night, local time, with an epicentre in the Atlas Mountains about 75km southwest of Marrakech. The quake shook the northeast African and southwest Mediterranean r…
The epicentre of Morocco’s devastating earthquake on 8 September was in the High Atlas Mountains, about 71km south-west of Marrakesh. Moina Spooner, from The Conversation Africa, asked Jesús Galindo-Zaldivar, who has been carrying out research on the formation of the Atlas mountains and the geology of the area, about the factors which led to this situat…
Tune into news from about any part of the planet, and there will likely be a headline about extreme weather. While these stories will be specific to the location, they all tend to include the amplifying effects of climate change.This includes the wildfire devastation on the island of Maui in Hawaii, where rising temperatures have dried vegetation and ma…
Rome wasn’t built in a day, but a large portion of it can be devastated in a few hours when an extreme weather event hits, according to experts studying the city’s vulnerability. Rising temperatures are making severe storms more frequent globally, but what makes Rome a ticking climate time bomb is a combination of outdated infrastructures and decades of…
Many urban regions across the globe are confronted with increasing flood risks for people, infrastructures, livelihoods and ecosystems, resulting from rapid urbanization and changes in climate, societies, and land use. Upscaled adaptation efforts are needed to safeguard communities’ well-being. One region that is particularly prone to flooding is Centra…
This summer the Northern Hemisphere has been so hot with record temperatures — including at sea — that discussions have turned to the limits of human survival. Even in the Antarctic, sea ice is failing to re-form, a drastic departure from normal winter patterns. It isn’t just your perception that extreme heat is happening m…
Researchers of Kiel University model future urban development on European coasts.Europe's coasts are densely populated and already affected by the impacts of sea level rise. In addition to traditional, cost-intensive coastal protection measures, spatial land use planning strategies are becoming increasingly important to protect coastal communities from…