Research briefs

As climate change brings with it increased extreme weather events, one of the pressing issues for Africa’s farmers will be how to address these challenges. One dimension to be factored in is that men and women farmers are responding to the pressures differently.

The way we talk about climate change affects the way people think about it. For scientific evidence to shape people’s actions, it is crucial that science be communicated to the public effectively. Social scientists have been increasingly studying the science of science communication, to better understand what does and does not work for discussing different scientific topics.

The world’s poorest countries are experiencing a substantially greater increase in hot days and warm nights compared to wealthy countries as a result of human-caused climate change, research shows. The stark difference in impacts was revealed when the researchers looked at the increase in the number of days that exceeded the hottest 10% of all days recorded for the wealthiest and poorest countries.

In a research paper released this week, scientists have looked extensively at what could happen during an eruption in Auckland, finding that critical infrastructure could still provide some services in the face of extreme conditions.

A new study assessing potential future climate damage to European coastal cities has found that, if, as currently, carbon emissions continue to track the IPCC's worst scenario annual economic losses may range from 1.2 bn USD in 2030 to over 40 bn by 2100.

Cattle are vulnerable to changes in rainfall patterns, temperature, humidity, and evaporation. Climactic changes can affect livestock through pasture growth, forage crop quantity and quality, spatial changes in disease and pest distribution. To mitigate these effects, farmers need accurate and timely forecasts of weather and heat at daily, weekly and seasonal scales.

A recent first-of-its-kind analysis of wildfire records over 20 years shows that human-started fires accounted for 84 percent of all wildfires, tripled the length of the fire season and dominated an area seven times greater than that affected by lightning-caused fires. Humans have “a remarkable influence” on modern U.S. wildfire regimes, research concludes.

Fault zones invariably contain groundwater, and if the pressure of this water increases, two sides of an eaarthquake fault are free to slip past each other, causing an earthquake. Hydrological changes do not need to be sudden or large to change the water pressure in a fault zone. It is thus unsurprising that extreme rainfall events might also encourage earthquakes.