Climate Change

April 28, 2024 10:29 AM

Strong tornado hits China’s Guangzhou, killing 5, injuring 33

Five people were killed and 33 others injured in a strong tornado that hit Guangzhou, the capital city of south China's Guangdong Province, on Saturday afternoon, local authorities said. The tornado hit Zhongluotan Town in the city's Baiyun District at approximately 15:00, while the weather station in Liangtian Village, roughly 2.8 kilometers from the tornado's point of occurrence, registered a maximum wind gust of 20.6 meters per second. A preliminary investigation by the provincial m...

April 23, 2024 4:52 PM

Asia most affected by climate disasters in 2023, heatwaves fatalities rising in India: UN report

Asia was world's most disaster-hit region by weather, climate and water hazards in 2023, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said, with floods and storms causing the highest number of casualties. In a report published on Tuesday, WMO said that 79 disasters linked to hydro-meteorological events had been reported in Asia in 2023. More than 80% of these were related to floods and storms that caused more than 2,000 deaths. Asia is warming faster than the global average, according to WMO. L...

TOPSHOT - This photo taken on July 7, 2016 shows an overview of trees and houses submerged by floodwater in a village in Xuancheng, in east China's Anhui province. Flooding is common during the summer monsoon season in southern China, but rainfall has been particularly heavy this year and many areas have been lashed by torrential rains this week. (Photo by AFP) / China OUT (Photo by STR/AFP via Getty Images)

April 22, 2024 10:28 PM

Floods swamp southern China, spark extreme weather fears

Floods swamped cities in southern China's densely populated Pearl River Delta following record-breaking rains, sparking worries about the region's defences against bigger deluges induced by extreme weather events. The province once dubbed the "factory floor of the world" is prone to summer floods. Its defences against disruptive floods were severely tested in June 2022 when Guangdong was pounded by the heaviest downpours in six decades. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated. Since Thu...

April 9, 2024 9:30 PM

World faced hottest March ever: EU climate agency

The world experienced the hottest March ever, making it the tenth month in a row that is the warmest on record, the European Union climate agency said on Tuesday. The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said that the average surface air temperature was 14.14 degrees Celsius globally which was 0.73 degrees Celsius above the 1991-2020 average for March and 0.10 degrees Celsius above the previous high set in March 2016. Moreover, the global average temperature is also the highest on record, w...

April 9, 2024 6:26 PM

Swiss climate policy shortcomings violated human rights, top court rules

Europe's top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change. The European Court of Human Rights's (ECtHR) decision on the case brought by more than 2,000 elderly Swiss women set a precedent that will resonate across Europe and beyond for how courts deal with a growing trend of climate litigation. But in a sign of the complexities of climate litigation, the court rejected two similar cl...