Heat alerts are in effect for 23 states and three major cities on Friday, affecting more than 110 million people. (Capital Weather Gang)

This week’s heat wave might not be exceptionally intense, but it’s certainly a far-reaching one...

Gasification. (Illustration: Marc Fusco)

People have been trying for decades to eliminate landfills and fight climate change by vaporizing garbage—with disappointing results. But that could be changing...

Miguel Arias Cañete, the European commissioner for climate action and energy, met with Secretary of State John Kerry at the United Nations building in Vienna on Saturday. They are working on proposals to save the ozone layer. Credit Christian Bruna/European Pressphoto Agency

WASHINGTON — When negotiators from nearly 200 countries gathered outside Paris in December for the United Nations summit meeting on climate change, they reached the first agreement to take action on curbing their planet-warming pollution...

Aerial view of deforested land around Paragominas, northern state of Para, Brazil. CREDIT: AP Photo/Andre Penner

Deforestation in the Amazon has been a growing problem over the past five decades, with ranchers leading the way in clearing rainforest for cattle and cultivation. But while Brazil, the largest country in South America, seems on track to reduce deforestation, other major Amazonian countries like Peru are increasingly struggling to protect their share of the world’s largest rainforest...

Image credit: SmokeandFumes.org

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) today expanded its website SmokeandFumes.org, featuring a new video and more internal industry documents dating back to the 1950s that reveal the nexus between the oil and tobacco industries’ shared campaigns to undermine science to delay accountability and political action to curtail their deadly products...

'Roughly 10 feet of sea level rise—well beyond previous estimates—would render coastal cities such as New York, London, and Shanghai uninhabitable.' Woodbine

GENEVA— The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reported the first six months of this year have seen all previous global warming records broken.The WMO said 2016 is on track to be the world’s hottest year on record with more heat on the way...

A water kiosk in Malawi. Credit: Charles Mpaka/IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Jul 21 2016 (IPS) - Although the devastating El Niño of 2015 to 2016 has now subsided, in many parts of Africa, Central America and Southeast Asia rains and harvests are not expected to recover until 2017...

A new process for converting natural gas into hydrogen could be the solution for powering electric vehicles Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

With hydrogen tipped to become an important clean energy fuel, a new process may be the solution to powering electric vehicles and heating buildings...

(CNN)The hole in the ozone layer was first discovered in 1985 by scientists from the British Antarctic Survey, who described how ozone levels above the Antarctic were steadily dropping compared to the previous decade. This was quickly recognized as a severe environmental problem -- and the culprit was identified as the unchecked use of chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs...

Photographer: David Parsons/Getty Images

Not only can scientists take carbon dioxide out of the air; they can also turn it into a useful chemical...

credit: NASA

Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen...

The running average of global temperatures during 2016.

The first half of 2016 has blown away temperature records, capped off by a record hot June, once again bumping up the odds that 2016 will be the hottest year on record globally, according to data released Tuesday...

Turbine support at Rhode Island's Block Island Wind Farm, the first commercial offshore wind power plant under construction in the United States. (Photo: Deepwater Wind)

The U.S. has barely tapped an enormous source of renewable energy...

Photo credit: NASA

The world needs to awaken itself to the looming catastrophe of global warming,” said Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, at a recent meeting in Muscat. “We must provide a safe operating space where vested interest and lobby-driven policies will not see the world marching into disaster.” Just what is a safe operating space for human civilization?

Output from wind farms, like this one near Berlin, can be unreliable. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

Is the global effort to combat climate change, painstakingly agreed to in Paris seven months ago, already going off the rails?

Environmental groups criticised the decision as downgrading action on climate change. Photograph: Murdo Macleod for the Guardian

Ex-ministers and environmental groups condemn decision to axe ministry as downgrading action to tackle climate change...

The Indian Point nuclear plant in Buchanan, N.Y., which Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo considers dangerous and wants to close, is excluded from the subsidies in the clean-energy proposal. Credit hiroko masuike/the new york times

The blueprint for New York State’s lofty clean-energy goals relies on the technologies of the future: The state, officials have promised, will draw half of its electricity from renewable and clean energy sources like wind and solar power by 2030...

© Nissan Nissan Fuel Cells

In a move that could launch zero-emissions-vehicles into a new era of usability (and make quite a few farmers in Iowa happy), Nissan has revealed a new type of fuel cell—one that's fueled up with bio-ethanol instead of compressed hydrogen.

Droughts, floods, forest fires and melting poles – climate change is impacting Earth like never before. From the Australia to Greenland, Ashley Cooper’s work spans 13 years and over 30 countries. This selection, taken from his new book, shows a changing landscape, scarred by pollution and natural disasters – but there is hope too, with the steady rise of renewable energy...