A Chinese woman holds her phone as Chinese Paramilitary police wear masks to protect against pollution as they stand guard during smog in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. (Kevin Frayer/Getty Images)

Air pollution is growing worse in urban areas across much of the globe, hitting the poorest city dwellers hardest and contributing to a wide range of potentially life-shortening health problems, from heart disease to severe asthma, according to the World Health Organization...

‘We’re going into very new territory’: James Butler, of the US National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, says the amount of carbon dioxide is locking in future warming. Photograph: John Giles/PA

Future in which global concentration of CO2 is permanently above 400 parts per million looms...

CREDIT: P Photo/Bebeto Matthews  In this Aug. 21, 2014, file photo, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, center, speaks during a news conference in New York.

Not content to let the House Committee on Space, Science, and Technology’s reputation for hating science rest for even a moment, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) has now subpoenaed the New York attorney general over his investigation into Exxon’s role in sowing climate denial...

CREDIT: Samantha Page/ThinkProgress  Kirby Misperton, in Yorkshire, England, could be the site of a new test well for hydraulic fracturing -- but not if the local opposition can help it.

“If we can’t say that it’s safe then we shouldn’t do it.”

The dried-up river Tawi in Kashmir, India. Water scarcity is an increasing problem in poorer parts of the world. Photograph: Jaipal Singh/EPA

Radical action is needed to combat increasing rate of environmental damage to water sources, land, biodiversity and marine life, report shows...

Misery Index showing temperatures plus dewpoint levels across India on May 19, 2016. Image: Earth Simulator

India just set a new national record heat benchmark when the small city of Phalodi, in northwest India, recorded a high temperature of a whopping 51 degrees Celsius, or 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit, on May 19...

CREDIT: Alejandro Davila Fragoso: Dead tilapia lines the shores of the Salton Sea, California's largest lake. Located in Imperial County, the manmade Salton Sea is drying up fast, threatening the fate of fish, migratory bird species and even public health as exposed playa will create dust bowls, harming an area known for high asthma rates and high levels of air pollution.

BOMBAY BEACH, CA — The lake is drying up, uncounted dead fish line the shore, and the desert town is losing people...

As recently as 2013, renewables provided only about 23% of Portugal’s electricity. By 2015 that figure had risen to 48%. Photograph: Pete Titmuss/Alamy Stock Photo

Zero emission milestone reached as country is powered by just wind, solar and hydro-generated electricity for 107 hours...

CREDIT: AP Photo/Matthew Brown

The Obama administration says it's working to boost renewable energy and head off the threat of climate change, but it's not ready to pull the plug on fossil fuels...

A football field worth of natural area in the West is disappearing every two and a half minutes. And every year, the Western United States loses an Los Angeles-sized amount of natural area to development...

In Vietnam, alternate wetting and drying in irrigated rice is helping farmers use less water and lower emissions without compromising yields. (Courtesy of G. Smith/CIAT)

By now, almost anyone can pick the world’s biggest polluters out of a lineup: power plants, automobile tailpipes and factories...

To date, scientists have mostly worried about the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets as dangerous drivers of sea level rise (AFP Photo/Eitan Abramovich)

Paris (AFP) - A rapidly melting glacier atop East Antarctica is on track to lift oceans at least two metres, and could soon pass a "tipping point" of no return, researchers said Wednesday...

The state's highest court has mandated new standards for carbon pollution in Massachusetts. ( File photo)

A closely watched lawsuit concerning climate change has been decided in favor of environmentalists who sued Massachusetts over its failure to implement carbon-reduction goals mandated by the 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act...

Picture: JAY DIRECTO/AFP/Getty Images

May 17, 2016 — Coastal cities around the world are facing multiple environmental challenges, including rising seas, increasing storm surges and more frequent flooding...

FILE - In this Aug. 17, 2015 file photo, timber burns in the First Creek fire near lakeside structures on the western shore of Lake Chelan near Chelan, Wash. The nation’s primary wildfire-fighters are getting ready for the 2016 season, which is expected to be worse than average in Hawaii, Alaska and the Southwest. U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will meet with regional forest officials Tuesday, May 17, 2016, to discuss plans and preparations. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)

California could face a dangerous and difficult wildfire season in 2016 despite a relatively wet winter, federal officials warned Tuesday...

Image credit: Simon Fraser University, courtesy flickr

The Obama administration’s new rules to curb methane come in the wake of two reports that illustrate the dangers of hydraulic fracturing (fracking). These reports show that methane is leaking throughout the fracking process from extraction to the end users...

Photo by Hodor Groot/CC By CC BY-NC 2.0

Atmospheric scientists have long suspected that climate change produces an increase in weather extremes of all varieties, but tornadoes are an unusually tricky case...

People march during a rally against climate change in New York, September 21, 2014. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz

So what’s the problem here?

A man pushes his bicycle cart through waist-deep flooding caused by typhoon Linfa, locally named Egay, at Longos town in Malabon city, north of Manila July 6, 2015. REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco

By 2050, 1.3 billion people and $158 trillion in assets will be menaced by worsening river and coastal floods alone...