Month: September 2021

The Mediterranean basin emerged as the wildfire hotspot that contributed to intense smoke pollution Carbon dioxide emissions from wildfires in the past two months have touched a new high since 2003, from when records have been maintained.  The cumulative CO2 emissions from violent forest fires in the two months was 2643.4 megatonnes, Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) announced September 21, 2021.  Wildfires are common during the boreal (of the Northern Hemisphere) fire season that lasts from May to October. But the number of fires, their intensity, region covered and persistence were unusually…

Nearly 41,000 people reach Italian shores but many are denied asylum The number of migrants arriving on Italy’s shores has nearly doubled compared with last year. Almost 41,000 people have arrived in Italy by sea since January, compared with 21,000 over the same period in 2020, the national news said in a report posted Tuesday. The jump in numbers is not a one-off. Crossings during last year’s pandemic-affected summer were higher than in 2019. Warm summer weather and political instability in North Africa have been linked to the rising number of crossings,…

Climate change could push more than 200 million people to leave their homes in the next three decades and create migration hot spots unless urgent action is taken to reduce global emissions and bridge the development gap, a World Bank report has found. The second part of the Groundswell report published Monday examined how the impacts of slow-onset climate change such as water scarcity, decreasing crop productivity and rising sea levels could lead to millions of what it describes as “climate migrants” by 2050 under three different scenarios with varying…