In 2024, the Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) recorded 393 natural hazard-related disasters. These events caused 16,753 fatalities and affected 167.2 million people. Economic losses totaled US$241.95 billion. The year 2024 was marked by extreme temperature events in Asia that caused thousands of deaths, severe droughts in Africa affecting over 25 …
Climate strongly influences global wildfire activity, and recent wildfire surges may signal fire weather-induced pyrogeographic shifts. Here we use three daily global climate data sets and three fire danger indices to develop a simple annual metric of fire weather season length, and map spatio-temporal trends from 1979 to 2013. We …
The quality of diets in rodent feeding trials is crucial. We describe the contamination with environmental pollutants of 13 laboratory rodent diets from 5 continents. Measurements were performed using accredited methodologies. All diets were contaminated with pesticides (1-6 out of 262 measured), heavy metals (2-3 out of 4, mostly lead …
Tropical forests provide global climate regulation ecosystem services and their clearing is a significant source of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and resultant radiative forcing of climate change. However, consensus on pan-tropical forest carbon dynamics is lacking. The researchers present a new estimate that employs recommended good practices to quantify …
Mega hydropower projects in tropical forests pose a major emergent threat to terrestrial and freshwater biodiversity worldwide. Despite the unprecedented number of existing, under-construction and planned hydroelectric dams in lowland tropical forests, long-term effects on biodiversity have yet to be evaluated. We examine how medium and large-bodied assemblages of terrestrial …
Since the early 2000s, Latin America and the Caribbean has seen meaningful progress toward universal health coverage with an additional 46 million people in nine countries having at least nominal guarantees of affordable health care, according to a new joint publication by the Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization (PAHO/WHO) …
The issue of energy access for the poor is gaining momentum globally. This collection of papers by early-career researchers draws on in-depth field research in Latin America, Asia and Africa to explore the challenges of delivering access to modern energy services. The chapters document the ongoing inequities of energy landscapes …
Vector-borne transmission of Trypanosoma cruzi is seen exclusively in the Americas where an estimated 8 million people are infected with the parasite. Significant research in southern Peru has been conducted to understand T. cruzi infection and vector control, however, much less is known about the burden of infection and epidemiology …
Malaria remains endemic in 21 countries of the American continent with an estimated 427,000 cases per year. Approximately 10% of these occur in the Mesoamerican and Caribbean regions. During the last decade, malaria transmission in Mesoamerica showed a decrease of ~85%; whereas, in the Caribbean region, Hispaniola (comprising the Dominican …
If you find yourself sweating out a day that is monstrously hot, chances are you can blame humanity. A new report links three out of four such days to man's effects on climate. And as climate change worsens around mid-century, that percentage of extremely hot days being caused by man-made …
Each week at least two people are being killed for taking a stand against environmental destruction. Some are shot by police during protests, others gunned down by hired assassins. As companies go in search of new land to exploit, increasingly people are paying the ultimate price for standing in their …
With 800 million people going to bed hungry every night, countries combating hunger must build better food systems that raise agricultural productivity in rural areas, invest in improving nutritional outcomes for young children and pregnant women, and boost climate-smart agriculture that can withstand a warmer planet, says a World Bank …
Latin America has the planet's largest land reserves for agriculture and had the most rapid agricultural expansion during the twenty-first century. A large portion of the expansion replaced forests, as shown by many local and regional studies. However, expansion varied regionally and also replaced other land covers. Further, it is …
The HadGEM2 earth system climate model was used to assess the impact of biomass burning on surface ozone concentrations over the Amazon forest and its impact on vegetation, under present-day climate conditions. Here the researchers consider biomass burning emissions from wildfires, deforestation fires, agricultural forest burning, and residential and commercial …
Exploitation of the extensive polymetallic deposits of the Andean Altiplano in South America since precolonial times has caused substantial emissions of neurotoxic lead (Pb) into the atmosphere; however, its historical significance compared to recent Pb pollution from leaded gasoline is not yet resolved. We present a comprehensive Pb emission history …
In 2005 and 2010 the Amazon basin experienced two strong droughts, driven by shifts in the tropical hydrological regime possibly associated with global climate change, as predicted by some global models. Tree mortality increased after the 2005 drought, and regional atmospheric inversion modelling showed basin-wide decreases in CO2 uptake in …
Changes in the phenology of vegetation activity may accelerate or dampen rates of climate change by altering energy exchanges between the land surface and the atmosphere and can threaten species with synchronized life cycles. Current knowledge of long-term changes in vegetation activity is regional, or restricted to highly integrated measures …
By most measures, the 2000s were one of the most impressive decades for economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). With the exception of 2009, the region s gross domestic product per capita grew consistently at an average rate of 2.5 percent between 2000 and 2012. During the …
A new generation of an Earth system model now includes a number of land-surface processes directly relevant to analyzing potential impacts of climate change. This model, HadGEM2-ES, allows us to assess the impacts of climate change, multiple interactions, and feedbacks as the model is run. This paper discusses the results …
Large-scale deforestation could cause monsoon rains to shift south, cutting rainfall in India by nearly a fifth warns this new study by Indian Institute of Science published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) Biogeophysical effects such as albedo and evapotranspiration changes due to deforestation were shown by …
The Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) has released the Statistical Yearbook for Latin America and the Caribbean 2014. The annual Yearbook provides a statistical overview of the social, economic and environmental development processes in the region, to support comparative analysis of Latin American and Caribbean countries …
