Spaç Prison, Albania The World Monuments Watch is a program created by (WMF) to bring attention to cultural heritages worldwide that are threatened by things such as nature or social, political and economic impact. Launched in 1996, the WMF takes site nominees every two years. Inclusion on the watch list provides a platform for raising awareness and coming up with effective solutions. So far the Watch has provided more than 600 sites with support. Above is a slideshow of some...

Soggy times are coming for cities along both U.S. coasts and they’ll be here much quicker than previously thought. By mid-century, is set to make floods a monthly occurrence in more than two dozen major cities, and in some of those cities, it could become a daily occurrence by the 2070s. The watery findings come from a and presented at the American Geophysical Union meeting. It builds on findings earlier this year from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) scientists...

A recent study reveals an aspect about solar energy we never expected or thought possible – it contributes to climate change. The study, conducted by climate change research scientist Aixue Hu of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and published Monday in the , found that solar panels tend to cause regional cooling when converting sunlight into electricity and increase urban area temperatures when said electricity transforms into heat. Researchers conducted climate model sensitivity experiments to look at the effects...

Women in India try to keep cool during a stifling heat wave in May 2015. The lasting legacy of climate change will be heat. The land, the oceans, all of it. It’s the tie that binds and while the global average temperature is the defining metric, the increasing incidence of heat waves and longer lasting extreme heat is how the world will experience it. All eight papers dealing with extreme heat events in this year’s Bulletin of the American Meteorological...

Months of uncollected garbage and waste are causing a putrid problem in Beirut. Despite filth lining the streets of Lebanon’s capital, the city’s government has made little effort to clean it up. The issue began in July after one of the city’s primary landfills reached capacity with more than 15 million tons of trash. Stuck in a tight gridlock, the city’s government has yet to allocate any funds or find a new site for a suitable landfill. With no alternate...

The fingerprints of man-made climate change on 14 extreme weather events in 2014, hitting every continent but Antarctica, a new scientific analysis shows. Dozens of scientists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and across the world examined 28 strange weather conditions last year to see if global warming partly increased their likelihood or their strength. In a series of papers in a 180-page, peer-reviewed report, the scientists spotted some effects of climate change in half of them. In other...

A new study suggests that largely uninvestigated high-latitude volcanoes might have a significant effect on global weather events. A group of climate scientists and academics from the United States, Sweden and Norway found that volcanoes at higher-latitudes can have a major impact on climate and even trigger El Niño-like irregularities in the atmosphere. Using a climate model, the researchers discovered that large summer eruptions from high-latitude volcanoes cause hemispheric cooling and a weakening in the trade winds. An aerial picture...

Chinese pollution has reached its highest levels since record-keeping began, creating a dangerous, hazy scene in several towns. In Shenyang, in northeastern China, pollution levels , according to Xinhua News Agency. For comparison, China's government said pollution levels are unhealthy. This picture taken on Nov. 8, 2015 shows Chinese residents walking along a pedestrian bridge in Shenyang, China's Liaoning province. (STR/AFP/Getty Images) The highest pollution level ever recorded was inPalangkaraya, Indonesia, during illegal burning in September, according to CNN. CNN...

This photo illustration depicts Durban, South Africa, after a 2 degrees Celsius increase in global temperature, a threshold that, if surpassed, could usher in catastrophic global impacts from climate change. (Credit: sealevel.climatecentral.org/Nickolay Lamm) Long-term sea level rise set in motion by near-term carbon emissions threatens major coastal cities across the world. Here we present paired images showing how iconic locations — in London, Shanghai, Mumbai, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Durban and New York— could fare under scenarios of business as...

A NASA satellite image shows Lake Mead in 2000. (NASA) Springs and marshes in a desert near Las Vegas , according to a new U.S. Geological Survey study that offers a never-before-seen view into the past and how climate change can affect sensitive ecosystems. Evidence found on exposed dirt and rocks in the desert just outside the city limits shows drastic contraction and expansion of desert wetlands in response to each period of rapid climate change. In cases where conditions...

Like an artist at the canvas, Earth's wind and rain create eerie and intriguing masterpieces from the desert to the rain forest. Formed over the course of millennia, these strange scenes owe their to the whims of the weather. 1. Hoodoos These stacked, totem-like rocks were once actually a single slab of stone formed as a plateau in horizontal layers over time. As rain gradually chips away at weaker parts of the stone, it leaves an behind. Bryce Canyon National...

The price you pay for a cup off coffee may go up because of the damaging drought conditions caused by the El Niño weather system. Brazil and Indonesia, the second and third largest producers of robusta beans, are experiencing dryness that could endanger the production of the popular bean type. Overall, Brazil and Indonesia are . Colombia, the second-largest producer of arabica beans, is also feeling the heat from an El Niño-related dryness that threatens to worsen the ongoing drought,...

In this animated image, you can see the massive flooding that occurred in the town of Bento Rodrigues, Brazil, when a dam unleashed a wall of muddy wastewater on the area. (Image via NASA) A deadly dam failure that sent wastewater from an iron ore mine downstream into a Brazilian town earlier this month was visible from space, as NASA has revealed in a pair of photos. The before-and-after images have been animated at the top of this page to...