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The UN warned the interaction between pollution and climate change will impact hundreds of millions of people

More frequent and intense heatwaves and wildfires driven by climate change are expected to worsen the quality of the air we breathe, harming human health and ecosystems, the UN warned Wednesday.

A new report from the UN’s World Meteorological Organization (WMO) cautioned that the interaction between pollution and climate change would impact hundreds of millions of people over the coming century, and urged action to rein in the harm.

The WMO’s annual Air Quality and Climate Bulletin examined the impacts of large wildfires across Siberia and western North America in 2021, finding that they produced widespread increases in health hazards, with concentrations in eastern Siberia reaching “levels not observed before”.

Tiny particles with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres (PM2.5) are considered particularly harmful since they can penetrate deep into the lungs or cardiovascular system.

“As the globe warms, wildfires and associated air pollution are expected to increase, even under a low emissions scenario,” WMO chief Petteri Taalas said in a statement.

“In addition to human health impacts, this will also affect ecosystems as air pollutants settle from the atmosphere to Earth’s surface.”

– ‘Foretaste of the future’ –

At the global scale, there has been a reduction over the past two decades in the total burned area, as a result of decreasing numbers of fires in savannas and grasslands.

But WMO said that some regions like western North America, the Amazon and Australia were seeing far more fires.

Even beyond wildfires, a hotter climate can drive up pollution and worsen air quality.

Taalas pointed out that severe heatwaves in Europe and China this year, coupled with stable high atmospheric conditions, sunlight and low wind speeds, had been “conducive to high pollution levels,” warning that “this is a foretaste of the future.”

“We expect a further increase in the frequency, intensity and duration of heatwaves, which could lead to even worse air quality,” he said.

This phenomenon is known as the “climate penalty”, which refers to how climate change amplifies ground-level ozone production, which negatively impacts air quality. 

In the stratosphere, ozone provides important protection from cancer-causing ultraviolet rays, but closer to the ground it is very hazardous for human health.

If emission levels remain high, this climate penalty is expected to account for “a fifth of all surface ozone concentration increase,” WMO scientific officer Lorenzo Labrador told reporters.

He warned that most of that increase will happen over Asia, “and there you have about one quarter of the entire world population.”

The WMO called for action, stressing that “a worldwide carbon neutrality emissions scenario would limit the future occurrence of extreme ozone air pollution episodes.”

The report points out that air quality and climate are interconnected, since chemicals that worsen air quality are normally co-emitted with greenhouse gases.

“Changes in one inevitably cause changes in the other,” it said.

The report shows how little international donors spend on improving air quality while ploughing money into dirty energy and infrastructure projects across Africa

Foreign governments are spending more than 30 times more on fossil fuel projects in Africa than on initiatives to lessen the impacts of the continent’s second-biggest killer, air pollution, research showed Wednesday.

The report, released on the International Day of Clean Air, showed how little donor nations spend on improving air quality while ploughing money into dirty energy and infrastructure projects across Africa. 

The United Nations estimates that air pollution kills around nine million people globally each year, with fossil fuels accounting for two-thirds of the levels of harmful particulates humans are exposed to. 

The financial benefits of improving air quality alone would far exceed the costs of slashing emissions to meet the Paris Agreement temperature goals, according to a landmark United Nations climate science assessment this year. 

Yet, as Wednesday’s analysis by the Clean Air Fund shows, US, European and Asian governments are still going ahead with fossil fuel-based development projects that will likely worsen already poor air quality in cities and along highways across Africa.

The fund found that just 0.3 percent of African countries’ development assistance received between 2015-2021 had been specifically earmarked for air quality projects, despite pollution being responsible for some one in five deaths continent-wide. 

During the same period, donor nations provided 36 times more funding for prolonging fossil fuel use in Africa. 

“That difference alone is extremely startling,” Dennis Appiah, head of the fund’s Ghana office and a co-author of the report. 

“I think it’s also highlighted that most often governments are not paying attention to the issue of air pollution,” he told AFP. 

“Either they are not conscious of the impact of it, or they do not see it as a problem.” 

Appiah called air pollution a “silent killer” as its effects are far harder to see and message to communities compared with other climate-linked phenomena such as flooding.

– ‘Death sentence’ –

An ongoing population boom means Africa will be — on current birth rates — home to some 2.5 billion people by 2050, with the UN estimating that 26 countries will double their populations by then. 

The vast majority of population growth will occur in urban areas, with much of the infrastructure needed to support increases yet to be built.

The continent is virtually blameless for climate change yet continues to be a hotspot for extreme events linked to global heating. 

Appiah said that while Africa’s development needs were huge, governments needed to prioritise sustainable ways of electrifying and connecting communities. 

“Policymakers are stuck in going through the same traditional chain for development that we see in the West, and also in some of the Asian countries that are now suffering the consequences of some of those decisions,” he said. 

“I think Africa is positioned to take advantage of some of the technology which exists. We don’t have to go through the same process (as developed countries), we can leapfrog to new technologies.”

With renewable energy such as wind and solar already frequently cheaper than oil and fossil gas per kilowatt hour, the hope is that African governments can factor in the economic benefits of avoiding air pollution into their development plans.

In a preface to Wednesday’s report, Ugandan activist Vanessa Nakate said that policies featuring new fossil fuel infrastructure in Africa were “a death sentence for people in communities like mine”.

“It’s time for governments to hear the voices of people all around the world who are calling for leaders to clean up our air and protect our health,” she said.

Ducks are believed to be superspreaders of bird flu in part because they travel so far as they migrate

Ducks contaminated by mercury pollution are significantly more likely to get bird flu, a study found Wednesday, pointing towards another way that human-driven changes to the natural world increase the risk of viruses spreading.

Bird flu rarely infects humans but persistent outbreaks in the US and UK among other countries have led to millions of poultry being culled so far this year.

Wild waterfowl such as ducks are believed to be superspreaders of the virus in part because they travel so far as they migrate, potentially infecting other birds along the way.

For the new study, scientists shot down nearly 750 wild ducks from 11 different species in California’s San Francisco Bay, which is in a migratory path that stretches from Alaska to Patagonia.

They then tested the ducks for mercury contamination and whether they were infected with bird flu — or had antibodies for the virus in their system. 

The results, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, showed that ducks contaminated with mercury were up to 3.5 times more likely to have had bird flu at some point over the last year or so.

The study’s lead author, Claire Teitelbaum, a quantitative ecologist at the USGS Eastern Ecological Science Center, said mercury contamination “can suppress the immune system, and that might make infection with anything — including influenza — more likely”.

The San Francisco Bay is also a “significant hotspot for mercury contamination in North America… largely from historical gold mining, where mercury was part of that process,” she told AFP.

The ducks however tested negative to the highly pathogenic H5N1 bird flu strain that has been detected in many parts of the world.

– More bird flu likely –

Teitelbaum said that bird flu outbreaks in the United States had slowed down during the summer “because many of the wild birds are up on their breeding grounds” farther north. 

But “as they’re starting to come back down, we’re probably going to see a lot more activity”, she warned.

The spread comes as researchers increasingly sound the alarm that climate change, deforestation, livestock farming and other human-induced factors raise the likelihood of viruses crossing over from animals to humans.

Teitelbaum said that “there are just so many ways in which humans have historically altered and are continuing to alter the natural environment.”

How pollution and contamination affect the risk of diseases spreading is “just another link that we need to add in to our more holistic view of what’s going on in the world,” she said.

Daniel Becker, a biologist at the University of Oklahoma not involved in the research, hailed the “impressive” study.

“There is surprisingly little work looking at contaminant concentrations in wildlife and their relationship to infectious disease,” especially for viruses that can cross over to humans like bird flu, he said.

Russia's ambassador to the UN, Vasily Nebenzya, expressed regret at a UN Security Council meeting on September 6, 2022, that an IAEA report on the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant did not blame Ukraine for shelling the Russian-occupied Ukrainian facility

Russia on Tuesday voiced regret that a report by the UN nuclear watchdog warning of risks at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia plant did not blame Kyiv for shelling the Moscow-occupied site.

“We regret that in your report… the source of the shelling is not directly named,” Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya told a Security Council session attended virtually by Rafael Grossi, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

“We do understand your position as an international regulator, but in the current situation it’s very important to call things by their name,” he said.

The IAEA in a report released earlier Tuesday called for a demilitarized zone to be set up outside Europe’s largest nuclear plant, which was seized by Russian troops during their invasion of Ukraine.

Both sides have blamed each other for shelling, which took place again Tuesday despite the watchdog’s recommendations.

“If the provocations by the Kyiv regime continue, there is no guarantee that there won’t be serious consequences, and the responsibility for that lies fully with Kyiv and its Western backers and all other members of Security Council,” Nebenzya said.

Western powers voiced dismay at his remarks, saying that the fundamental issue was Russia’s invasion of and occupation of the plant.

“Despite Russia’s song and dance here today to avoid acknowledging responsibility for its actions, Russia has no right to expose the world to unnecessary risk and the possibility of the nuclear catastrophe,” senior US diplomat Jeffrey DeLaurentis told the session.

Ukraine also hit back, saying that there were no issues at the plant until Russia seized it.

“The world not only deserves but needs the representatives of the IAEA to force Russia to demilitarize the territory of the (nuclear power plant) and return full control over the plant to Ukraine,” said Sergiy Kyslytsya, Ukraine’s ambassador.

Grossi, speaking after a visit to Zaporizhzhia, said that nuclear inspectors were more accustomed to traveling after a disaster such as in Chernobyl and Fukushima.

“In this case, had the historical, ethical imperative to prevent something from happening,” Grossi said.

“We are playing with fire and something very, very catastrophic could take place.”

Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and has long been a favorite for astronomers interested in star formation

A stellar nursery nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula has been captured in crisp detail by NASA’s Webb telescope, revealing hitherto unseen features that deepen scientific understanding, the agency said Tuesday.

Officially known as 30 Doradus, the region of space is characterized by its dusty filaments that resemble the legs of a hairy spider, and has long been a favorite for astronomers interested in star formation.

Thousands of young stars, distant background galaxies, and the detailed structure of the nebula’s gas and dust structures were viewable for the first time thanks to Webb’s high resolution infrared instruments.

Webb operates primarily in the infrared spectrum, because light from objects in the distant cosmos has been stretched into this wavelength over the course of the universe’s expansion.

The telescope’s primary imager, Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), found the cavity in the center of the nebula was hollowed out by radiation carried on stellar winds emanating from a cluster of massive young stars, which appear as pale blue dots.

Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which analyzes light patterns to determine the composition of objects, caught one young star in the act of shedding a cloud of dust from around itself. 

The same star was previously thought to be at a later stage of formation, already well on the way to clearing its dusty bubble.

The region was also imaged using the Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI), which uses longer wavelengths of infrared to pierce through dust grains that absorb or scatter shorter wavelengths. 

This faded the hot stars and clarified the cooler regions, revealing never-before-seen points of light within the stellar nursery, which indicate protostars that are still gaining mass.

Astronomic interest in the Tarantula Nebula stems from its similar chemical composition to gigantic star-forming regions observed a few billion years after the Big Bang, a period called the “cosmic noon” when star formation peaked.

At just 161,000 light-years away, Tarantula is a readily viewable example of this flourishing period of cosmic creation. 

Webb should also provide scientists the opportunity to gaze at distant galaxies from the actual era of cosmic noon, and compare it to observations of Tarantula, to understand similarities and differences.

Operational since July, Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever built, with astronomers confident it will herald a new era of discovery.

Flames consume an area of the Brasilia National Park in the Brazilian capital September 5, 2022

Firefighters raced Tuesday to contain a massive blaze devastating a national park in the Brazilian capital, which is suffering from a heat wave and more than four months of drought.

The fire, which hit the park Monday, has burned through around 2,000 hectares (nearly 5,000 acres) of the 42,000 hectare reserve in Brasilia, according to the national parks service, ICMBio.

Forty firefighters from ICMBio and the Brasilia fire department managed to control one of the fire’s two fronts Monday night.

The blaze is concentrated in an area around 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the presidential offices, the Planalto Palace.

“Severe conditions,” including temperatures of more than 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit) and critically low humidity of around 30 percent, have exacerbated the already flammable situation left by the drought, ICMBio said.

The Brazilian capital has not had rain in 122 days.

Officials said they did not yet know what caused the fire.

Brasilia National Park was established in 1961, the year after the ultra-modernist capital was inaugurated in Brazil’s central-west — a region with a prolonged dry season that typically runs from May to September.

The Brasilia blaze comes as officials report an alarming surge in fires in the Brazilian Amazon.

Last month was the worst August in 12 years, with 33,116 fires detected in Brazil’s share of the world’s biggest rainforest, according to satellite monitoring by the national space agency, INPE.

President Jair Bolsonaro, who is up for reelection in October, has faced international outcry over a surge of fires and destruction in the Amazon, whose billions of carbon-absorbing trees are a key buffer against global warming.

California's power grid is under immense strain because of soaring temperatures

At least two people are dead and thousands have been ordered to flee a rapidly spreading fire in California, with the region’s oppressive heatwave expected to peak Tuesday.

Several buildings were destroyed as the Fairview fire erupted southeast of Los Angeles, racing to consume 2,400 acres (1,000 hectares) in less than 24 hours.

Firefighters said two people were known to have died in the blaze, and one person had been hospitalized with burn injuries.

More than 3,000 homes are under orders to evacuate, and all local schools have been shuttered.

The blaze was “spreading very quickly before firefighters even got on scene,” a local fire department spokesman said on Twitter.

California is in the middle of a ferocious heatwave, with temperatures of 110 Fahrenheit (43 Celsius) being recorded in several areas.

That, coupled with a two-decade drought that has left the countryside tinder dry, is creating ideal conditions for explosive wildfires.

The heat hit the state, as well as parts of neighboring Arizona and Nevada, last week, and is forecast to continue until around Thursday.

– Flex Alert –

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), which runs the state’s power grid, has issued several consecutive “Flex Alerts.”

These call on households to limit power consumption between 4:00 pm and 9:00 pm to avoid straining the over-burdened system.

That typically means turning up the thermostat on air conditioning systems, avoiding using major appliances, and not charging electric vehicles during this time.

But California ISO president Elliot Mainzer warned Monday that an incredibly hot Tuesday would put even more pressure on the grid, and called for consumers to redouble their efforts.

“This is an extraordinary heat event we are experiencing, and the efforts by consumers to lean in and reduce their energy use after 4:00 pm are absolutely essential,” said Mainzer.

“Over the last several days we have seen a positive impact on lowering demand because of everyone’s help, but now we need a reduction in energy use that is two or three times greater than what we’ve seen so far as this historic heat wave continues to intensify.”

California has abundant solar installations, including on homes, which typically provide for around a third of the state’s power requirements during daylight.

But when the sun goes down, that supply falls quickly, leaving traditional generation to plug the gap. The problem is particularly acute in the early evening when temperatures are still high, but solar starts dropping out of the power mix.

Scientists say global warming, which is being driven chiefly by humanity’s unchecked burning of fossil fuels, is making natural weather variations more extreme.

Heat waves are getting hotter and more intense, while storms are getting wetter and, in many cases, more dangerous.

Not beating about the bush: Chimpanzees have signature styles when they drum on tree roots, researchers have found

The drummers puff out their chests, let out a guttural yell, then step up to their kits and furiously pound out their signature beat so that everyone within earshot can tell who is playing.

The drum kit is the giant gnarled root of a tree in the Ugandan rainforest — and the drummer is a chimpanzee. 

A new study published Tuesday found that not only do chimpanzees have their own styles — some preferring straightforward rock beats while others groove to more freeform jazz — they can also hide their signature sound if they do not want to reveal their location.

The researchers followed the Waibira chimpanzee group in western Uganda’s Budongo Forest, recording the drum sessions of seven male chimps and analysing the intervals between beats. 

The chimps mostly use their feet, but also their hands to make the sound, which carries more than a kilometre through the dense rainforest. 

The drumming serves as a kind of social media, allowing travelling chimpanzees to communicate with each other, said Vesta Eleuteri, the lead author of the study published in the journal Animal Behaviour.

The PhD student said that after just a few weeks in the rainforest she was able to recognise exactly who was drumming.

“Tristan — the John Bonham of the forest — makes very fast drums with many evenly separated beats,” she said, referring to the legendarily hard-hitting drummer of rock band Led Zeppelin.

Tristan’s drumming “is so fast that you can barely see his hands”, Eleuteri said.

– Hiding their style –

But other chimps like Alf or Ila make a more syncopated rhythm using a technique in which both their feet hit a root at almost the same time, said British primatologist Catherine Hobaiter, the study’s senior author.

The research team was led by scientists from Scotland’s University of St Andrews, and several of the chimpanzees are named after Scottish single malt whiskies, including Ila — for Caol Ila — and fellow chimp Talisker.

Hobaiter, who started the habituation of the Waibira group in 2011, said it long been known that chimpanzees drummed.

“But it wasn’t until this study that we understood they’re using these signature styles when they’re potentially looking for other individuals — when they’re travelling, when they’re on their own or in a small group,” she told AFP.

The researchers also discovered that the chimps sometimes choose not to drum in their signature beat, to avoid revealing their location or identity.

“They have this wonderful flexibility to express their identity and their style, but also to sometimes keep that hidden,” Hobaiter said.

Michael Wilson, a specialist on chimpanzees at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the research, said the study’s methodology was sound.

But he was not “completely convinced, though, that the drumming is sufficiently distinctive that you could reliably tell all individuals apart,” because some patterns seemed very similar, he said, calling for more research.

– ‘A sense of music’ –

While plenty of animals produce sounds we think of as music — such as birdsong — the research could open the door to the possibility that chimpanzees enjoy music on a level generally thought to only be possible for humans. 

“I do think that chimpanzees, like us, potentially have a sense of rhythmicity, a sense of music, something that touches them on an almost emotional level, in the way that we might have a sense of awe when we hear an amazing drum solo or another kind of dramatic musical sound,” Hobaiter said.

Most research on the culture of chimpanzees has looked at their tools or food, she said.

“But if we think about human culture we don’t think about the tools we use — we think about how we dress, the music we listen to,” she added.

Next the researchers plan to investigate how neighbouring and far-off communities of chimpanzees drum in their own differing styles.

Hobaiter has already been looking at chimpanzees in Guinea, where there are very few trees to drum in the open savannah.

“We’ve got early hints that they might be throwing rocks against rocks” to make sound, she said.

“Literal rock music in this case.”

In Montreal, protesters condemned Royal Bank of Canada's investment in pipelines last October

The decarbonisation plans of some of the biggest corporations from G7 nations put Earth on course to heat a potentially catastrophic 2.7 degrees Celsius — blowing Earth well past the Paris Agreement temperature goals, analysis showed Tuesday.

As more and more firms announce their intention to become carbon neutral by mid-century at the latest, scrutinising corporate claims of green action is increasingly important to check whether they are aligned with the latest climate science. 

CDP, a non-profit that runs a global disclosure system for companies to manage their environmental impacts, looked at the climate plans of more than 4,000 firms across the world’s seven largest economies.

They found that current plans would lead to a world by 2100 that is 2.7C hotter than currently — a far cry from the temperature goals of the 2015 Paris deal, which enjoins nations to limit warming to “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels. 

Europe was the best performer, with rapid action since 2021 likely to have “cooled” the temperature prediction some 0.3C, the analysis showed. 

Businesses in Canada, on the other hand, were the worst performing in terms of decarbonisation plans, with 88 percent of reported greenhouse gas emissions coming from firms that have no disclosed net zero plans.

Across all regions and sectors, only the European power generation sector achieved a temperature rating below 2C, driven by targets from renewable and nuclear energy companies.

Many companies have plans in place to reduce emissions directly produced from their business operations, such as vehicle exhausts and office heating.

Far fewer have plans covering emissions produced by the consumption or use of their products and which often count for most of their carbon footprints.

Companies in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands had policies to reduce their emissions across their entire value chain, which equated with a 2.2C temperature rise, according to the CDP.

“However, despite this progress, the average temperature ratings for corporates remain well above 1.5C across all major European economies,” it said.

Galtier made light of the criticism while Mbappe bent double in uncontrolled laughter beside him in apparent incredulity over the controversy

French football giants Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday faced accusations of failing to take climate change seriously, after coach Christophe Galtier and star Kylian Mbappe mocked a suggestion that they should take the train rather than private planes for short-haul travel.

Galtier and Mbappe were asked at a press conference on Monday whether they had discussed an offer from the state railway group SNCF to provide travel for them to away games.

Galtier initially smirked at the idea while Mbappe bent double in laughter over the suggestion — with the clip quickly going viral on social media.

“We had a chat with our travel organisers earlier to see if we can travel by sand-yacht,” Galtier replied sarcastically, referring to sail-powered beach buggies that are popular on some French beaches.

Politicians, campaigners and even the prime minister weighed in on Tuesday, condemning both men for being out-of-touch and arrogant at a time when Europe faces an energy crisis and spiralling temperatures linked to climate change. 

“I think it’s important that they realise what world we live in, that they are aware that there is a climate crisis that is no longer a hypothesis about tomorrow but a reality today,” Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne told reporters while visiting a Paris police station. 

Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire called Galtier’s response “inappropriate” while Paris’ left-wing mayor Anne Hidalgo tweeted: “It’s not on to answer stuff like that???? Wake up guys??? This is Paris.”

– Private jets –

The controversy began over the weekend when PSG notched up an easy 3-0 away victory against Nantes to stay top of Ligue 1 on their trip to the French city, which is 380 kilometres (240 miles) west of Paris but located on a high-speed train line.

The side — owned by an investment fund of major gas producer Qatar — boasted on social media that they had made the return trip with shirt sponsors Qatar Airways, but their travel choice was publicly questioned due to its carbon footprint.

“Paris-Nantes is less than two hours by TGV,” Alain Krakovitch, the head of SNCF’s TGV high-speed passenger trains, wrote on Twitter afterwards.

“I renew our proposal for a TGV offer adapted to your specific needs in line with our common interests — safety, speed, services and eco-mobility,” he added.

The PSG team recently went by road to a clash with Lille, the club said, and may also take the coach for other upcoming matches.

The Qatar-owned club takes “security, public order, logistical problems and the environment” into consideration when planning travel, it said. 

The controversy comes against the background of a growing clamour in France from environmental campaigners for restrictions on private jet travel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Pressure group Attac had on Friday pilloried PSG’s Argentinian star Lionel Messi for his use of private air travel.

“From June to August, Messi made 52 flights with his private jet, amounting to 1,502 tons of CO2 emissions. That’s as much as a single French person would be responsible for in 150 years,” it said.

Star French attacker Karim Benzema also faced criticism over the summer for posting a video from his holidays in Miami which flaunted his wealth — and carbon footprint — with sports cars, jet skis and motor boats.

Many teams in the top Spanish, Italian and English leagues, including Juventus and Liverpool, regularly travel by train.

– Role model? –

Communication experts said they were amazed at the insensitivity of the PSG manager’s reply on the same day that President Emmanuel Macron was urging French people to lower their air conditioning and heating to save electricity.

Europe faces an energy crunch this winter after Russia cut its gas deliveries to the continent.

The press conference behaviour was a rare faux pas for World Cup-winning posterboy Mbappe who has forged a reputation as a mature, socially-minded player despite his young age of just 23.

“I have no thoughts,” he replied in the press conference when asked for his view on the train travel option.

Contacted by AFP, his representatives declined to comment on Tuesday.

“It is a devastating blow to his image,” Frank Hocquemiller, an agent for several French international footballers, told AFP. “Footballers need to understand that if you are a role model, or in his case an icon, everything carries great importance.” 

French climatologist Valerie Masson-Delmotte said she wanted Mbappe to set an example.

“What he says, what he does, these things have an influence far beyond what scientists might say or do, because he inspires so many people,” she told France Inter radio.

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