The great Sichuan earthquake of 12 May 2008 caught Earth scientists off guard. A year on, Alexandra Witze reports from the shattered towns on how researchers have learned from their failures.
The World Health Organization (WHO) this week remained on the verge of declaring a pandemic of the H1N1 swine-associated flu
virus. Public-health bodies and scientists have made progress in starting to understand the outbreak, but major questions remain about how severe the disease will get.
The effect of a cumulative emission of carbon on peak global mean surface temperature is better constrained than the effect of stabilizing the atmospheric composition. The approach is also insensitive to the timing or peak rate of emissions.
If policy-makers are to reach international agreement on greenhouse-gas emissions at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in December, they need to be optimistic that their decisions could have swift and overwhelmingly positive effects on climate change. The reality is less certain, but no less urgent.
Geoengineering schemes, such as brightening clouds, are being talked about ever more widely. In the third of three features, Oliver Morton looks at how likely they are to work.
It's simple to mop carbon dioxide out of the air, but it could cost a lot of money. In the second of three features on the carbon challenge, Nicola Jones talks with the scientists pursuing this strategy.
