The World's oceans have warmed 50 per cent faster over the last 40 years than previously thought due to climate change,Australian and US climate researchers have reported Higher ocean temperatures expand the volume of water, contributing to a rise in sea levels that is submerging small island nations and threatening to wreak havoc in low-lying, densely-populated delta regions around the globe. The study, published in the British journal Nature, adds to a growing scientific chorus of warnings about the pace and consequences rising oceans.

The oceans have been growing warmer and sea levels have been rising at a faster rate than previously estimated, researchers reported. A review of millions of measurements over the past four decades revealed a subtle error, they said; after correcting it, they found that sea levels rose two inches from 1961 to 2003

Mass extinctions that wiped out up to 90% of earth's flora and fauna were driven in large part by shifting ocean levels, according to a study published in Nature. Understanding what made many of the planet's living organism rapidly die out at least five times over the last half billion years remains one of the great challenges in paleontology and biology. Some theories point an accusing figure at the cooling effect of massive dust shrouds thrown into the atmosphere by volcanoes and asteroids crashing into earth, or the warming caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide.

Estuarine mangrove forests are a priceless environmental, cultural and aesthetic legacy. And ours have begun to drown

SHILLONG

The revelation by the India Meteorological Department (IMD) that eight of the 10 warmest years on record since 1901 have been in the last one decade and that all years since 1993, barring one, have clocked higher than normal temperature establish beyond doubt that India's climate has already changed on account of global warming

Computer analyses of global climate have consistently overstated warming in Antarctica, concludes new research by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and Ohio State University. The study can help scientists improve computer models and determine if Earth's southernmost continent will warm significantly this century, a major research question because of Antarctica's potential impact on global sea-level rise.