The recent decline in Horn of Africa rainfall during the March–May “long rains” season has fomented drought and famine, threatening food security in an already vulnerable region. Some attribute this decline to anthropogenic forcing, whereas others maintain that it is a feature of internal climate variability. We show that the rate of drying in the Horn of Africa during the 20th century is unusual in the context of the last 2000 years, is synchronous with recent global and regional warming, and therefore may have an anthropogenic component.

Plastic, as a form of marine litter, is found in varying quantities and sizes around the globe from surface waters to deep-sea sediments. Identifying patterns of microplastic distribution will benefit an understanding of the scale of their potential effect on the environment and organisms. As sea ice extent is reducing in the Arctic, heightened shipping and fishing activity may increase marine pollution in the area. Microplastics may enter the region following ocean transport and local input, although baseline contamination measurements are still required.

Following a series of extreme air pollution events, the Chinese government released the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan in 2013 (China's State Council 2013). The Action Plan sets clear goals for key regions (i.e. cities above the prefecture level, Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei Province, the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta) and establishes near-term control efforts for the next five years. However, the extent to which the Action Plan can direct local governments' activities on air pollution control remains unknown.

We revisited long-term observations of PM2.5 at ground-based stations in Japan during 2001–2012 to examine possible impacts of Siberian wildfires on regional air quality. Exceedances of Japan's air quality standard for daily mean concentration (35 μg m−3) were observed several times at Rishiri Island in northern Japan in the spring of 2003 and 2008 when intense wildfires occurred in Siberia.

Original Source

The high prevalence of sickle haemoglobin in Africa shows that malaria has been a major force for human evolutionary selection, but surprisingly few other polymorphisms have been proven to confer resistance to malaria in large epidemiological studies. To address this problem, we conducted a multi-centre genome-wide association study (GWAS) of life-threatening Plasmodium falciparum infection (severe malaria) in over 11,000 African children, with replication data in a further 14,000 individuals.

Since the year 2000, a concerted campaign against malaria has led to unprecedented levels of intervention coverage across sub-Saharan Africa. Understanding the effect of this control effort is vital to inform future control planning. However, the effect of malaria interventions across the varied epidemiological settings of Africa remains poorly understood owing to the absence of reliable surveillance data and the simplistic approaches underlying current disease estimates.

India says that it will produce 40% of its energy from sources other than fossil fuels by 2030, and will reduce the intensity of its carbon dioxide emissions by roughly one-third. The country’s highly anticipated announcement on 2 October comes ahead of United Nations talks in Paris this December, at which nations hope to reach an updated agreement to fight climate change.

Most nations have strict controls on environmental waste, from arsenic to zinc. Yet no legal limits have been set to control pollution from drugs during their manufacture, use and disposal. That is despite evidence that pharmaceutical waste can wreak havoc in the environment — hormones found in contraceptives cause male fish to grow female sex organs, and a painkiller used in livestock has wiped out millions of vultures in India that fed on the carcasses. (Editorial)

Antarctica’s contribution to global sea-level rise has recently been increasing . Whether its ice discharge will become unstable and decouple from anthropogenic forcing or increase linearly with the warming of the surrounding ocean is of fundamental importance . Under unabated greenhouse-gas emissions, ocean models indicate an abrupt intrusion of warm circumpolar deep water into the cavity belowWest Antarctica’s Filchner–Ronne ice shelf within the next two centuries.

Following the 1986 Chernobyl accident, 116,000 people were permanently evacuated from the 4,200 km Chernobyl exclusion zone. There is continuing scientific and public debate surrounding the fate of wildlife that remained in the abandoned area. Several previous studies of the Chernobyl exclusion zone indicated major radiation effects and pronounced reductions in wildlife populations at dose rates well below those thought to cause significant impacts. In contrast, our long-term empirical data showed no evidence of a negative influence of radiation on mammal abundance.