Air pollution alerts deliver health benefits for Chinese cities, says study
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Pollution in Shanghai City, December 2024. Air pollution alerts issued by authorities in China’s cities significantly reduce harmful pollution and save lives, a new study appears to reveal. Publishing their findings in PNAS Nexus, an international research group led by University of Birmingham scientists analysed five years of data from 57 cities in northern China […]
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Smarter use of wood can help cool the planet, says new study
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Low-value wood can be used in engineered products such as particleboard before being converted to energy with carbon capture. A recent research project appears to demonstrate a more effective way to use wood to achieve enduring global cooling. Rather than sending low-value wood directly into bioenergy systems such as BECCS, the study suggests it could […]
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MIT researchers use AI to uncover atomic defects in materials
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In biology, defects are generally bad. But in materials science, defects can be intentionally tuned to give materials useful new properties. Today, atomic-scale defects are carefully introduced during the manufacturing process of products like steel, semiconductors, and solar cells to help improve strength, control electrical conductivity, optimize performance, and more. But even as defects have […]
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Why Are Natural Gas Prices So High?
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The post Why Are Natural Gas Prices So High? appeared first on Energy Innovation.
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Housing Reform Without Preemption
Photo by Nandish Jha on Unsplash Zoning regulations have lately come under fire for making cities less dense and driving up the cost of new homes. State legislatures are increasingly responding by preempting aspects of local zoning authority. But despite its real problems, both now and historically, local zoning power remains an important tool among […]
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LlamaAgents Builder: From Prompt to Deployed AI Agent in Minutes
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Creating an AI agent for tasks like analyzing and processing documents autonomously used to require hours of near-endless configuration, code orchestration, and deployment battles.
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DeBriefed 27 Mach 2026: North Sea myths debunked | India’s climate plan | IPCC and Indigenous knowledge
Welcome to Carbon Brief’s DeBriefed. An essential guide to the week’s key developments relating to climate change. This week Hormuz latest DELAYED ULTIMATUM: The week started with US president Donald Trump giving Iran 48 hours to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital supply route for oil and gas, or the US would “hit and obliterate” […]
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Q&A: What does India’s new Paris Agreement pledge mean for climate action?
India has set a new target to reduce its “emissions intensity” – greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output – to 47% below 2005 levels by 2035. The much-awaited announcement comes within India’s delayed new nationally determined contribution (NDC) for 2035 under the Paris Agreement, which had been due last year. The pledge, which has […]
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‘Very alarming’ winter sees Arctic sea ice hit record-low for second year running
Arctic sea ice has reached its peak extent for this winter, clocking in as the joint-smallest in a satellite record going back almost half a century. Provisional data from the US National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) shows that sea ice extent peaked at 14.29m square kilometres (km2) on 15 March. This is slightly […]
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Analysis: UK is ‘halving’ its climate finance for developing countries
The UK is roughly halving the climate aid it allocates to developing countries, when accounting changes and inflation are factored in, according to new analysis by Carbon Brief. On 19 March, the government announced that the UK would provide “around £6bn” of international “climate finance” over the next three years. This replaces a previous goal […]
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MIT engineers design proteins by their motion, not just their shape
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Proteins are far more than nutrients we track on a food label. Present in every cell of our bodies, they work like nature’s molecular machines. They walk, stretch, bend, and flex to do their jobs, pumping blood, fighting disease, building tissue, and many other jobs too small for the eye to see. Their power doesn’t […]
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Seeing sounds
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Growing up in Mexico and Texas, Mariano Salcedo ’25 couldn’t readily indulge his passion for creating music. “There are no bands in Mexican public schools,” he says. While some families could pay for instruments and lessons, others, like Salcedo’s, were less fortunate. “I’ve always loved music,” he continues. “I was a listener.” Salcedo, the Alex […]
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Environmental regulation system “not working as well as it should”, warns Public Accounts Committee
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The UK’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has raised serious concerns over the ability of environmental regulators and government to meet their existing responsibilities while delivering a programme of major reforms. In a newly published report, MPs conclude that the current regulatory system requires “substantial changes” and is failing to effectively support either nature recovery or […]
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Guest post: How declining cloudiness is accelerating global warming
For the past two decades, low-level cloud cover has been declining, increasing the amount of sunlight absorbed by Earth and amplifying global warming. As global temperatures have reached record highs in recent years, there has been concern that the decline in cloudiness may be enhancing warming more than previously expected. In a new study, published […]
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AI system learns to keep warehouse robot traffic running smoothly
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Inside a giant autonomous warehouse, hundreds of robots dart down aisles as they collect and distribute items to fulfill a steady stream of customer orders. In this busy environment, even small traffic jams or minor collisions can snowball into massive slowdowns. To avoid such an avalanche of inefficiencies, researchers from MIT and the tech firm […]
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Analysis: India’s CO2 emissions in 2025 grew at slowest rate in two decades
India’s carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions grew by 0.5% in the second half of 2025 and by just 0.7% in the year as a whole, the slowest rate in more than two decades. This is a sharp slowdown from the growth of 4-11% in the preceding four years and marks the lowest rate of increase since […]
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Augmenting citizen science with computer vision for fish monitoring
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Each spring, river herring populations migrate from Massachusetts coastal waters to begin their annual journey up rivers and streams to freshwater spawning habitat. River herring have faced severe population declines over the past several decades, and their migration is extensively monitored across the region, primarily through traditional visual counting and volunteer-based programs. Monitoring fish movement and […]
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Limiting global warming to 2C would not ‘rule out’ extreme impacts
Limiting warming to 2C above pre-industrial temperatures may not be enough to prevent “extreme global climate outcomes”, according to research published in Nature. The authors simulate climate extremes – such as drought in breadbasket regions and flooding in populated areas – under a 2C warming scenario using a range of different global climate models. They […]