As climate change accelerates, the world is experiencing more frequent extreme weather events and rising temperatures. This is driving up the demand for cooling to make cities liveable, especially in fast-growing megacities with populations exceeding 10 million.

While cooling is essential, it also creates a challenge, as conventional cooling systems consume vast amounts of energy and contribute to carbon emissions, creating a vicious cycle that worsens global warming. To break this cycle, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore), Aalborg University and Aarhus University in Denmark have embarked on a new five-year research initiative, supported by US$9.4 million (DKK 60 million or S$12 million) in funding from the Grundfos Foundation. This is the foundation’s largest individual research grant to date and the first to include a university outside Denmark.

Titled Sustainable Water-based cooling in Megacities (SWiM), the three universities will develop intelligent and sustainable cooling systems that can reduce energy consumption in large cities by up to 30 per cent, lowering both costs and carbon emissions.

A new study, led by federal agencies in collaboration with the University of Colorado Denver, shows that the whitebark pine tree—an iconic, high-elevation tree that stretches from California’s Sierra Nevada through the Cascades and Rockies and into Canada—could lose as much as 80 percent of its habitat to climate change in the next 25 years.   The loss could have a cascade of effects, impacting wildlife and people. 

Andean glaciers advanced during an acute period of climate change at the end of the last Ice Age, new research has found.

Ice can dissolve iron minerals more effectively than liquid water, according to a new study from Umeå University. The discovery could help explain why many Arctic rivers are now turning rusty orange as permafrost thaws in a warming climate.