Increasing tree species diversity is often regarded as a way to make forests more resilient to climate change. However, a new international study led by the University of Freiburg shows that diversity can have both positive and negative effects on forests’ drought resilience. By analyzing tree rings from 1,600 trees in 68 different species mixtures across Europe, the researchers found that the effects of tree diversity on tree growth can shift from beneficial to negative during prolonged drought conditions. The results highlight that careful selection of species combinations and locally adapted management approaches are essential for developing truly climate-resilient forests.

Although El Niño suppresses overall monsoon season rainfall across India, a new study finds that it also, counterintuitively, sharply increases the likelihood of extreme daily downpours in the country’s wetter regions. The findings suggest that the processes that drive this intensification may play an important role in driving extreme rainfall variability under climate change in other tropical locations. It’s long been known that the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) exerts a powerful influence on India’s summer monsoon rains. During El Niño years, warmer Pacific waters trigger unusual patterns of rising and sinking air, producing a large-scale suppression of seasonal rainfall across the Indian subcontinent. In India’s typically drier regions, this results in fewer rainy days and weaker showers, compounding their dryness. However, in the nation’s climatologically wetter zones, which also experience less frequent rainfall during El Niño events, observations suggest that the storms that do occur tend to be markedly more intense. This contrasting pattern underscores El Niño’s complex and regionally varied impact on India’s monsoon rains. Yet, despite this, ENSOs’ influence on the Indian summer monsoon, and the physical mechanisms driving these patterns, remain largely unexplored. To address this gap, Spencer Hill and colleagues measured extreme daily rainfall using a cutoff accumulation metric, which captures how often very heavy rain occurs relative to average conditions. Applying this to over a century of high-resolution Indian rainfall observational data (1901–2020), Hill et al. found that while light and moderate rain become less frequent during El Niño, the probability of very heavy downpours rises steeply in India’s wetter regions, with extreme rainfall events becoming more than 50% likelier in some cases, which can result in potentially hazardous conditions. Moreover, unlike El Niño’s weakening influence on India’s average summer rainfall over recent decades, its impact on extremes has remained comparatively steady over time, though with some regional shifts. According to the authors, this intensification is linked to changes in atmospheric buoyancy and low-pressure system tracks.

Wildfire smoke increasingly threatens lives across the country. A new study shows smoke exposure in the coming decades will cause tens of thousands of excess deaths and predicts where exposure will occur so communities and policymakers can prepare for the health burden.

In a milestone for Southeast Asia’s healthcare sector, Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH), MOH Holdings Pte Ltd (MOHH), and the Centre for Sustainable Medicine (CoSM) at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) have released its first-ever comprehensive national emissions report for Singapore’s healthcare sector, and the first comprehensive study across Asia.

The NUS-MOH study demonstrates that Singapore’s healthcare system is 18%[1] more sustainable than previously estimated, with the country delivering world-class healthcare at 20% lower carbon intensity than other advanced economies.

 

[1] 18% lower than the most recent estimate of Singapore's healthcare emissions on a 3-year rolling average basis (Romanello et al. (2024). The 2024 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change: Facing Record-Breaking Threats From Delayed Action. The Lancet, 404(10465), 1847-1896. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(24)01822-1)

A University of Massachusetts Amherst public health researcher has been awarded a three-year, $1.12 million grant from the National Science Foundation to lead a multinational examination of therelationship between water governance systems and the health of young children, amid a backdrop of global climate change.