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carbon emissions
On Top of All of Israel's Other Bombs in Gaza, Study Reveals a War-Driven Carbon Bomb
"What we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change," said one United Nations special rapporteur.
May 30, 2025
A group of researchers has released an updated analysis detailing the devastating impact that Israel's war on Gaza has had in terms of greenhouse gas emissions—in addition to loss of human life.
The study, first reported on by The Guardian and posted to SSRN on Friday, found that the projected planet-warming carbon emissions of "direct war activities" over 15 months of Israel’s military assault on Gaza were greater than the individual annual emissions of 36 countries and territories.
According to local health officials in Gaza, over 54,000 people have been killed in the enclave following October 7, 2023, when a deadly Hamas attack on Israel spurred a devastating military response.
"For over 600 days, Israel has been saying it's targeting Hamas, but it is civilians who have been corralled, bombed, and killed en masse every day," said Bushra Khalidi, policy lead in the Occupied Palestinian Territory for the anti-poverty group Oxfam, on Wednesday.
According to the study, 15-months of war, a period from October 2023 to January 2025, resulted in an estimated 1.89 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions. According to The Guardian's write up of the study, 99% of that 1.89 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent was generated by Israel's ground invasion and aerial attacks on Gaza.
In January 2025, a cease-fire went into effect, but Israel ended the cease-fire in mid-March.
The estimated tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent increases to 32.2 million tonnes when the study accounts for "pre-conflict and post-conflict related construction activities."
The pre-conflict emissions include the construction of security-related concrete infrastructure in both Israel and Gaza over the past 16 years, including Hamas' network of tunnels and Israel's "iron wall." Post-conflict relates to the future reconstruction needs of Gaza following extensive Israeli attacks.
"This updated research evidences the urgency to stop the escalating atrocities, and make sure that Israel and all states comply with international law, including the decisions from the [International Criminal Court] and the [International Court of Justice]," Astrid Puentes Riaño, U.N. special rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment, told The Guardian.
"Whether or not states agree on calling it a genocide, what we are facing is severely impacting all life in Gaza, and also threatening human rights in the region, and even globally, due to the aggravation of climate change," she added.
The study, which according to The Guardian is under peer review by the journal One Earth, follows a study released last year authored by some of the same researchers who tackled this same question of the climate costs of the war on Gaza.
"These calculations point to the urgent need for increased visibility and mandatory reporting of military emissions for both war and peacetime through the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change," the more recent study states, referencing a treaty ratified by nearly 200 countries in the 1990s to combat "dangerous" human interference with climate systems.
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'Alarming' Report Shows Billions at Risk From Historically Low Snow Melt in Himalayas
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the report.
Apr 21, 2025
A report released Monday found that snow persistence in the Hindu Kush Himalaya region, sometimes called the "third pole" because of its water resources, was at its lowest level in 23 years during the 2024-2025 winter, or 23.6% below normal—a concerning water security development for nearly two billion people who rely on river basins that are fed by the region's snowmelt.
All told, snowmelt from the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region contributes about a fourth of the total runoff of twelve major river basins in the region, on average. Snow persistence has been below normal across all twelve major river basins, per the report.
These findings come from the Hindu Kush Himalaya Snow Update, an annual report put out by the International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which provides yearly analysis of snow persistence in the region—the snow that usually stays on the ground between November and March.
"The steadily declining persistence of seasonal snow is a warning bell for an emerging water crisis," according to the author of the report. "Continuous deficit of meltwater from snow would mean lesser river runoff in dry months and early melt season, highlighting the urgent need for adaptive water resource management strategies in mitigating forthcoming impacts of water shortage, especially for downstream communities facing intensifying summer extremes."
The HKH region stretches multiple thousands of miles long across eight countries—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Nepal, Myanmar and Pakistan—according GRID-Arendal, an environmental nonprofit based in Norway that works closely with the United Nations. It is the biggest volume of ice and snow outside of the Arctic and Antartica.
"While below-normal snow persistence has occurred before in this region—between 2003 and 2025 the region experienced thirteen below-normal snow years—the increasing frequency and intensity of such occurrences in recent times is a growing concern," according to the report. The 2024-2025 winter was the third consecutive year of below-normal snow persistence.
Sher Muhammad, a remote sensing specialist at ICIMOD who was the lead expert for the report, said in a statement published Monday that the deficit situations occurring in continuous succession is an "alarming trend."
ICIMOD's director general Pema Gyamtsho highlighted the need for policy solutions to address the problem over the long term in a statement published on Monday. "Carbon emissions have already locked in an irreversible course of recurrent snow anomalies in the HKH," said Gyamtsho.
Rising temperatures and water scarcity in the region has already created climate refugees.
Research from ICIMOD published in 2023 found that glaciers in the HKH region are melting at an accelerated rate and could lose up to 80% of their volume by century's end absent ambitious action to slash planet-warming emissions.
In March, a United Nations agency found that, worldwide, 2022-2024 saw the largest three-year loss of glaciers on record.
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A Third of the Arctic's Landmass is Now a Source of Carbon: Study
The study was published as President Donald Trump was blasted for an executive order that one critic said shows he wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station."
Jan 21, 2025
For thousands of years, the land areas of the Arctic have served as a "carbon sink," storing potential carbon emissions in the permafrost. But according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change Tuesday, more than 34% of the Arctic is now a source of carbon to the atmosphere, as permafrost melts and the Arctic becomes greener.
"When emissions from fire were added, the percentage grew to 40%," according to the Woodwell Climate Research Center, which led the international team that conducted the research.
The study, which was first reported on by The Guardian, was released the day after President Donald Trump issued multiple presidential actions influencing the United States' ability to confront the climate crisis, which is primarily caused by fossil fuel emissions, including one directly impacting resource extraction in Alaska, a section of which is within the Arctic Circle.
Sue Natali, one of the researchers who worked on the study published in Nature Climate Change, toldNPR in December (in reference to similar research) that the Arctic's warming "is not an issue of what party you support."
"This is something that impacts everyone," she said.
As the permafrost—ground that remains frozen for two or more years—holds less carbon, it releases CO2 into the atmosphere that could "considerably exacerbate climate change," according to the study.
"There is a load of carbon in the Arctic soils. It's close to half of the Earth's soil carbon pool. That's much more than there is in the atmosphere. There's a huge potential reservoir that should ideally stay in the ground," said Anna Virkkala, the lead author of the study, in an interview with The Guardian.
The dire warning was released on the heels of Trump's executive order titled "Unleashing the Alaska's Extraordinary Resource Potential" that calls for expedited "permitting and leasing of energy and natural resource projects in Alaska," as well as for the prioritization of "development of Alaska's liquefied natural gas (LNG) potential, including the sale and transportation of Alaskan LNG to other regions of the United States and allied nations within the Pacific region."
The order also rolls back a number of Biden-era restrictions on drilling and extraction in Alaska, which included protecting areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from oil and gas leasing.
"Alaska is warming four times faster than the rest of the planet, a trend that is wreaking havoc on communities, ecosystems, fish, wildlife, and ways of life that depend on healthy lands and waters," said Carole Holley, managing attorney for the Alaska Office of the environmental group Earthjustice, in a statement Monday.
"Earthjustice and its clients will not stand idly by while Trump once again forces a harmful industry-driven agenda on our state for political gain and the benefit of a wealthy few," she added.
Trump wants to turn the Alaskan Arctic into the "the world's largest gas station," said Athan Manuel, director of Sierra Club's Lands Protection Program, in a statement Monday. "Make no mistake, Trump's rushed and sloppy actions today are an existential threat to these lands and waters, and the communities and wildlife that depend on them."
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