The surprising link between sunshine and suicide

Lengthening daylight isn't necessarily good news where mental health is concerned.

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Studies dating back to the 1800s have found that suicides peak in the spring and are lowest in winter.

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Investing $1.8 trillion in climate adaptation could yield $7.1 trillion

A new report argues that we stand to gain a lot economically by investing in 5 key areas.

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  • The Global Commission on Adaptation, an organization led by Ban Ki-Moon, Bill Gates, and Kristalina Georgieva, breaks down the costs and benefits of investing in five key areas for climate adaptation.
  • Whereas climate mitigation focuses on reducing future greenhouse gas emissions, climate adaptation focuses on how to deal with the changing world that climate change will bring.
  • Both mitigation and adaptation projects are commonly criticized as being too expensive, but the new report underscores the quantitative benefits that could be realized.
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Intensifying storms? More than half of Grand Bahama Island is under water.

Hurricane Dorian has devastated the islands.

Photo credit: Paul Halliwell / U.K. Ministry of Defense / Agence France-Presse / Getty Images
  • Hurricane Dorian battered the Bahama Islands for nearly two days.
  • Over half of the island was submerged in water.
  • Climate scientists are starting to think that the intensification and length of hurricanes can be traced to climate change.
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The next clean energy source? Snow.

Researchers from UCLA invent a device that generates electricity from a rather unusual source.

Photo credit: Bryce Evans on Unsplash
  • UCLA scientists have invented a cheap, flexible, and simple device called snow-TENG that generates electricity when it comes into contact with snow.
  • Scientists have known that snow carries an electrical charge for several decades, but this device is one of the first to capitalize on that effect.
  • The researchers believe that snow-TENG could be used in movement-tracking applications or as a simple weather station that requires no battery to operate.
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July 2019 was the hottest month ever recorded on Earth

2019 could prove to be the second-hottest year on record.

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  • A new report from the European Union's Copernicus Climate Change Programme describes how 2019 has already logged several record-hot months.
  • Alarmingly, these temperature increases are occurring even though the planet is transitioning into a more neutral El Niño phase.
  • This year brought several severe heat waves to Europe, India, and Pakistan, among other areas.
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