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MercoPress, en Español

Montevideo, March 26th 2026 - 16:30 UTC

Environment

  • Wednesday, January 31st 2018 - 16:04 UTC

    Falklands ecosystem documented in National Geographic February

    Paul Nicklen: “There seems to be this balance of people, sheep, agriculture, fishing, and really abundant wildlife and nature”.

    The National Geographic February 2018 will document the Falkland Islands' diverse ecosystem by wildlife photographer Paul Nicklen. The piece points out that for every permanent resident in the Falklands there are 167 sheep, but also the Islands have 65 species of birds, along marine mammals in the surrounding ecosystem.

  • Wednesday, January 31st 2018 - 09:29 UTC

    NASA satellite keeps track of wildfires in Argentina

    NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of a wildfire in La Pampa Province, on January 29, 2018.

    Roughly 12,000 wildfires burn each year in Argentina, charring more than 1.3 million hectares (5,000 square miles) of forest and grasslands. The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured an image of one of them on January 29, 2018.

  • Tuesday, January 30th 2018 - 10:00 UTC

    Petrobras to join the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative

    The OGCI is the CEO-led grouping of oil and gas companies that intends to lead the industry’s response to climate change

    The Oil and Gas Climate Initiative (OGCI) and Petrobras announced that the Brazilian company will join the initiative. This commitment is subject to the approval of the OGCI Climate Investments Members’ Agreement by the Petrobras board of directors.

  • Tuesday, January 30th 2018 - 07:22 UTC

    Foreign Office planning to ban drilling and mining offshore BOTs in South Atlantic

    South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands are home to more than 3 million penguins, along with fur seals, elephant seals and various species of whale.

    British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is expected to institute a ban on fishing, drilling and freight transport in British overseas territories in the South Atlantic in an effort to protect wildlife in the area. The South Sandwich Islands, which plays host to Antarctic scientists but has no permanent residents, lie around 1,500km east of the Falkland Islands.

  • Monday, January 29th 2018 - 10:22 UTC

    Ozone hole: NASA's satellite confirms 20% less depletion; recovery by 2080

    Antarctic ozone hole forms during September in the South Hemisphere winter as returning sun’s rays catalyze ozone destruction cycles of chlorine and bromine

    Scientists have shown through direct satellite observations of the ozone hole that levels of ozone-destroying chlorine are declining. Measurements show that the decline in chlorine, resulting from an international ban on chlorine-containing man-made chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), has resulted in about 20% less ozone depletion during the Antarctic winter than there was in 2005, the first year that measurements of chlorine and ozone during the Antarctic winter were made by NASA's Aura satellite.

  • Friday, January 19th 2018 - 10:08 UTC

    Global surface temperatures in 2017, the second warmest since 1880, says NASA

    2017 was the third consecutive year in which global temperatures were more than 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above late 19th-century levels.

    Earth’s global surface temperatures in 2017 ranked as the second warmest since 1880, according to an analysis by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Continuing the planet’s long-term warming trend, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 0.90 degrees Celsius (1.62 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean. That is second only to global temperatures in 2016.

  • Wednesday, January 17th 2018 - 09:23 UTC

    Minus 67 Celsisus in Russia'a Yakuta region, 5.300 kilometers east of Moscow

    A teenager selfie with her eyebrows frozen. Although even with minus 40 Celsius, schools are open in Yakutia, minus 67 was a bit too much

    Even thermometers can't keep up with the plunging temperatures in Russia's remote Yakutia region, which hit minus 67 degrees Celsius (minus 88.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in some areas on Tuesday. In Yakutia, a region of 1 million people about 5,300 kilometers east of Moscow, students routinely go to school even in minus 40 degrees. But school was canceled on Tuesday throughout the region and police ordered parents to keep their children inside.

  • Friday, January 12th 2018 - 07:18 UTC

    Falklands concern with vast fishing fleet gathering on high seas

    Barton confirmed the fleet had been out there from an early date and was likely to be catching small squid as well as having the capacity to catch a great deal of squid

    A vast fleet of fishing vessels assembling to catch Illex squid on the high seas, some 400 miles north of the Falkland Islands, is an issue of concern to the Falkland Islands Fisheries Department.

  • Thursday, January 11th 2018 - 10:12 UTC

    Weddel seal ends on the mid Atlantic Brazilian island of Trindade

    The polar mammal had travelled more than 5,000km north of its Antarctic habitat; more than 1,500 kilometers beyond the farthest north previous record in Uruguay.

    The Brazilian Navy spotted something unusual in the azure waters of the South Atlantic. In 2015, at a remote outpost and biological research station on the island of Trindade, 1,100 kilometers off central Brazil, sailors spotted a small gray seal swimming in the waves. Two days later, they found its body on the island’s Catelha beach. Scientists who went to take a closer look made an astonishing discovery—the corpse was a young Weddell seal.

  • Wednesday, January 10th 2018 - 10:33 UTC

    Scorched Australia: 2017 third hottest year on record

    Summer heat described as “exceptional” had resulted in several land-based records being set in New South Wales and Queensland.

    Australia experienced its third-warmest year on record in 2017, according to the nation's Bureau of Meteorology. The national mean temperature of 22.75C was almost 1C higher than a 1961-1990 baseline, its annual report revealed. Only 2005 and 2013 were warmer, based on records kept for about a century.