UN climate report: Scientists release 'survival guide' to avert climate disaster

Scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change met in Switzerland where glaciers are melting

UN chief Antonio Guterres says a major new report on climate change is a "survival guide for humanity".

Clean energy and technology can be exploited to avoid the growing climate disaster, the report says.

Biodiversity: 'Magical marine species' pushed toward extinction

A "sea cow" that evoked tales of mermaids is being driven to the edge of extinction, conservation experts warn.

According to an update of the official extinction list, the dugong is almost wiped out in some parts of the world.

Scientists have also sounded alarm over the loss of other marine creatures, including exotic coral and shellfish.

World leaders will meet at the UN in New York later for more talks to save the world's oceans from overexploitation.

The UN High Seas Treaty has been through 10 years of negotiations but has yet to be signed.

If agreed, it would put 30% of the world's oceans into conservation areas by 2030.

Campaigners hope it will protect marine life from overfishing and other human activities.

Two-thirds of the world's oceans are currently considered international waters, which mean all countries have a right to fish, ship and do research there. But only 1.2% of these high seas, as they are referred to, are protected.

Catastrophic climate change outcomes, including human extinction, are not being taken seriously enough by scientists, a new study says.

The authors say that the consequences of more extreme warming - still on the cards if no action is taken - are "dangerously underexplored".

They argue that the world needs to start preparing for the possibility of what they term the "climate endgame".

They want UN scientists to investigate the risk of catastrophic change. According to this new analysis, the closest attempts to directly understand or address how climate change could lead to global catastrophe have come from popular science books such as The Uninhabitable Earth and not from mainstream science research.

Kenya's Wildlife and Tourism ministry says that climate change is now a bigger threat to elephant conservation than poaching.

In the past year, the country has recorded 179 elephant deaths due to the ongoing drought affecting the Horn of Africa.

Following consecutive seasons of poor rains, rivers and water pans have dried up and grasslands have shrivelled in the game reserves.

Scientists and politicians say we are facing a planetary crisis because of climate change.

But what's the evidence for global warming and how do we know it's being caused by humans?

How do we know the world is getting warmer?

Our planet has been warming rapidly since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

The average temperature at the Earth's surface has risen about 1.1C since 1850. Furthermore, each of the last four decades has been warmer than any that preceded it, since the middle of the 19th Century.