Wetter and wilder: the signs of warming everywhere

In the third part of our series on the eve of the Poznan conference, we look at how climate change is already changing ordinary people's lives from Australia to Brazil
Joao da Antonio's eyes are full of tears. If good rains do not come, he says, he will pack his bag, kiss his wife and two children goodbye and join the annual exodus of young men leaving hot, dry rural north-east Brazil for the biofuel fields in the south.

Da Antonio, 19, can earn about £30 a month for 10 hours gruelling work a day cutting sugar cane to make ethanol, and more than a million small farmers like him migrate south for six months of the year because the land can no longer support them. Tens of thousands a year never return, forced to move permanently to Sao Paulo or another of Brazil's cities in search of work.

"Life here is one of suffering," Da Antonio said. "I will do anything to earn some money. None of us want to die, but the lack of water here will kill us. " More >>>

Global warming faster than expected, WWF says

Monday 20 October 2008 - The EU should prepare to respond with more swift and ambitious climate change policies as global warming is accelerating at a faster pace than previously thought, a new scientific report states.

The report, published by the WWF, uses the first new scientific data on climate change since the publication of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report in 2007. It shows that global warming is in fact gathering pace faster than the IPCC forecast.

The report reveals that global sea levels are now expected to rise by more than twice the IPCC's maximum estimate of 0.59m by the end of the century, putting vast coastal areas in danger, while higher temperatures have already reduced global yields of wheat, maize and barley. Furthermore, the Arctic Ocean is now losing ice up to 30 years ahead of previous projections, according to the WWF. More >>>