Even when the Arctic goes dark and cold, thinning ice could keep the North Pole from cooling off.

The loss of insulating ice between the ocean and atmosphere increases the amount of heat-trapping water vapor and clouds in the Arctic air. That extra moisture keeps air temperatures relatively warm during fall and winter and melts even more ice, new climate simulations suggest. This self-reinforcing cycle could partially explain why Arctic warming has outpaced the global average over recent decades, researchers report online November 11 in the Journal of Climate.

Climate change could increase the number of wildlife species found in Britain as birds and insects take refuge from higher temperatures in southern Europe, a study by the RSPB has found.

Dozens of species, including 20 types of waterbird, including the little egret, common crane, purple heron, little bittern, black-winged stilt and mediterranean gull, have already arrived and begun breeding in recent decades. Species that are largely confined to the south coast, such as the dartford warbler, are expected to spread northwards and inhabit a much larger area.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Thursday promised to give $10.6 billion to developing nations by 2020 to help them implement policies against global warming, ahead of the U.N. climate talks in Paris next week.

The decision to offer 1.3-trillion yen ($10.6 billion) came after Japan gave a roughly combined 2.0 trillion yen for the same purpose in 2013 and 2014.

A long list of seemingly harmless everyday actions contribute to emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and other climate-altering greenhouse gases.

Driving a car and flipping a light switch have a clear "carbon footprint" -- much less obvious is the harm caused by sending a simple text message or opening a bottle of water.  

There are few films more environmentally infused than the highest grossing one in history, “Avatar” — in which a highly militarized mining company seeks to exploit the resources of the rich forest world of Pandora. But less known is how the film’s director, James Cameron, has also used some of the money made from “Avatar” to champion an array of green causes, even as he’s also using clean energy to power the film’s three planned sequels.

“We put in a 1 megawatt solar array on the roof of the soundstages where we’re doing the ‘Avatar’ sequels, so we’ll be net energy neutral there,” Cameron told The Washington Post recently. “We’ll sell back to the grid and it will balance back over the time when we’re working and when we’re not working.”

Prince Charles has said that climate change may have been one of the causes of the civil war in Syria.

The heir to the throne has long been a passionate campaigner on environmental issues and linked drought in the Middle Eastern nation with the conflict which has left hundreds of thousands dead, created millions of refugees and seen the rise of Islamic State.

More than 2,000 academics from over 80 countries – including linguist Noam Chomsky, climate scientist Michael E Mann, philosopher Peter Singer, and historian Naomi Oreskes – have called on world leaders to do more to limit global warming to a 1.5C rise.

In an open letter, they write that leaders meeting in Paris at a crunch UN climate summit next week should “be mustering planet-wide mobilization, at all societal levels” and call for citizens around the world to hold their leaders to account on the issue.

Climate experts say the need to agree on a global carbon price to cut pollution and aid clean technologies is a no-brainer, and yet the topic will have no place at the upcoming Paris climate talks.

World leaders, captains of industry, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had all expressed hope that the Paris meeting would welcome the idea.

The black pearl of Tahiti is at the heart of French Polynesia's economy but is now highly vulnerable to climate change, and its fragile existence underlines – in a small but exquisite way – what is at stake in U.N. climate talks starting in Paris this month.

"We would be much happier not to have to deal with climate warming," said Teva Rohfritsch, the minister in charge of what is dubbed the "blue economy".

Tim Krantz still remembers a time when the pollution in Los Angeles was so bad it turned the sky yellow, making it hard to breathe and irritating the eyes.

Today, the skies over the city are clear enough to see the Pacific Ocean from the Hollywood hills or the San Gabriel Mountains to the north.