Climate change will boost the odds up to 14-fold for extremely rare, hard-to-predict tropical cyclones for parts of Australia, the United States and Dubai by 2100, researchers said Monday.

The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, used a new approach to predict the frequency and intensity of rare superstorms dubbed "grey swans".

High sea temperatures off the coast of Qatar threaten precious coral reef and have caused mass deaths among some 20 types of fish, Doha-based marine researchers said on Monday.

A study carried out by experts from Qatar University and the environment ministry last week has revealed that water temperatures during the fierce Gulf summer have passed 6 degrees celsius (97 farenheit).

Key climate negotiations opened in Bonn on Monday with a top U.N. official warning there was not enough money to host a year-end Paris conference tasked with sealing a global carbon-curbing pact.

Addressing delegates, U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres said there was insufficent "funding for participation for either the October session, which is already planned, or for the COP."

Scientists are "overwhelmingly unified" in concluding that humans are contributing to global climate change, Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday night, and the public is slowly getting the full picture.

Skeptics who stand in the way of action to respond to climate change will not be remembered kindly, he told Alaska reporters.

Billionaire climate philanthropist George Soros invested more than $2m (£1.3m) in struggling coal giants Peabody Energy and Arch Coal in recent months, despite having once called the fuel “lethal” to the climate.

Filings with the Securities and Exchange commission show that between April and June this year Soros Fund Management (SFM) bought more than 1m shares in Peabody ($2.25m), the world’s largest private coal company, and 500,000 shares in Arch ($188,000).

Ioane Teitiota and Angua Erika and their three New Zealand-born children have lost claims for refugee status due to global warming.

Mr Teitiota has been battling deportation to Kiribati since 2011, when he overstayed his visa.

International organizations could be overestimating emissions from China, the world's biggest producer of greenhouse gas because of problems in the way they calculate their data, said a study published by Nature on Wednesday.

With talks on a new global climate accord set to take place in Paris in December, China, the world's biggest producer of climate-warming gas, has promised to bring emissions to a peak by "around 2030", but it remains unclear how much CO2 China is actually producing and how much it will produce in 15 years.

THE MELTDOWN in 2011 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor terrified people in the densely packed nation of Japan, persuaded the government to close all reactors and turned public opinion there and in many other places decidedly against the technology.

Yet last week Japan restarted a reactor at the Sendai nuclear power plant. More Japanese nuclear units could begin producing electricity again soon. This should not concern the world. It should be a relief.

Brazil’s drive to nip illicit tree-felling in the bud has shifted the nature of the problem, according to researchers.

Small-scale illegal logging is – proportionally speaking – on the rise, says a report by the Climate Policy Initiative and the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro.

Despite its benefits, switching to solar power can be a daunting prospect for the average homeowner. From the cost of purchasing or leasing your own solar panel system to uncertainties about how much power it’ll actually generate, taking the leap can seem like a risk.

A new Google project is seeking to allay some of these concerns with a tool that estimates the amount of energy and savings solar power could generate for any given home. Project Sunroof, which just launched in pilot form on Monday, allows users to search their address and find out the number of square feet available on their roof for solar panels, the number of hours of usable sunlight that could be generated, and the amount of money it could save. It’s currently available for residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, Fresno and Boston.