Global Warming >>

The Environmental Protection Agency can now regulate air pollution that drifts across state lines – the new rules should pay for themselves in lives saved ...

From lost cities to islands that don't exist, geographical oddities reveal what makes a sense of place, says social geographer Alastair Bonnett in Off the Map ...

The melting of a rather small ice volume on East Antarctica's shore could trigger a persistent ice discharge into the ocean, resulting in unstoppable sea-level rise for thousands of years to come. These findings are based on computer simulations of the Antarctic ice flow using improved data of the ground profile underneath the ice sheet. ...

Ozone pollution across the continental United States will become far more difficult to keep in check as temperatures rise, according to new research. The detailed study shows that Americans face the risk of a 70 percent increase in unhealthy summertime ozone levels by 2050. This is because warmer temperatures and other changes in the atmosphere related to a changing climate, including higher atmospheric...

Suren Gazaryan set out to protect the habitat of cave-dwelling bats that he studies. He wound up having to flee his Russian homeland ...

New research shows the first detailed look at global land surface warming trends over the last 100 years, illustrating precisely when and where different areas of the world started to warm up or cool down. ...

Inbreeding is killing off the wolves of Isle Royale National Park, and as a result, the moose are proliferating, threatening the vegetation on the remote Lake Superior island. ...

A global plan to offset emissions by protecting forests relies on estimating the carbon locked up in trees – but figures from satellite data may be way out ...

Alaska's seismic network records thousands of quakes produced by glaciers, capturing valuable data that scientists could use to better understand their behavior, but instead their seismic signals are set aside as oddities. The current earthquake monitoring system could be 'tweaked' to target the dynamic movement of the state's glaciers. ...

Amphibians in the West's high-mountain areas find themselves caught between climate-induced habitat loss and predation from introduced fish. A novel combination of tools could help weigh where amphibians are in the most need of help. ...

Climate change could strengthen African easterly waves, which could in turn have consequences for rainfall in the Sahel region of northern Africa, formation of Atlantic hurricanes and dust transport across the Atlantic Ocean. ...

The tropics ill be highly affected by local changes in temperature and precipitation, leading to novel climates with no current analogues in the planet. These results expose the complexities of climate change effects on biodiversity and the challenges in predicting and preserving natural ecosystems in a changing Earth. ...

The combined heat from climate change and urbanization is likely to reduce the number of eastern swallowtails and other native butterflies in Ohio and promote the spread of invasive relatives. The findings, based on years of monitoring, are likely applicable globally. Butterflies serve as important indicator species for how the broader ecosystem might be impacted, the researchers say. They are pursuing...

About 1.7 billion years ago, evolution seemed to grind to a halt, but a long time later it kicked in with a vengeance – plate tectonics may explain why ...

Changing cattle fields to forests is a cheap way of tackling climate change and saving species threatened with extinction, a new study has found. Researchers from leading universities carried out a survey of carbon stocks, biodiversity and economic values from one of the world's most threatened ecosystems, the western Andes of Colombia. The main use of land in communities is cattle farming, but the...

Increasing ocean temperatures due to climate change will soon see reefs retaining and nurturing more of their own coral larvae, leaving large reef systems less interconnected and potentially more vulnerable. "We found that at higher temperatures more coral larvae will tend to stay on their birth reef," says the lead author of the study. ...

New research shows bacteria combat dangerous gas leaks. Bacteria could mop up naturally-occurring and human-made leaks of natural gases before they are released into the atmosphere and cause global warming, according to new research. ...

Scientists propose the name flash heats to describe temperature rises lasting less than two days. The new name could lead to changes in protocols for preventing heat strokes and forest fires, and in insurance coverage for damage caused by these phenomena. ...

From food shortages to global weather changes, there are ways to mitigate the risks of climate change, experts say. A new muli-national report outlines what we can expect as the planet continues to change with regard to climate patterns, and offers recommendations that focus on strategies from adaptation to mitigation. ...

A study assessed material and energy inputs required to produce a petunia plant from propagation to delivery. Impacts were expressed in terms of the contribution to the carbon footprint (global warming potential) of a single finished plant. Although traditional plastic containers were 'significant contributors' to global warming potential, electrical consumption for supplemental lighting and irrigation...