Climate

While lightning strikes are generally considered to be a summer phenomenon, the rare and powerful superbolt form doesn't follow suit.

Researchers from the US and South Korea have run climate simulations that include the “iceberg effect” and found that melting icebergs could play a significant role in slowing warming in the Southern Hemisphere.

July 2019 has been found to be the hottest month ever recorded, which won’t surprise anybody who sweated through the heat wave this summer. This continues a long-running upwards trend, with the first six months of the year tied for second hottest and sea ice at an all-time low at both poles.

How effective would planting new trees be to combat climate change? A new study from ETH Zurich has found that Earth has room to reforest an area the size of the US, and calculates what benefits that might bring. But of course, the story is more complicated than just planting a trillion new trees.

The hole in the ozone layer may be on the mend, but its environmental impacts are ongoing. A new review study has examined the effects that the extra UV radiation is having on the environment, such as shifting climate zones, changing ocean temperatures and making some species more vulnerable.

Declassified spy satellite photos have revealed that compared to the last quarter of the 20th century, Himalayan glaciers have been melting twice as fast this century. In a rare piece of good news, a separate study has shown that a Greenland glacier has gained ice for the third year in a row.

New research led by the University of Cambridge has found that forests may not be as useful a carbon sink as we thought. The team found that a warming climate makes trees grow faster and die younger, releasing their captured carbon back into the air sooner.

The summer of 2018 was marked by extreme weather events like droughts and floods. A new study has pinned the blame on stalled giant waves in the jet stream, and unfortunately they’re expected to only get worse with the changing climate.

A comprehensive study has combined field observations and satellite data to track glacial ice loss. The team found that between 1961 and 2016, glaciers globally lost a total of over 9 trillion tonnes of ice, contributing significantly to sea level rise.

Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a major driver of shifts in the Earth’s climate, and in the past too little CO2 has been associated with triggering ice ages. Now a team of scientists has found a surprising new mechanism that could lead to ice ages: Tropical tectonic activity.

Continuing a long-term upward trend, several climate reports released today have concluded that 2018 was among the hottest years on record. In independent analyses, NASA, NOAA and WMO have all found the past year to be dotted with broken records.

About 700 million years ago, basically the entire planet iced over in a period often called “Snowball Earth.” Now researchers have found fossil fats that help fill in the story of how life bounced back after this global cataclysm, and how we humans might owe our very existence to them.