Science Daily

With methods of so-called geoengineering, the climate could theoretically be artificially influenced and cooled. Researchers have now investigated whether it would be possible to prevent the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet by artificially 'dimming the sun'. The results show that artificial influence does not work without decarbonization and entails high risks.

A new study finds that around 1.12 million years ago a massive cooling event in the North Atlantic and corresponding shifts in climate, vegetation and food resources disrupted early human occupation of Europe.

New research links chemical changes in seawater to volcanic activity and changes.

If climate models predict that much of tropical Africa will become wetter with a warming climate, then why does it keep getting drier in the Horn of Africa?

A telecommunications fiber optic cable deployed offshore of Oliktok Point, Alaska recorded ambient seismic noise that can be used to finely track the formation and retreat of sea ice in the area, researchers report.

Extreme events in Antarctica such as ocean heatwaves and ice loss will almost certainly become more common and more severe, researchers say.

A subpolar species associated with Atlantic water expanded far into the Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial, analysis of microfossil content of sediment cores reveals. This implies that summers in the Arctic were ice free during this period.

The study investigated why the paths of meandering rivers change over time and is a step toward understanding what the hydroclimate on Mars was like when there was still surface water.

In past ice ages, the intensity of summer insolation affected the emergence of warm and cold periods and played an important role in triggering abrupt climate changes, a study by climate researchers, geoscientists, and environmental physicists suggests. Using stalagmites in the European Alps, they were able to demonstrate that warm phases appeared primarily when the summer insolation reached maxima in the Northern Hemisphere.

Ancient pathogens that escape from melting permafrost have real potential to damage microbial communities and might potentially threaten human health, according to a new study.

An international team of linguists and geneticists has achieved a significant breakthrough in our understanding of the origins of Indo-European, a family of languages spoken by nearly half of the world's population.

Arctic terns -- which fly on the longest migrations of any animal on Earth -- may be able to navigate the dangers posed by climate change, new research suggests.

Important ocean currents that redistribute heat, cold and precipitation between the tropics and the northernmost parts of the Atlantic region will shut down around the year 2060 if current greenhouse gas emissions persist. This is the conclusion based on new calculations that contradict the latest report from the IPCC.

A large portion of Greenland was an ice-free tundra landscape -- perhaps covered by trees and roaming woolly mammoths -- in the recent geologic past (about 416,000 years ago), a new study shows. The results help overturn a previous view that much of the Greenland ice sheet persisted for most of the last two and a half million years. Instead, moderate warming, from 424,000 to 374,000 years ago, led to dramatic melting. At that time, the melting of Greenland caused at least five feet of sea level rise, despite atmospheric levels of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being far lower than today (280 vs. 420 ppm). This indicates that the ice sheet on Greenland may be more sensitive to human-caused climate change than previously understood -- and will be vulnerable to irreversible, rapid melting in coming centuries.

A new radar technique developed by a graduate student allows imaging of the upper few feet of ice sheets on Earth and icy worlds. The technique uses instruments on airplanes or satellites to survey large regions quickly. The upper few feet of ice sheets are important for measuring melt on Earth or looking for habitable environments on icy worlds. Previous airborne or satellite techniques could not image this narrow region in detail.

An international team of researchers has chosen the location which best represents the beginnings of what could be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Working Group have put forward Crawford Lake, in Canada, as a Global Boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the Anthropocene. A GSSP is an internationally agreed-upon reference point to show the start of a new geological period or epoch in layers of rock that have built up through the ages.

Scientists in Japan have used a global climate model to show that dust from land without snow cover in the Arctic is a major source of particles that form ice crystals in Arctic low-level clouds. This finding could help improve predictions of Arctic warming, which is suggested to be much faster than in other parts of the world.

As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new research.

Understanding when and where ships are entering areas of Arctic sea ice can help better understand the potential impacts of vessel traffic in the region.

An El Niño event has officially begun. The climate phenomenon, which originates in the tropical Pacific and occurs in intervals of a few years will shape weather across the planet for the next year or more and give rise to various climatic extremes. El Niño-like conditions can also occur on longer time scales of decades or centuries. This has been shown to have occurred in the recent past.