Science Daily

The temporary breakdown of Earth's magnetic field 42,000 years ago sparked major climate shifts that led to global environmental change and mass extinctions, a new international study shows.

Based on the long-term Potsdam radiation time series, researchers have shown that variations in the intensity of sunlight over decades are down to ultra-fine, human-made dirt particles in the atmosphere.

The distribution of vegetation is routinely used to classify climate regions worldwide, yet whether these regions are relevant to other organisms is unknown. Researchers have established climate regions based on vertebrate species' distributions in a new study. They found that while high-energy climate regions are similar across vertebrate and plant groups, there are large differences in temperate and cold climates.

A new study reveals the lasting genetic impacts of increased isolation among different tiger subpopulations.

Lakes underneath the Antarctic ice sheet could be more hospitable than previously thought, allowing them to host more microbial life.

An international team has sequenced DNA recovered from mammoth remains that are up to 1.2 million years old. The analyses show that the Columbian mammoth that inhabited North America during the last ice age was a hybrid between the woolly mammoth and a previously unknown genetic lineage of mammoth. The study provides new insights into when and how fast mammoths became adapted to cold climate.

Crocodiles are resilient animals from a lineage that has survived for over 200 million years. Skilled swimmers, crocodiles can travel long distances and live in freshwater to marine environments. But they can't roam far overland. American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) are found in the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of the Neotropics but they arrived in the Pacific before Panama existed, according to new research.

Scientists have developed a simple way to better evaluate the potential of novel materials to store or release heat on demand in your home, office, or other building in a way that more efficiently manages the building's energy use.

At a glacier near the South Pole, earth scientists have found evidence of a quiet, slow-motion fault slip that triggers strong, fast-slip earthquakes many miles away.

Iceberg melt is responsible for about half the fresh water entering the ocean from the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. Accurately modelling how it enters is important for understanding potential impact on ocean circulation.

Geologists shed new light on a long-lasting debate about the trigger mechanism of large rockslides. Lake mud in two Alpine lakes in Tyrol reveal that rare strong earthquakes are the final cause of multiple, prehistoric rockslides in the Eastern Alps. The steep rock slopes were degraded by a series of prehistoric earthquakes, larger than any of the historically documented events in the region of the past ~1000 years.

A new imaging technique has been developed to improve our ability to visualize and track the symbiotic interactions between coral and algae in response to globally warming sea surface temperatures and deepening seawaters.

A new study identifies a climate phenomenon that may have helped sauropodomorphs spread northward across the Pangea supercontinent.

Frozen land beneath rising sea levels currently traps 60 billion tons of methane and 560 billion tons of organic carbon. Little is known about the frozen sediment and soil -- called submarine permafrost -- even as it slowly thaws and releases methane and carbon that could have significant impacts on climate.

Imagine an ice chunk the size of Hawaii disappearing, almost instantaneously, from an ice sheet. That is what happened in the Storfjorden Trough in the Arctic Ocean some 11,000 years ago.

There may be greater CO2 emissions associated with thawing Arctic permafrost than ever imagined. An international team of researchers has discovered that soil bacteria release CO2 previously thought to be trapped by iron. The finding presents a large new carbon footprint that is unaccounted for in current climate models.

The Southern Ocean is one of the key regions for understanding the climate system. The photosynthesis-performing plankton there contribute significantly to controlling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. But which factors favor or limit plankton growth? Researchers have now published a study showing for the first time that, in addition to the micronutrient iron, manganese can play an important role. Among other things, the results have implications for understanding ice ages in the past.

How did rocks rust on Earth and turn red? A new study has shed new light on the important phenomenon and will help address questions about the Late Triassic climate more than 200 million years ago, when greenhouse gas levels were high enough to be a model for what our planet may be like in the future.

A professor is calling on scientists to conduct dedicated process studies and to share their data and research findings on Arctic warming. She stresses the importance of studying how aerosols and clouds interact, as these highly complex and poorly understood mechanisms play a key role in climate change, but are also strongly affected by it. According to her, the region is in rapid transition and scientists need to act to not run behind.

Chemists have helped discover that iodic acids can rapidly form aerosol particles in the atmosphere, giving scientists more knowledge of how iodine emissions can contribute to cloud formation and climate change.