Science Daily

Natural fluctuations in climate have occurred over past millennia, which would have naturally led to climatic cooling today in the absence of human activity.

An international team of scientists has mapped the evolutionary relationships between China's 30,000 flowering plant species, uncovering a distinct regional pattern in biodiversity. Eastern China is a floral 'museum' with a rich array of ancient lineages and distant relatives while the western provinces are an evolutionary 'cradle' for newer and more closely related species.

Weather forecasters could be able to better predict regional rainfall and temperatures by using North Atlantic jet stream data, according to new research. Climate scientists examined the relationship between changes in North Atlantic atmospheric circulation -- or jet stream -- and UK regional weather variations during summer and winter months over the past 65 years, and found that the jet stream changes were significantly associated with variations in regional rainfall and temperatures.

By analyzing sediment cores from Chilean lakes, an international team of scientists discovered that giant earthquakes reoccur with relatively regular intervals. When also taking into account smaller earthquakes, the repeat interval becomes increasingly more irregular to a level where earthquakes happen randomly in time.

Scientists analyzed ancient human genomes from 38 northern Europeans dating from approximately 7,500 to 500 BCE. The study found that Scandinavia was initially settled via a southern and a northern route and that the arrival of agriculture in northern Europe was facilitated by movements of farmers and pastoralists into the region.

Research has found that changes in ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean influence rainfall in the Western Hemisphere, and that these two systems have been linked for thousands of years.

New research has pushed a major milestone in the evolution of Earth's environment back by about 250 million years.

The warming climate is expected to affect coastal regions worldwide as glaciers and ice sheets melt, raising sea level globally. For the first time, an international team has found evidence of how sea-level rise already is affecting high and low tides in both the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, two large estuaries of the eastern United States.

Plumes of hot rock surging upward from the Earth's mantle at volcanic hotspots contain evidence that the Earth's formative years may have been even more chaotic than previously thought, according to new work.

Global surface temperatures surged by a record amount from 2014 to 2016, boosting the total amount of warming since the start of the last century by more than 25 percent in just three years, according to a new University of Arizona-led paper. The research is the first to quantify the record temperature spike of an additional 0.43 degrees F (0.24 C) in just three years and to identify the fundamental reason for the jump.

Two of the most rapidly changing glaciers in Antarctica, which are leading contributors to sea-level rise, may behave as an interacting system rather than separate entities, according to a new analysis of radar data.

Biologists have known for a long time that animals living in colder climates tend to have larger bodies, supposedly as an adaptation to reduce heat loss. However, a new study shows that this trend in birds might actually be due to the effects of high temperatures during development -- raising new alarms about how populations might be affected by global warming.

Artefacts revealed by melting ice patches in the high mountains of Oppland shed new light on ancient high-altitude hunting.

Researchers studied the energy consumption of indoor swimming pools and practice indoor ice rinks, and use of solar power in them. It is possible to cover 30% per cent of the energy need of such sites with solar power. However, the storage of solar energy poses a big challenge for increasing the use of solar power.

Researchers have found that calculations of water storage in many river basins from commonly used global computer models differ markedly from independent storage estimates from GRACE satellites.

In North-East Greenland, researchers have measured the loss of heat that comes up from the interior of the Earth. This enormous area is a geothermal 'hot spot' that melts the ice sheet from below and triggers the sliding of glaciers towards the sea.

Continuing the planet's long-term warming trend, globally averaged temperatures in 2017 were 1.62 degrees Fahrenheit (0.90 degrees Celsius) warmer than the 1951 to 1980 mean, according to scientists.

Scientists have been familiar with Finnish landforms for decades. Now, however, researchers have discovered a new landform previously unknown to science with the aid of laser technology. After the initial discovery in Finland, similar forms have also been found in Sweden.

A new study has uncovered previously unknown effects of rain-on-snow events, winter precipitation and ice tidal surges on the muskoxen.

Ocean sediments are a massive storehouse for the potent greenhouse gas methane. But methane only acts as a greenhouse gas if and when it reaches the atmosphere. Environmental scientists recently set out to discover whether or not this ancient-sourced methane, which is released due to warming ocean waters, survives the journey from the seafloor and reaches the atmosphere.