Science Daily

Ice and winter floods are important natural disturbances for maintaining species-rich riparian zones along northern watercourses. If the climate becomes warmer this disturbance might be lost. This could potentially lead to a less diverse riparian zone.

A release of carbon dioxide from the deep ocean helped bring an end to the last Ice Age, according to new research. The study shows that carbon stored in an isolated reservoir deep in the Southern Ocean re-connected with the atmosphere, driving a rise in atmospheric CO2 and an increase in global temperatures. The finding gives scientists an insight into how the ocean affects the carbon cycle and climate change.

Sea ice increases in Antarctica do not make up for the accelerated Arctic sea ice loss of the last decades, a new study finds. As a whole, the planet has been shedding sea ice at an average annual rate of 13,500 square miles (35,000 square kilometers) since 1979, the equivalent of losing an area of sea ice larger than the state of Maryland every year.

A massive canyon that is home to Europe's most powerful waterfall was created in a matter of days by extreme flooding, new research reveals.

Researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence of widespread, human-produced air pollution in South America -- from the Spanish conquest of the Inca.

Norway is dotted with small glaciers and permanent snow patches that contain all sorts of archaeological treasures, from ancient shoes to 5000-year-old arrowheads. But climate change has turned up the temperature on these snowfields and they are vanishing at an astonishing rate.

A new study shows that undersea volcanoes flare up on strikingly regular cycles, ranging from two weeks to 100,000 years -- and, that they erupt almost exclusively during the first six months of each year. The pulses -- apparently tied to short- and long-term changes in earth's orbit, and to sea levels -- may help trigger natural climate swings.

Geologists once thought that, until about 18,000 years ago, a mammoth glacier covered the top two-thirds of Ireland. Recently, however, they found evidence that it wasn't just the top two-thirds: The Irish glacier was much larger, completely engulfing the country and extending far offshore.

Natural seepage of methane offshore the Arctic archipelago Svalbard has been occurring periodically for at least 2.7 million years. Major events of methane emissions happened at least twice during this period, according to a new study.

A recent study determined that heavy rainfall events have become more frequent over the last 50 years on Hawai'i Island. For instance, a rare storm with daily precipitation of nearly 12 inches, occurring once every 20 years by 1960, has become a rather common storm event on the Big Island of Hawai'i -- returning every 3-5 years by 2009.

New evidence showing the level of atmospheric carbon dioxide millions of years ago supports recent climate change predictions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Scientists have found that there is a direct relation between the changes in the earth's orbit and the stability of the Eastern ice cap of Antarctica, more specifically, on the continental fringe of Wilkes Land (East Antarctica).

Earth's crust under Iceland is rebounding as global warming melts the island's great ice caps. In south-central Iceland some sites are moving upward as much as 1.4 inches (35 mm) per year. A new paper is the first to show the current fast uplift of the Icelandic crust is a result of accelerated melting of the island's glaciers and coincides with the onset of warming that began about 30 years ago, the researchers said.

Arctic sea ice extent plunged precipitously from 2001 to 2007, then barely budged between 2007 and 2013. Even in a warming world, researchers should expect such unusual periods of no change -- and rapid change -- at the world's northern reaches, according to a new paper.

From the subarctic Pacific to the Chilean margins, extreme oxygen loss is stretching from the upper ocean to about 3,000 meters deep. In some oceanic regions, such loss occurred within 100 years or less, according to a new study.

A group of 13 scientists argue that the Nordic countries are in a unique position to showcase how to handle the growing pressure on the oceans. However, this relies on a collective ability to regard change as connected.

Scientists have reconstructed the past climate for the region around Cantona, a large fortified city in highland Mexico, and found the population drastically declined in the past, at least in part because of climate change.

For the first time, researchers have successfully decoded climate data from old permafrost ground ice and reconstructed the development of winter temperatures in Russia's Lena River Delta. Their conclusions: over the past 7,000 years, winter temperatures in the Siberian permafrost regions have gradually risen.

Scientists using ice-penetrating radar have created 3-D maps of the age of the ice within the Greenland Ice Sheet. The new maps will aid future research to understand the impact of climate change on the ice sheet. The Greenland Ice Sheet is the second largest mass of ice on Earth, containing enough water to raise ocean levels by about 20 feet.

A correlation between climate and the evolution of language has been uncovered by researchers. To find a relationship between the climate and the evolution of language, one needs to discover an association between the environment and vocal sounds that is consistent throughout the world and present in different languages. And that is precisely what a group of researchers has done.