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Less than one year after President Barack Obama announced a White House Arctic Initiative that included better mapping of the area, a team of researchers has released the first-ever publicly available set of high-resolution, three-dimensional topographic maps of the entire state of Alaska.

New research suggests that Africa has gradually become wetter over the past 1.3 million years -- instead of drier as was thought previously.

Over the past decades, the northward drift of sea ice surrounding Antarctica has strengthened. This not only has increased the extent of the sea ice, but also has freshened the sea water around the sea-ice edge -- with as yet indeterminate consequences for the global climate system and Antarctica's ecosystem.

It takes thousands of years for seabed communities to recover from major glaciation events, new research suggests. The study focused on the seas around South Georgia in the south Atlantic.

The release of methane from the seafloor was much slower than previously thought during a rapid global warming event 56 million years ago, report scientists.

Climate change was less important for technological innovation among Stone Age humans than previously assumed.

Methane is stored under the sea floor, concentrated in form of hydrates, crystalline ice structures that stay stable under high pressure and in low temperatures. Several studies suggest that as the ocean warms, the hydrates might melt and potentially release methane into the ocean waters and atmosphere.

Historic changes to Antarctic sea ice could be unraveled using a new technique, say scientists. The new method builds on an existing technique developed over the last 10 years, which identified a means by which scientists could measure changes to sea ice in the Arctic.

New research shows that a nanometer-thin layer of water between two charged surfaces exhibits ice-like tendencies that allow it to withstand pressures of hundreds of atmospheres. The discovery could lead to better ways to minimize friction in a variety of settings.

The Working Group on the 'Anthropocene' (AWG) will provide its summary of evidence and its provisional recommendations on a potential new geological time interval.

Scientists have used historical records and climate simulations to examine snowfall trends in Antarctica. They found that the effect of rising temperatures on snowfall has so far been overshadowed by Antarctica's large natural climate variability, which comes from random, chaotic variations in the polar weather. By mid-century, however, as temperatures continue to rise, the study shows how the effect of human-induced warming on Antarctica's net snow accumulation should emerge above the noise.

Researchers caution that global warming signals are being masked by random weather variations and report that the human influence on snowfall levels will become detectable within the next few decades.

Earth scientists have untangled the curious landscape of China's Tarim Basin using a model simulation of ancient events. Despite lying in arid desert and being the site of rapidly growing, elongated folds of stratified rock called anticlines, the Tarim Basin region features huge flat surfaces that have been beveled across the tops of those folds. The folds are caused by the ongoing convergence between India and Asia.

An international research project has found human activity has been causing global warming for almost two centuries, proving human-induced climate change is not just a 20th century phenomenon.

Scientists have discovered the cause of the recent run of miserable wet summers as they begin to unravel the mysteries of the Atlantic jet stream.

A new research project has provided the first modern evidence of a landscape-level permafrost carbon feedback, in which thawing permafrost releases ancient carbon as climate-warming greenhouse gases.

Fresh understanding of West Antarctica has revealed how the region's ice sheet could become unstable in a warming world.

This year's melt season in the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas started with a bang, with a record low maximum extent in March and relatively rapid ice loss through May. One NASA sea ice scientist describes this as 'the new normal.'

Thin clouds at about 5 km altitude are more ubiquitous in the tropics than previously thought and they have a substantial cooling effect on climate, report researchers. The cooling effect of mid-level clouds is currently missing in global climate models.

Expansion and retreat of sea ice varied consistently in pace with rapid climate changes through past 90,000 years, a new study shows.