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Charles Darwin's 1842 theory about the formation of ring-shaped reefs, called atolls, is incorrect, but 'it's so beautiful, so simple and pleasing' that it still appears in textbooks and university courses, said a marine geologist. The accurate description is more complicated, and biologists are hoping to set the record straight.

Meltwater lakes that form at glacier margins cause ice to recede much further and faster compared to glaciers that terminate on land, according to a new study. But the effects of these glacial lakes are not represented in current ice loss models, warn the study authors. Therefore, estimates of recession rates and ice mass loss from lake-terminating glaciers in the coming decades are likely to be under-estimated.

Fluctuations in the weather can have a significant impact on melting Antarctic ice, and models that do not include this factor can underestimate the global impact of sea level rise, according to scientists.

Researchers have found varying projections on global warming trends put forth by climate change scientists can be explained by differing models' predictions regarding ice loss and atmospheric water vapor.

Projections of potentially dramatic sea-level rise from ice-sheet melting in Antarctica have been wide-ranging, but a Rutgers-led team has created a model that enables improved projections and could help better address climate change threats.

Researchers probing peatlands to discover clues about past environments and carbon stocks on land have identified peatland on Borneo that is twice as old and much deeper than previously thought. An inland site near Putussibau formed at least 47,800 years old and contains peat 18 meters deep.

Warmer winters due to climate change are causing lakes in the Northern Hemisphere to experience more ice-free years, according to a new study. Researchers recently analyzed nearly 80 years of lake ice data, stretching from 1939 to 2016, for 122 lakes that typically freeze every winter. They found ice-free years have become more than three times more frequent since 1978 and 11% of lakes studied experienced at least one completely ice-free year since 1939.

The current climate crisis underlines that carbon cycle perturbations can cause significant climate change. New research reveals how carbon cycle and global climate have been interacting throughout the last 35 million years of geologic history, under natural circumstances.

Dust blowing onto high mountains in the western Himalayas is a bigger factor than previously thought in hastening the melting of snow there, researchers show. That's because dust - lots of it in the Himalayas - absorbs sunlight, heating the snow that surrounds it.

Global warming is driving an unprecedented rise in sea temperatures including in the Mediterranean, according to a major new report.

Repeated catastrophic ice discharges from western North America into the North Pacific contributed to, and perhaps triggered, hemispheric-scale changes in the Earth's climate during the last ice age.

When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova - a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned to normal, physicists have found evidence of a supernova that exploded near the Earth around 2.5 million years ago.

If human societies don't sharply curb emissions of greenhouse gases, Greenland's rate of ice loss this century is likely to greatly outpace that of any century over the past 12,000 years, a new study concludes. Scientists say the results reiterate the need for countries around the world to take action now to reduce emissions, slow the decline of ice sheets, and mitigate sea level rise.

Climate warming will alter marine community compositions as species are expected to shift poleward, significantly impacting the Arctic marine ecosystem.

Usually, talk of carbon sequestration focuses on plants: forests storing carbon in the trunks of massive trees, algae blooming and sinking to the seabed, or perhaps peatlands locking carbon away for tens of thousands of years. While it's true that plants take up large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, the rocks themselves mediate a great deal of the carbon cycle over geological timescales. Processes like volcano eruptions, mountain building and erosion are responsible for moving carbon through Earth's atmosphere, surface and mantle.

Researchers encountered a puzzle at Cape Irizar, a rocky cape located just south of the Drygalski Ice Tongue on the Scott Coast, Ross Sea. He found both ancient and what appeared to be fresh remains of Adelie penguins, mostly of chicks, which frequently die and accumulate at these colonies. However, the 'fresh' remains were puzzling, he says, because there are no records of an active penguin colony at this site.

'Zombie fires' and burning of fire-resistant vegetation are new features driving Arctic fires -- with strong consequences for the global climate -- warn international fire scientists.

As the globe warms, the atmosphere is becoming more unstable, but the oceans are becoming more stable, according to an international team of climate scientists, who say that the increase in stability is greater than predicted, and a stable ocean will absorb less carbon and be less productive.

Researchers have shown that over the past two thousand years, volcanoes have played a larger role in natural temperature variability than previously thought, and their climatic effects may have contributed to past societal and economic change.

Nearly 30 years after recording a temperature of minus 93.2 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 69.6 Celsius) in Greenland, the measurement has been verified by the World Meteorological Organization as the coldest recorded temperature in the Northern Hemisphere.