Feed aggregator

Researchers create a global map of soil pH and illuminate how it changes between wet and dry climates.

Scientists have found evidence in a chunk of bedrock drilled from nearly two miles below the summit of the Greenland ice sheet that the sheet nearly disappeared for an extended time in the last million years or so. The finding casts doubt on assumptions that Greenland has been relatively stable during the recent geological past, and implies that global warming could tip it into decline more precipitously than previously thought.

First-of-their-kind studies provide new insight into the deep history of the Greenland Ice Sheet, looking back millions of years farther than previous techniques allowed. However, the two studies present some strongly contrasting evidence about how Greenland's ice sheet may have responded to past climate change.

New research examines how vertebrate species in the eastern United States ranging from snakes to mammals to birds responded to climate change over the last 500,000 years. The study reveals that contrary to expectation, the massive glaciers that expanded and contracted across the region affected animal populations in different ways at different times. The analysis provides a window into how animals might react to any kind of climate change, whether glacial cycles or global warming.

Unusually high air temperatures and a warm ocean have led to a record low Arctic sea ice extent for November, according to scientists. In the Southern Hemisphere, Antarctic sea ice extent also hit a record low for the month, caused by moderately warm temperatures and a rapid shift in circumpolar winds.

Scientists have sorted and studied thousands of clam shells to build a 1,000-year record of ocean conditions and climate changes at a spot just off North Iceland.

A new technique based in information theory promises to improve researchers' ability to interpret ice core samples and our understanding of Earth's climate history.

A new study of warming after the last ice age 20,000 years ago confirms climate models that predict an amplification of warming at the poles. By 15,000 years ago, the Antarctic had warmed about 11 degrees Celsius, almost 3 times the average global warming (4 degrees Celsius). The calculations, based on temperature measurements down a 3.4-kilometer-deep borehole, prove that climate models do a good job of estimating past climatic conditions and, very likely, future changes.

Mosquito populations have increased as much as ten-fold over the past five decades in New York, New Jersey, and California, according to long-term datasets from mosquito monitoring programs. The number of mosquito species in these areas increased two- to four-fold in the same period. A new study finds the main drivers of these changes were the gradual waning of DDT concentrations in the environment and increased urbanization.

A study of the longest-living animal on Earth, the quahog clam, has provided researchers with an unprecedented insight into the history of the oceans.

While searching through historical archives to find out more about the 15th-century climate of what is now Belgium, northern France, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, a researcher noticed something odd. Compared with other decades of the last millennium, many of the 1430s' winters and some springs were extremely cold in the Low Countries, as well as in other parts of Europe.

Large-scale forest fires started by prehistoric hunter-gatherers are probably the reason why Europe is not more densely forested, researchers report.

Prairie cordgrass, a native perennial grass used for biomass energy, is tolerant to salt, flooding, and freezing stress. A new study demonstrates the gene expression patterns responsible for freezing tolerance in prairie cordgrass. Once the genes responsible for freezing tolerance are identified in prairie cordgrass, they may be applied to other crops in the future.

As long as ecologists have studied temperate lakes, the winter has been their off-season. It's difficult, even dangerous, to look under the ice, and they figured plants, animals and algae weren't doing much in the dark and cold anyway. But an international team of 62 scientists looking at more than 100 lakes has concluded that life under the ice is vibrant, complex and surprisingly active. Their findings stand to complicate the understanding of freshwater systems just as climate change is warming lakes around the planet.

A key glacier in Antarctica is breaking apart from the inside out, suggesting that the ocean is weakening ice on the edges of the continent.

Using a new theory, a researcher shows that more freshwater in the Arctic may strengthen the Gulfstream’s extension into the polar regions – the opposite of what has generally been anticipated with future climate change.

An international team of researchers has analyzed fossils and DNA from living and recently extinct species to show that conservation sensitive Australasian marsupials are much older than previously thought.

Scientists have discovered a huge reduction in an African dust plume that led to more Saharan monsoons 11,000 years ago, suggests a new report.

The present thinning and retreat of Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica is part of a climatically forced trend that was triggered in the 1940s, new research by an international team shows.

Icebergs contribute more meltwater to Greenland's fjords than previously thought, losing up to half of their volume as they move through the narrow inlets, according to new research.