Science Daily

The mystery of why most of the most powerful lightning on Earth happens over the oceans isn't solved, but a few of the usual suspects are no longer in custody. It's possible the increased presence of salt in the atmosphere plays a role.

Giant Ice Age species including elephant-sized sloths and powerful sabre-toothed cats that once roamed the windswept plains of Patagonia, southern South America, were finally felled by a perfect storm of a rapidly warming climate and humans, a new study has shown.

Permafrost below shallow Arctic lakes is thawing as a result of changing winter climate, new research shows. These rates of warming are similar to those observed in terrestrial permafrost, yet those soils are still well below freezing and thaw is not expected for at least another 70 years. However, a regime shift in lake ice is leading to sub-lake permafrost thaw now.

A 700-year-old fertile soil technique could mitigate climate change and revolutionize farming across Africa, say researchers. They discovered that the ancient West African method of adding charcoal and kitchen waste to highly weathered, nutrient poor tropical soils can transform the land into enduringly fertile, carbon-rich black soils which the researchers dub 'African Dark Earths'.

An ancient basin hidden beneath the Greenland ice sheet may help explain the location, size and velocity of Greenland's fastest flowing outlet glacier. The research also provides an insight into what past river drainage looked like in Greenland, and what it could look like in the future as the ice sheet retreats.

Soil moisture levels will determine how much carbon is released to the atmosphere as rising temperatures thaw Arctic lands, suggests new scientific research.

Remote lakes in a perpetually ice-free area of Antarctica show not only the chemical signature of ancient wildfires, but also some much more recent evidence of fossil-fuel combustion, according to new research.

Researchers have provided a unique glimpse into one of the least understood environments on Earth by revealing for the first time former subglacial lakes and their drainage routes beneath the North American ice sheets.

Tens of thousands of 'citizen scientists' have volunteered some use of their personal computer time to help researchers create one of the most detailed, high resolution simulations of weather ever done in the Western United States. This approach will ultimately help improve future predictions of regional climate and answer very specific questions.

The mining, navigation, minerals exploration and environmental hydrology sectors are set to benefit from new research into quantum technology, say experts.

Scientists have found past El Niño oscillations in the Pacific Ocean may have amplified global climate fluctuations for hundreds of years at a time.The team uncovered century-scale patterns in Pacific rainfall and temperature, and linked them with global climate changes in the past 2,000 years, which will influence climate models of current trends.

Following record-high temperatures and melting records that affected northwest Greenland in summer 2015, a new study provides the first evidence linking melting in Greenland to the anticipated effects of a phenomenon known as Artic amplification.

Paleogeneticists have shown that early farmers from across Europe have an almost unbroken trail of ancestry leading back to the Aegean.

Scientists using evidence from bison fossils have determined when an ice-free corridor opened up along the Rocky Mountains during the late Pleistocene. The corridor has been considered a potential route for human and animal migrations between the far north (Alaska and Yukon) and the rest of North America, but when and how it was used has long been uncertain.

Part of Antarctica's coastline has been losing ice to the ocean for far longer than had been expected by scientists, a study of satellite pictures has shown.

Shifts in the distribution of Spectacled Eiders, a predatory bird at the top of the Bering Sea's benthic food web, indicate possible changes in the Arctic's marine ecosystem, according to new research.

Researchers have developed an apparatus to meet the growing need for measuring ice as it changes in response to external forces, a process ice scientists call 'deformational behaviors.'' These forces occur on Earth in glacial ice as it flows due to gravity, and in space as icy satellite bodies respond to tidal forces from their parent bodies.

Population sizes of the Australian carpenter bee have increased dramatically during the global warming following the last Ice Age. This matches previous studies on bees in North America and Fiji, showing that bees from diverse habitats respond strongly to climate change.

The water around Antarctica has not seen the atmosphere for centuries, since long before the machine age. New observations and model simulations suggest this may be the last place on Earth to feel climate change.

250 methane flares release the climate gas methane from the seabed and into the Arctic Ocean. During the summer months this leads to an increased methane concentration in the ocean. But surprisingly, very little of the climate gas rising up through the sea reaches the atmosphere, report investigators.