Science Daily

In the late summer of 2016, a field team monitored Caspian tern chicks through to fledging in Cape Krusenstern National Monument in Alaska. This discovery of Caspian terns breeding above the Arctic Circle in the Chukchi Sea is nearly 1,000 miles farther north than previously recorded – a strikingly large jump in the range of nesting for this (or any) species.

By adding highly accurate radiocarbon dating of soil to standard Earth system models, environmental scientists have learned a dirty little secret: The ground will absorb far less atmospheric carbon dioxide this century than previously thought.

The same hotspot in Earth's mantle that feeds Iceland's active volcanoes has been affecting scientists' calculations of ice loss in the Greenland ice sheet, causing them to underestimate the melting by about 20 gigatons (20 billion metric tons) per year.

Tiny ocean fossils distributed widely across rock surfaces in the Transantarctic Mountains point to the potential for a substantial rise in global sea levels under conditions of continued global warming, according to a new study. The study indicates the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS) has a history of instability during ancient warm periods and could be vulnerable to significant retreat and partial collapse induced by future climate change.

Experts have established two new world records for the longest reported distance and the longest reported duration for a single lightning flash in, respectively, Oklahoma (United States of America) and southern France. The lightning flash over Oklahoma in 2007 covered a horizontal distance of 321 kilometers (199.5 miles). The lightning event over southern France in 2012 lasted continuously for 7.74 seconds.

Severe hurricanes, storm surges and an increase in the number of icebergs are just some of the changes planet Earth has experienced due to warming oceans over the last 20 years, according to a new report.

New research illuminates where and why novel species combinations are likely to emerge due to recent changes in temperature and precipitation.

The Arctic is nearing its seasonal sea ice minimum this month, but predicting exactly when the region will see its first ice-free summer may be more difficult than previously believed, according to the results of new research.

The Arctic's ice cover appears to have reached its minimum extent on September 10, 2016, according to scientists. Arctic sea ice extent on that day stood at 4.14 million square kilometers (1.60 million square miles), statistically tied at second lowest in the satellite record with the 2007 minimum.

Clues from prehistoric droughts and arid periods in California show that today's increasing greenhouse gas levels could lock the state into drought for centuries.

For more than 20 million years, the ups and downs of diversity in terrestrial large mammals were determined by primary production, i.e. net production of plant biomass. This pattern changed with the onset of the ice ages. The reason for this is likely the beginning of human impact on nature, according to a new research. Based on 14,000 fossils, the scientists reconstructed the diversity of terrestrial large mammals and compared it with data on the biomass production of plants during the same time period.

A new study finds a trend toward earlier sea ice melt in the spring and later ice growth in the fall across all 19 polar bear populations, which can negatively impact the feeding and breeding capabilities of the bears. The paper is the first to quantify the sea ice changes in each polar bear subpopulation across the entire Arctic region using metrics that are specifically relevant to polar bear biology.

On average, a polar bear loses up to 30 percent of its total body mass while fasting during the open-water season. Although some scientists previously believed land-based foods could supplement the bears' nutritional needs until the sea ice returns, a new study has revealed that access to terrestrial food is not sufficient to reduce the rate of body mass loss for fasting polar bears.

Stalagmites rising from the floor of a cave in southern Indiana may contain traces of past earthquakes in the region, according to a new report.

Operation IceBridge, NASA's airborne survey of polar ice, is flying in Greenland for the second time this year, to observe the impact of the summer melt season on the ice sheet.

European earthworms invading the forests of North America are responsible for a decline in species diversity in the forest understory. Scientists have now been able to demonstrate this general pattern for the first time. In invaded forests, the vegetation on the forest floor has changed dramatically: The species diversity of native plants is declining, yet the amount of non-native (exotic) plants is increasing, and so is the amount of grasses.

By comparing the timing of the evolution of thorns on about 2,000 woody tree species in southern Africa and the time that antelopes arrived in Africa, a group of scientists found that trees like African acacias evolved thorns as a defense mechanism at exactly the same time that antelope arrived in Africa.

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.