Science Daily

Climate models incorrectly predict El Niño, according to a new study. An analysis of fossil corals and mollusk shells from the Pacific Ocean reveals there is no link between the strength of seasonal differences and El Niño, a complex but irregular climate pattern with large impacts on weather, agriculture, fisheries, tourism, and air quality worldwide.

While some dream of the day that aerial drones deliver their online purchases, scientists are using the technology today to deliver data that was never available before. About 5,000 meters high in the Peruvian Andes, the scientists are mapping glaciers and wetlands in the Cordillera Blanca mountain range with 10-centimeter precision to gauge how climate change will affect the half-million local residents who rely in part on those glaciers for their water supply.

A new report shows that air temperature in 2015 across the Arctic was well above average with temperature anomalies over land more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above average, the highest since records began in 1900. Increasing air and sea surface temperatures, decreasing sea ice extent and Greenland ice sheet mass, and changing behavior of fish and walrus are among key observations.

Paleoclimatologists have shed new light on how the tilt of the Earth affects the world's heaviest rainbelt. They analyzed data from the past 282,000 years that shows, for the first time, a connection between the Earth's tilt called obliquity that shifts every 41,000 years, and the movement of a low pressure band of clouds that is the Earth's largest source of heat and moisture -- the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ.

Global warming is disturbing the delicate balance of the ocean currents. Petroleum and climate researchers are now working together to try and understand what is happening beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.

New hydrophone surveys of migration gateways to the Arctic show that recent extremes in sea ice loss has opened new waters to humpback and fin whales that once ranged through the far north only in summer. And as climate change drives the ice into further retreat, such 'summer' species may begin competing with bowhead whales that once had the habitat to themselves.

Scientists are studying past changes in sea level in order to make accurate future predictions of this consequence of climate change, and they're looking down to Earth's core to do so. 'In order to fully understand the sea-level change that has occurred in the past century, we need to understand the dynamics of the flow in Earth's core' says one of the researchers.

Pioneering new research has shed new light on the causes behind an 'ice-age' that took place on Earth around 170 million years ago.

New fossil evidence shows that Australia’s fire-prone shrubland open vegetation originated at least 70 million years ago – 40-50 million years earlier than previously thought.

A new metal grate will improve efficiency of primitive wood-burning cookstoves in developing countries.

Climate scientists present evidence in a new study that they can predict whether the Arctic sea ice that forms in the winter will grow, shrink, or hold its own over the next several years.

Scientists were able to deploy ruggidized seismometers that could withstand intense cold in Antarctica only recently. A line of seismometers strung across the West Antarctic Rift Valley and the Marie Byrd Land have given geologists their first good look at the mantle beneath the ice and rocks, revealing areas of hot rock that might affect the behavior of the overlying ice sheet.

Greenland's glaciers are retreating quickly, and a new study shows in historical terms just how quickly: over the past century, at least twice as fast as any other time in the past 9,500 years. The study also provides new evidence for just how sensitive glaciers are to temperature, showing that they responded to past abrupt cooling and warming periods, some of which might have lasted only decades.

Old Weather is a citizen-science project that is mining historic ship logs to get a unique peek at the history of Arctic climate. Now volunteers will transcribe logbooks from hundreds of whaling ships that recorded Arctic conditions in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

A new study questions the popular notion that 10th-century Norse people were able to colonize Greenland because of a period of unusually warm weather. Researchers say the climate was already cold when the Norse arrived -- and that climate thus probably played little role in their mysterious demise some 400 years later. On a larger scale, the study adds to building evidence that the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when Europe enjoyed clement weather, did not necessarily extend to other parts of the world.

By examining rocks at the bottom of ancient oceans, an international group of researchers has revealed that arsenic concentrations in the oceans have varied greatly over time. But also that in the very early oceans, arsenic co-varied with the rise of atmospheric oxygen and coincided with the coming and going of global glaciations, researchers say.

Using a core sample from the Santa Barbara Basin, researchers decipher the history of paleoclimate change with surprising results. For more than a million years, Earth's climate has oscillated from glacial (ice age) to interglacial (warm) -- the latter representing modern conditions. According to the authors, the Santa Barbara Basin holds the most pristine marine record of these fluctuations, thanks in large part to the area's unique location along the California margin. The basin is the confluence of the cool California current from the subpolar region and the warm countercurrent from the tropics.

While the politicians are taking part in global climate talks in Paris, a group of scientists traced solar activity over the past thousand years and made the forecast to the year 3200.

Falling oxygen levels caused by global warming could be a greater threat to the survival of life on planet Earth than flooding, according to new research.

New research has calculated Arctic warming from various sources of black carbon emissions. Emissions from Asia and gas flaring in Russia have the greatest impact on Arctic warming.