Science Daily

Record-breaking temperatures and droughts are directly affecting ecosystems worldwide, an international research team of life scientists reports.

Fishing line, paper clips, glass marble, glue -- no, not the makings of a MacGyver episode but a new experiment that lets students precisely measure the effects of global warming on oceans.

There have been many estimates for when the earth's inner core was formed, but scientists have used new data which indicates that the Earth's inner core was formed 1-1.5 billion years ago as it 'froze' from the surrounding molten iron outer core.

A new discovery documents the intricate arrangement of the muscles and ligaments that controlled the main feathers of the wing of an ancient bird, supporting the notion that at least some of the most ancient birds performed aerodynamic feats in a fashion similar to those of many living birds.

The more ice is melted of the Antarctic Filchner-Ronne shelf, the more ice flows into the ocean, and the more the region contributes to global sea-level rise. Unlike some some other parts of Antarctica, this region is not characterized by instabilities which, once triggered, can lead to persistent ice discharge into the ocean even without a further increase of warming. So for the Filchner-Ronne ice, this is a tiny bit of good news.

Climate change is causing more than just warmer oceans and erratic weather. According to scientists, it also has the capacity to alter the shape of the planet.

Despite climate change, sea ice in the Northwest Passage (NWP) remains too thick and treacherous for it to be a regular commercial Arctic shipping route for many decades, according to new research. Prior to this research, there was little information about the thickness of sea ice in the NWP. Next to ice coverage and type, sea ice thickness plays the most important role in assessing shipping hazards and predicting ice break-up.

For the first time, climate researchers compared both sea-level rise rates and storm surge heights in prehistoric and modern eras and found that the combined increases of each have raised the likelihood of a devastating 500-year flood occurring as often as every 25 years.

A landmark study predicts that climate change will have a major impact on life in Antarctica this century. Scientists say that results indicated that by 2100 there would be 25 percent more soil fungal 'species' in the most rapidly warming parts of Antarctica.

Changes to overturning circulation in the Southern Ocean as a result of temperatures over Antarctica play key role in carbon uptake by the oceans.

Scientists have discovered evidence of carbonaceous aerosols -- organic dust -- transported from Asia and deposited in the Arctic over the last 450 years, according to a study. They have also found that increased levels of dust were being deposited during warmer periods when the Arctic Oscillation -- changes in the prevailing wind direction centred on the Atlantic -- was at its strongest.

Many tropical Pacific island nations are struggling to adapt to gradual sea level rise stemming from warming oceans and melting ice caps. Now they may also see much more frequent extreme sea level swings. The culprit is a projected behavioral change of the El Niño phenomenon and its characteristic Pacific wind response, according to recent computer modeling experiments and tide-gauge analysis.

Researchers have used radiocarbon measured in deep-sea fossil corals to shed light on carbon dioxide levels during Earth's last deglaciation. Fossil corals have the unique advantage that they can be precisely dated by radiometric uranium-series dating, giving an age scale that can be directly compared to the ice core records.

You might expect that little happens in the Arctic Ocean during the cold and dark winter. But that just isn't so, according to researchers who have sampled the activities of many different species during three consecutive winters in Kongsfjorden, Svalbard.

Many studies predict that future sea-level rise along the US Atlantic and Gulf coasts will increase flooding. Others suggest that the human-caused warming driving this rise will also boost the intensity and frequency of big coastal storms. Now, a new study quantifies how they could interact to produce alarming spikes in the combined height and duration of flooding. It projects that coastal flooding could possibly shoot up several hundredfold by 2100, from the Northeast to Texas.

When it comes to climate change, it's rare to get any good news. But a researcher who's reported evidence, after more than two decades of study, has some: the loss of sea ice over Antarctic waters in some areas has led to the increased growth of creatures living on the seafloor. Those underwater assemblages are acting as an important and unexpected carbon sink.

New analysis of the effects of melting permafrost in the Arctic points to $43 trillion in extra economic damage by the end of the next century, on top of the more than the $300 trillion economic damage already predicted.

In the last 30,000 years there was, at times, more mixing in the Southern Ocean than previously thought. This meant that vast quantities of nutrients were available to phytoalgae, which in turn contributed to storing the greenhouse gas CO2 during the last glacial period.

Researchers have found unique genetic mutations in the Inuit genome that make them more adapted to cold as well as a diet high in omega-3 fatty acids, with the side effect of shorter height. This is the first evidence human populations have adapted to particular diets and differ in their physiological response. While a fish oil diet may be healthful for Inuit, this may not be true for other populations.

Scientists have now answered a 40-year-old question about Arctic ice thickness by treating the ice floes of the frozen seas like colliding molecules in a fluid or gas.