Science Daily

Simulations integrate historical records, fossils, and ancient DNA to reveal why the European bison nearly went extinct, and pinpoint optimal areas for conservation.   Since the near-extinction of the European bison, enormous conservation efforts have helped to restore wild populations, and its numbers are on the rise. However, the study authors argue that ensuring the species's long-term protection and recovery requires understanding why they nearly went extinct in the first place.    'Our study also suggests areas where rewilding attempts are most likely to be successful,' said lead author July Pilowsky, currently a disease ecologist at Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. Pilowsky completed the research while working on their PhD at University of Adelaide and University of Copenhagen.   

An international consortium of geoscientists has reconstructed atmosphereric levels of CO2 going back 66 million years using proxies in the geoloogical record. Today's concenteration, 420 parts per million, is higher than it's ever been in 14 million years.

New research has shown that fire-ice -- frozen methane which is trapped as a solid under our oceans -- is vulnerable to melting due to climate change and could be released into the sea.

What wiped out the dinosaurs? A meteorite plummeting to Earth is only part of the story, a new study suggests. Climate change triggered by massive volcanic eruptions may have ultimately set the stage for the dinosaur extinction, challenging the traditional narrative that a meteorite alone delivered the final blow to the ancient giants.

Himalayan Glaciers fight back to preserve themselves, but for how long? An international team of researchers explains a stunning phenomenon: rising global temperatures have led Himalayan glaciers to increasingly cool the air in contact with the ice surface. The ensuing cold winds might help cool the glaciers and preserve the surrounding ecosystems. The results were found across the Himalayan range.

Identifying how and why Antarctica's major ice sheets behaved the way they did in the early Miocene could help inform understanding of the sheets' behavior under a warming climate. Together, the ice sheets lock a volume of water equivalent to more than 50 meters of sea level rise and influence ocean currents that affect marine food webs and regional climates. Their fate has profound consequences for life nearly everywhere on Earth.  

A recent study demonstrates how dripstones can be crucial for reconstructing past climates. The new approach can provide a detailed picture of the climate around early human occupations in South Africa.

Scientists are warning that apparently stable glaciers in the Antarctic can 'switch very rapidly' and lose large quantities of ice as a result of warmer oceans.    Their finding comes after glaciologists used satellites to track the Cadman Glacier, which drains into Beascochea Bay, on the west Antarctic peninsula.  

The Fens of eastern England, a low-lying, extremely flat landscape dominated by agricultural fields, was once a vast woodland filled with huge yew trees, according to new research. Scientists have studied hundreds of tree trunks, dug up by Fenland farmers while ploughing their fields. The team found that most of the ancient wood came from yew trees that populated the area between four and five thousand years ago.

Concerted action is required to mitigate the impact of warming on polar ecosystems and sustainably manage these unique habitats.  

Using historical records from around Australia, an international team of researchers have put forward the most accurate prediction to date of past Antarctic ice sheet melt, providing a more realistic forecast of future sea level rise.   The Antarctic ice sheet is the largest block of ice on earth, containing over 30 million cubic kilometers of water.   Hence, its melting could have a devasting impact on future sea levels. To find out just how big that impact might be, the research team turned to the past.  

A new study examines ice cores from the summit of the highest tropical mountain in the world, and finds unique insight into the climate record of the Amazon Basin over the last six decades. 

A study reports that scattering sunlight-reflecting particles in the atmosphere -- a theoretical form of climate engineering known as 'stratospheric aerosol injection' -- has potential to slow rapid ice melt in Western Antarctica.

As the world continues to warm, Antarctica is losing ice at an increasing pace, but the loss of sea ice may lead to more snowfall over the ice sheets, partially offsetting contributions to sea level rise.

For decades, we believed that outside ice ages Europe was mostly covered by dense forest before the arrival of modern humans. Now, a new study shows that there was far more open and semi-open vegetation than conventionally expected.

The Arctic is currently warming nearly four times faster than the global average rate. The new study aimed to estimate the impact of this faster warming on how quickly the global temperature thresholds of 1.5C and 2C, set down in the Paris Agreement, are likely to be breached.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of declining phytoplankton in the North Atlantic may have been greatly exaggerated. Analysis of a Greenland ice core going back 800 years shows that atmospheric chemistry, not dwindling phytoplankton populations, explains the industrial-era ice core trends.

New research explores how proteins produced by a common fungus trigger ice nucleation at warm temperatures. The study holds potential implications for improving our understanding of how life affects precipitation and climate.

A new study documents how Greenland's peripheral glaciers have changed from 1890 to 2022. Using satellite images and a unique archive of historical aerial photos, researchers documented changes in the lengths of more than 1,000 of the country's glaciers over the past 130 years. Although glaciers in Greenland have experienced retreat throughout the last century, the rate of their retreat has rapidly accelerated over the last two decades.

Up to now, the results of climate simulations have sometimes contradicted the analysis of climate traces from the past. Physicists and climatologists have now brought together experts in climate models and climate tracks to clarify how the discrepancies come about. The surprising result has now been published: in a way, both sides are right. Climate models correctly simulate global temperature trends, but often underestimate the strength of regional climate fluctuations, especially over the course of decades to centuries.