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The cost of reversing the effects of climate change -- restoring melted polar sea ice, for example -- quickly climbs nearly fourfold soon after a tipping point is crossed, according to new work. Much work has been done to explore the environmental costs tied to climate change. But this new study marks the first time researchers have quantified the costs of controlling tipping points before and after they unfold.

'Specialist' lifeforms that live under Arctic sea ice are at risk as the ice retreats, new research shows.

In an era of dwindling glaciers, Southern Patagonia has managed to hold on to a surprising amount of its ice. But, a new study suggests that this protective effect might be pushed up against its limits soon.

New research suggests that while manatees are an indelible part of Florida's seascape, they might also be relatively new residents in the Sunshine State.

The scientific debate around the installation of a massive underwater curtain to protect Antarctic ice sheets from melting lacks its vital political perspective. A research team argues that the serious questions around authority, sovereignty and security should be addressed proactively by the scientific community to avoid the protected seventh continent becoming the scene or object of international discord.

Glaciers that are within three miles of a volcano move nearly 50% quicker than average, a new study has found, which could help create early warning of future eruptions.

A new study highlights how some marine life could face extinction over the next century, if human-induced global warming worsens.

A series of rocks hiding around Colorado's Rocky Mountains may hold clues to a frigid period in Earth's past when glaciers several miles thick covered the entire planet.

New research reveals for the first time how a major Antarctic ice shelf has been subjected to increased melting by warming ocean waters over the last four decades. Scientists say the study -- the result of their autonomous Seaglider getting accidentally stuck underneath the Ross Ice Shelf -- suggests this will likely only increase further as climate change drives continued ocean warming.

A new study challenges theories regarding the origins of a significant transition through the Earth's ice ages. The research provides fresh insights into the ocean's role in climate during the Mid-Pleistocene Transition, an enigmatic interval of change in climate cycles that began about one million years ago.

Scientists have spotted microplastics, tiny pieces of plastic smaller than 5 millimeters, in some of the most pristine environments on Earth, from the depths of the Mariana Trench to the snow on Mt. Everest to the mountaintop clouds of China and Japan. Microplastics have been detected in human brains, the bellies of sea turtles and the roots of plants. Now, research reveals that microplastics in the atmosphere could be affecting weather and climate.

At the end of the last global ice age, the deep-frozen Earth reached a built-in limit of climate change and thawed into a slushy planet. Results provide the first direct geochemical evidence of the slushy planet -- otherwise known as the 'plume-world ocean' era -- when sky-high carbon dioxide levels forced the frozen Earth into a massive, rapid melting period.

The Amazon region is a global hotspot of biodiversity and plays a key role in the climate system because of its ability to store large amounts of carbon and its influence on the global water cycle. The rain forest is threatened, however, by climate change as well as by intensified deforestation activities. An international team has now investigated how a change in Atlantic circulation would impact the Amazon Rain Forest.

Ancient cultural burning practices carried out by Indigenous Australians limited fuel availability and prevented high intensity fires in southeastern Australia for thousands of years, according to new research.

A team discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of eruptions.

A new study unveils a surprising discovery: a substantial amount of meltwater is temporarily stored within the Greenland Ice Sheet during summer months. For the first time, an international group of researchers was able to quantify meltwater with positioning data. The finding challenges current models of how ice sheets contribute to global sea level rise.

Geneticists have deciphered the prehistory of aurochs -- the animals that were the focus of some of the most iconic early human art -- by analyzing 38 genomes harvested from bones dating across 50 millennia and stretching from Siberia to Britain. The aurochs roamed in Europe, Asia and Africa for hundreds of thousands of years. Adorned as paintings on many a cave wall, their domestication to create cattle gave us a harnessed source of muscle, meat and milk. Such was the influence of this domestication that today their descendants make up a third of the world's mammalian biomass.

The warming climate in polar regions may significantly disrupt ocean circulation patterns, a new study indicates. Scientists discovered that in the distant past, growing inflows of freshwater from melting Arctic sea-ice into the Nordic Seas likely significantly affected ocean circulation, sending temperatures plummeting across northern Europe.

The Arctic is warming at three to four times the global average. However, new research suggests the slowing of a key ocean current could reduce projected Arctic warming by up to 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

New research shows that a large, ubiquitous mobile genetic element changes the antagonistic weaponry of Bacteroides fragilis, a common bacterium of the human gut.