In the cold, dark depths of the Arctic Ocean, a feast of the dead is under way. A vast community of sponges, the densest group of these animals found in…
Category: Earth
A UN report shows climate change’s escalating toll on people and nature
Neither adaptation by humankind nor mitigation alone is enough to reduce the risk from climate impacts, hundreds of the world’s scientists say. Nothing less than a concerted, global effort to…
Freshwater ice can melt into scallops and spikes
Water’s wacky density leads to strange effects that researchers are still uncovering. Typically, liquids become denser the more they cool. But freshwater is densest at 4° Celsius. As it cools…
Satellites have located the world’s methane ‘ultra-emitters’
A small number of “ultra-emitters” of methane from oil and gas production contribute as much as 12 percent of methane emissions from oil and gas production every year to the…
The past’s extreme ocean heat waves are now the new normal
Yesterday’s scorching ocean extremes are today’s new normal. A new analysis of surface ocean temperatures over the past 150 years reveals that in 2019, 57 percent of the ocean’s surface…
Intense drought or flash floods can shock the global economy
Extremes in rainfall — whether intense drought or flash floods — can catastrophically slow the global economy, researchers report in the Jan. 13 Nature. And those impacts are most felt…
Rice feeds half the world. Climate change’s droughts and floods put it at risk
Under a midday summer sun in California’s Sacramento Valley, rice farmer Peter Rystrom walks across a dusty, barren plot of land, parched soil crunching beneath each step. In a typical…
Potty-trained cattle could help reduce pollution
You can lead a cow to a water closet, but can you make it pee there? It turns out that yes, you can. Researchers in Germany successfully trained cows to…
Cold plasma could transform the sustainable farms of the future
Physicist Stephan Reuter of Polytechnique Montréal spends most days using his expertise in energy and matter to improve medical technologies. Recently though, he stood in a sea of green to…
Mixing trees and crops can help both farmers and the climate
Maxwell Ochoo’s first attempt at farming was a dismal failure. In Ochieng Odiere, a village near the shores of Kenya’s Lake Victoria, “getting a job is a challenge,” the 34-year-old…
