Environment

The world’s biggest ice sheet could cause “several meters” of sea-level rise over centuries if the global temperature rises more than 2 °C, according to a British study published Wednesday. Researchers at Durham University concluded that if global greenhouse emissions remain high, the melting East Antarctica Ice Sheet (EAIS) could cause nearly half a meter

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill was not a short-lived catastrophe. Over 10 years after one of the largest environmental disasters in human history, a sticky oil residue still coats some marshland in the Gulf of Mexico, a new report reveals. Its impacts are still not fully understood. In the months following BP’s 2010 Deepwater calamity, desperate attempts

Fishermen discovered the American-made bomb on July 25, near the northern Italian village of Borgo Virgilio, near the city of Mantua, according to Reuters. The bomb appeared to have been submerged there for more than 70 years. However, water levels in the River Po – which stretches east-west across northern Italy and is the country’s longest

Warmer waters are flowing towards the East Antarctic ice sheet, according to our alarming new research which reveals a potential new driver of global sea-level rise. The research, published today in Nature Climate Change, shows changing water circulation in the Southern Ocean may be compromising the stability of the East Antarctic ice sheet. The ice

Humans are filling the world with trash, but not all of our waste is visible to the human eye. While plastic litter on the beach is easy to spot, microplastics and ‘forever chemicals’ have leached far and wide without our barely noticing. Both forms of pollution are now so ubiquitous in the environment, they are

Speculating over humanity’s demise is a sport we humans have enjoyed since forever. We build religions on our eschatological hopes, weave fiction out of our dystopian fears, and even write songs about the end of the world as we know it. So it’s surprising that in the midst of an escalating global climate crisis, one

A climate scientist at Tohoku University in Japan has run the numbers and does not think today’s mass extinction event will equal that of the previous five. At least not for many more centuries to come. On more than one occasion over the past 540 million years, Earth has lost most of its species in

Humankind marks a dubious milestone Thursday, the day by which humanity has consumed all Earth can sustainably produce for this year, with NGOs warning the rest of 2022 will be lived in resource deficit. The date – dubbed “Earth Overshoot Day” – marks a tipping point when people have used up “all that ecosystems can

A third set of human remains were found in Nevada’s Lake Mead on 25 July as water levels have receded to historic lows during a drought fueled by climate change.  The remains were spotted by a witness at Swim Beach on Lake Mead during the afternoon of 25 July, the National Park Service announced. Investigators retrieved the

Plants can go to extraordinary lengths to tempt pollinators to do their bidding. From donning female insect disguises (complete with pheromones!) to lure lustful males, oozing the stench of rotting flesh to temp hungry flies, or, most commonly, offering bribes of sweet rewards for any who visits – no lengths are too gross or pricy

Every five years, the Australian government releases a comprehensive report on the state of the nation’s environment, put together by a panel of independent scientists. The latest report, released this week, was long overdue and was always expected to be a doozy. In the past five years, severe coral bleaching events have whitened a third of

The UK has provisionally recorded its highest ever temperature on Tuesday: 102.4 °F (40.2 °C). It was the first time the UK recorded a temperature over 102 °F (40 °C) per the Met Office, the official weather organization in Britain. The reading was taken around London’s Heathrow Airport just before 1pm local time. Temperatures were forecast

Firefighters battled to contain wildfires sweeping across southwest Europe on Sunday as a heatwave showed no sign of abating, with Britain poised to set new temperature records this coming week. Blazes raging in France, Greece, Portugal and Spain have destroyed thousands of hectares of land and forced thousands of residents and holidaymakers to flee. It

The vast expanse of Lake Taupō’s sky blue waters, crowned by hazy, mountainous horizons, invokes an extreme sense of tranquility.  And yet, deep in the ground below, geological unrest is brewing, according to a new paper in the New Zealand Journal of Geology and Geophysics. Lake Taupō is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia, located

Our living planet is unique among all we’ve been able to explore in the Universe so far. From our axial tilt preventing too many temperature extremes, to our goldilocks zone position, life on Earth depends on many finely balanced, interwoven cycles that come together to produce the exact circumstances we need to thrive. One of

Parts of Portugal and Spain are the driest they have been in a thousand years due to an atmospheric high-pressure system driven by climate change, according to research published Monday, warning of severe implications for wine and olive production. The Azores High, an area of high pressure that rotates clockwise over parts of the North

Limiting global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels requires reaching net zero emissions by the middle of this century. This means that, in less than three decades, we need to reverse more than a century of rising emissions and bring annual emissions down to near zero, while balancing out all remaining unavoidable emissions by

A “wet wipe island” the size of two tennis courts has formed in the Thames, causing the river as it flows through London to change course, according to The Times of London. Ministers have asked people to stop using wet wipes, and the government is considering banning those that contain plastic. Fleur Anderson, a Labour MP,

With researchers warning that limiting global warming to 1.5 °C is fast slipping from our grasp, we know it will take a mammoth effort to reach. But the scale of emissions reductions required is actually something we have already achieved before – quite recently and rather by accident. In 2020, global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions fell

On top of intensifying algal blooms and depleting oxygen, a new study reveals Earth’s bodies of freshwater are also evaporating at a greater rate than we realized. What’s more, “lake evaporation plays a larger role in the hydrological cycle than previously thought,” says ecologist Gang Zhao who was at Texas A&M University during the study.

Like its movie namesake, the horrific marine heatwave nicknamed the Blob destroyed much in its path during its peak, causing mass deaths of fish, birds, and many other marine animals, threatening fishing industries. Since then, the Blob has at least briefly reared its head twice, hinting at an underlying persistence to its cause. Now, researchers

The oceans are one of our planet’s most important carbon sinks, with currently around 39,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide locked away – that’s around 50 times more than what’s circulating in the atmosphere right now. However, we can’t rely on this carbon capture and storage to solve our climate crisis problem, because we’re producing too much

These days, peeing on your food plants may be considered a gross and wacky gardening hack, despite the practice having been proven beneficial for thousands of years. But our modern squeamishness has meant gardeners and farmers alike must resort to expensive fertilizers to provide their crops with the much-needed nutrients found free in our pee.

In many places around the world, grocery store produce aisles are a delightful array of colors, even in the depths of winter, when it feels like not much could grow outside. But this year-round variety has a real cost on the planet, with a new study finding that ‘food miles’ account for 19 percent of

A historic drought affecting Italy’s largest river has brought a World War II-era shipwreck to light. The Po River runs 405 miles (651.8 km) from the Cottian Alps to empty into the Adriatic Sea. It’s currently facing its worst drought in 70 years, which has caused a decades-old sunken ship to resurface. The Zibello, a

We biological beings are messy things, leaving bits of our former selves behind everywhere we go – even in the air. This trail of self includes various secretions like saliva, discarded waste. and our constantly shedding outer layers like dead skin cells – many of which contain our unique DNA signatures. Bugs are no exception. From spiders

Climate change is slowing down the conveyor belt of ocean currents that brings warm water from the tropics up to the North Atlantic. Our research, published today (June 6) in Nature Climate Change, looks at the profound consequences to global climate if this Atlantic conveyor collapses entirely. We found the collapse of this system –

If microplastics have boundaries, we don’t yet know what they are. We seem to find this microscopic trash everywhere we look, from the bottom of the ocean to Earth’s highest peak. We’re starting to figure out why. Beyond all the disturbing discoveries of microplastics turning up inside our bodies, we now know these tiny fragments

By now, few people question the reality that humans are altering Earth’s climate. The real question is: How quickly can we halt, even reverse, the damage? Part of the answer to this question lies in the concept of ‘committed warming,’ also known as ‘pipeline warming.’ It refers to future increases in global temperatures that will be

The Siberian tundra could disappear by the year 2500, unless greenhouse gas emissions are dramatically reduced.  Even in the best-case scenarios, two-thirds of this landscape – defined by its short growing season and cover of grasses, moss, shrubs and lichens – could vanish, leaving behind two fragments separated by 1,553 miles (2,500 kilometers), scientists recently predicted. And

Planting more crops isn’t the only way to feed a growing population. Cutting air pollution could go a long way towards increasing crop production while saving precious land and money, according to new research. If the world cuts the emissions of just one type of air pollutant in half, estimates suggest winter crops could yield

Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in May were 50 percent higher than during the pre-industrial era, reaching levels not seen on Earth for about 4 million years, the main US climate agency said on Friday. Global warming caused by humans, particularly through the production of electricity using fossil fuels, transport, the production of

This year in April, the Biden administration announced a renewed commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement. The goal is now to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030. The target is ambitious, but it isn’t a pipe dream. According to a newly published analysis of existing climate models, it’s more than possible with strong

The famous snow-capped peaks of the Alps are fading fast and being replaced by vegetation cover – a process called “greening” that is expected to accelerate climate change, a study said Thursday. The research, published in Science, was based on 38 years of satellite imagery across the entirety of the iconic European mountain range. “We

Next time you go diving or snorkeling, have a close look at those wondrously long, bright green ribbons, waving with the ebb and flow of water. They are seagrasses – marine plants which produce flowers, fruit, and seedlings annually, like their land-based relatives. These underwater seagrass meadows grow in two ways: by sexual reproduction, which

“You can’t manage what you can’t measure”, according to a famous business mantra often attributed to management guru Peter Drucker. This can help explain why carbon emissions are under more scrutiny than ever as we ramp up our efforts to avoid the catastrophic effects of climate change. For example, the “carbon footprint” – a way

The tiny floating organisms that supply our world with as much as a fifth of its oxygen will be in dire straights as our oceans acidify, new research suggests. The creatures, called diatoms, will be deprived of the silica building blocks they need to construct their protective shells, which come in all sorts of dazzling

Experts are warning that the Eastern US should prepare for another barrage of tropical storms this year. The 2022 Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be more active than average for the seventh year in a row, according to the latest prediction from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  There is a 70 percent chance that

When something’s messing with your insides and you feel like you’re going to hurl, the last thing you probably want to do is eat. Deer, caribou, and other ungulates (hoofed animals) experience a similar problem when infected by non-deadly parasites. It utterly sucks for them, but it turns out infections that put them off their

Scientists have documented a worrying trend in the rainforests of Australia: Tree lifespans have halved in the last 35 years, and it appears to be due to the effects of climate change on the ecosystems. With these forests acting as significant carbon sinks, the consequences for the planet could be devastating, creating a feedback loop

As air pollution decreases in the western Northern Hemisphere, several new climate simulations suggest tropical cyclones in the Atlantic may increase. The forecast is troubling, though not necessarily a surprise. When tiny aerosols like dust, soot, and sulfates are airborne, they create smog that can dim sunlight and cool Earth’s atmosphere and surface. Broadly speaking,

All heatwaves today bear the unmistakable and measurable fingerprint of global warming, top experts on quantifying the impact of climate change on extreme weather said Wednesday. Burning fossil fuels and destroying forests have released enough greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to also boost the frequency and intensity of many floods, droughts, wildfires, and tropical storms,

Large fish in the open sea have declined by at least 90 percent over the past century due to overexploitation. To pull fish like tuna, swordfish, and marlin back from the brink, scientists argue we need to protect their migration superhighways known as ‘blue corridors’. A recent study on the Pacific Ocean has mapped the

There is an even chance that global temperatures will temporarily breach the benchmark of 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in one of the next five years, the United Nations warned Tuesday. The 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change saw countries agree to cap global warming at “well below” 2 °C above levels measured between 1850

Thousands of wild bird species are growing ill or dying from habitat loss, climate change, and overexploitation, according to new research. A new estimate from researchers around the world has found 48 percent of living bird species are known or suspected to have declining populations. That’s more than 5,000 species that face a risky future.

The oceans that surround us are transforming. As our climate changes, the world’s waters are shifting too, with abnormalities evident not only in the ocean’s temperature, but also its structure, currents, and even its color. As these changes manifest, the usually stable environment of the ocean is becoming more unpredictable and erratic, and in some

Throughout our planet’s history, Earth has fluctuated between a hothouse and an icehouse. Today, our home is supposed to be in a period of global cooling, but human emissions of greenhouse gasses are reversing that natural trend at a rapid and unprecedented rate. One of the last times Earth went from an icehouse to a

In a warmer world, rising sea levels could render many coastlines, beaches, and reef islands uninhabitable, or destroy them altogether. The 1.09℃ Earth has warmed since pre-industrial times has already heightened seas by 20 centimeters. But curiously, research shows some coastlines and even low-lying coral reef islands are actually growing rather than eroding in the