Environment

Roughly 2,000 Magellanic penguins have washed up dead on the beaches of Uruguay this July with empty stomachs and “tremendously thin” bodies. “This is mortality in the water,” Carmen Leizagoyen, who works at Uruguay’s Environment Ministry, told AFP. “Ninety percent are young specimens that arrive without fat reserves and with empty stomachs.” The cause of

2023 has gone from bad to worse for Earth’s southern ocean. In February, climate researchers announced that Antarctica’s sea ice had hit its lowest summer level since satellite records began 45 years ago. A few months later, in June, during what should be a ‘winter growth phase‘, floating sea ice around Antarctica was still struggling

Shallow waters off south Florida topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit (37.8C) for several hours on Monday, potentially setting a new world record with temperatures more commonly associated with hot tubs.​ The readings were taken from a single buoy in Manatee Bay, about 38 miles (60 kilometers) southwest of Miami, at a depth of five feet (1.5

A major ocean current system in the Atlantic could be about to collapse as soon as 2025, concerning new peer-reviewed research suggests. This is particularly concerning in light of the current heat extremes we’re witnessing across the globe, including a massive departure from previous records in the Atlantic Ocean itself. “Here we calculate when the

You’ve just finished a cup of coffee at your favorite cafe. Now you’re facing a trash bin, a recycling bin and a compost bin. What’s the most planet-friendly thing to do with your cup? Many of us would opt for the recycling bin – but that’s often the wrong choice. In order to hold liquids,

We know that meat has a substantial impact on the planet, and that plant-based diets are more environmentally sustainable. But exactly how much impact does the food we eat have on environmental outcomes and what difference would following a vegan diet make compared to consuming a high meat, or even low meat diet? We studied

News about switching to greener energy sources is always good news, and this certainly counts: The world’s largest wind turbine constructed to date is now up and running and contributing to the power grid in China. The MySE 16-260 earns its largest-ever tag thanks to its rotor diameter of 260 meters (853 feet) and its

A mile-thick ice sheet in Greenland vanished around 416,000 years ago during a period of moderate natural warming, driving global sea rise to levels that would spell catastrophe for coastal regions today, a study said Thursday. The results overturn a long-held view that the world’s largest island was an impregnable fortress of ice over the

Human-made climate change is supercharging natural weather phenomena to drive heatwaves roasting Asia, Europe and North America that could make 2023 the hottest year since records began, scientists say. Here experts explain how 2023 has got so hot, warning these record temperatures will get worse even if humanity sharply cuts its planet-warming gas emissions. ​El

The UN announced Monday that the 48.8C recorded on the Italian island of Sicily in 2021 had been verified as the European high temperature record, against which the current heatwave will be measured. ​The United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization (WMO) keeps the World Weather and Climate Extremes Archive and painstakingly verifies any claimed records including

A massive metal object found drifting off the shore of a remote beach in Western Australia is awash in mystery as officials try to figure out where it came from. Police have been guarding the mysterious thingamajig since it was discovered by baffled locals this last weekend about 250 kilometers (155 miles) north of Perth.

Scorching weather gripped three continents on Sunday, whipping up wildfires and threatening to topple temperature records as the dire consequences of global warming take shape.​ Predictions of historic heat hung over swathes of Asia, Europe and the United States. In the Vatican, 15,000 people braved sweltering temperatures to hear Pope Francis lead prayer, using parasols

Intense, relentless heat waves have become the new normal, fueling climate change and exacerbating droughts and wildfires. June was the hottest month on record, but July is set to be even worse. The beginning of the month was Earth’s hottest week on record, per early data from the World Meteorological Organization. Excessive heat warnings and

In 2021, researchers at Purdue University announced that they had developed the whitest paint on Earth. The color is so white that it can reflect over 98% of light. This is particularly useful because light generates heat – and we here on Earth are running a bit hot these days. If used on a building,

Analyzing two decades of satellite imagery, researchers from the US and UK have found Earth’s oceans are getting greener, potentially reflecting the impact climate change is having on phytoplankton populations as the world warms. The tiny microbes, including plant-like algae, use green chlorophyll to photosynthesize. So the greater their numbers, the greener their habitat becomes.

Many common drugs consist of chemicals sourced from crude oil, a situation that needs to change if we’re to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Now scientists have managed to make two well-known painkillers, acetaminophen (also known as paracetamol) and ibuprofen, out of a compound found in pine trees. The compound is also a waste

Global warming took off in the mid-1970s when the rise in global mean surface temperature exceeded natural variability. Every decade after the 1960s has been warmer than the one before and the 2010s were the warmest on record. But there can be a lot of variability from one year to the next. Now, in 2023,

Like the pages of a diary hidden beneath a child’s bed, the floor of Crawford Lake in Ontario, Canada, preserves Earth’s most recent memories in clear, chronological order. The story within its laminated sediments is dominated by humans, detailing at an annual resolution the activities of local Iroquoian communities in the late 13th to 15th

More than 61,000 people died due to the heat during Europe’s record-breaking summer last year, a study said on Monday which called for more to be done to protect against even deadlier heatwaves expected in the coming years. The world’s fastest warming continent experienced its hottest summer on record in 2022, as countries were hit

World daily temperature records have been smashed this week, according to preliminary data. The modeling tools that produced these estimates can provide an early warning of extreme heat events, even if they aren’t as precise as monthly and yearly reports produced by leading agencies, say experts. Who is producing the data? The University of Maine

Consuming over a third of Earth’s vertebrates, the more voracious predator our planet has ever known has a staggering ecological impact. New research finds this animal’s consumption creates a footprint 1,300 times larger than anything else we have records for. Yet only about half of what is being taken is for food. That predator is,

Tuesday was the hottest day ever recorded as the global average temperature leaped to a record high for the second day in a row, according to preliminary readings by US meteorologists published Wednesday. The average daily air temperature on the Earth’s surface reached 17.18 degrees Celsius (62.92 Fahrenheit), according to data compiled by an organisation

The risks of harvest failures in multiple global breadbaskets have been underestimated, according to a study Tuesday that researchers said should be a “wake up call” about the threat climate change poses to our food systems. Food production is both a key source of planet-warming emissions and highly exposed to the effects of climate change,

Monday was the world’s hottest day on record, exceeding an average of 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 degrees Fahrenheit) for the first time, according to initial measurements taken on Tuesday by US meteorologists. The average daily air temperature on the planet’s surface on July 3 was logged at 17.01 °C by an organisation attached to the

Seaweed farming is the fastest-growing force in global food production today. But while giant marine algae can produce tons of fuel and sustenance, scientists have recently pointed out that its ability to offset the climate crisis is largely unknown. To sink just 1 gigaton of carbon emissions a year, recent simulations suggest massive seaweed farms

Many sharks are being fished to the point of extinction, and yet one of the proposed solutions – sustainable shark fisheries – has largely failed to catch on. A new paper on the sudden closure of the world’s first eco-certified shark fishery explores why that might be. In 2011, a Canadian fishery for the Pacific

A heat dome occurs when a persistent region of high pressure traps heat over an area. The heat dome can stretch over several states and linger for days to weeks, leaving the people, crops and animals below to suffer through stagnant, hot air that can feel like an oven. Typically, heat domes are tied to

The currents of air that wrap around our planet are becoming unrecognizable to climate scientists. Some have even compared the chaotic pattern of the jet streams to a Van Gogh painting. The southern part of the jet stream over North America has completely broken apart and is currently trapped in a vicious revolution that has

Across the world, rainforests are becoming savanna or farmland, savanna is drying out and turning into desert, and icy tundra is thawing. Indeed, scientific studies have now recorded “regime shifts” like these in more than 20 different types of ecosystems where tipping points have been passed. Across the world, more than 20 percent of ecosystems

When a hurricane hits land, the destruction can be visible for years or even decades. Less obvious, but also powerful, is the effect hurricanes have on the oceans. In a new study, we show through real-time measurements that hurricanes don’t just churn water at the surface. They can also push heat deep into the ocean

NASA has released a chilling animation showing just how far sea levels have risen in the three short decades its satellites have been monitoring them. The data visualization, released last week, is the work of Andrew J. Christensen, a data visualizer for the NASA Scientific Visualization Studio. By animating observed changes in global sea level

We know human activity is inflating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record rates, restricting the radiation of heat into space and contributing to the overall warming of the planet. Invisible as they are, the ebb and flow of carbon emissions can be hard to wrap our heads around – but not

Himalayan glaciers providing critical water to nearly two billion people are melting faster than ever before due to climate change, exposing communities to unpredictable and costly disasters, scientists warned Tuesday. The glaciers disappeared 65 percent faster from 2011 to 2020 compared with the previous decade, according to a report by the International Centre for Integrated

A new study identifies which parts of our airways are getting clogged with microplastics as we inhale about 16.2 bits an hour. That’s a credit card’s worth of microplastic going into our respiratory system a week. We’re also eating and drinking these plastic particles, as microplastics are now everywhere, including in our veins. They’re in

Ocean bays that pinch West Antarctica are home to two distinct populations of Turquet’s octopus (Pareledone turqueti). The shared secrets of their ancestors do not bode well for the future health of our planet. A recent DNA analysis of the two geographically separated octopus populations, published earlier this year ahead of peer review, indicates they

The evolution of Earth’s climate contains many components. And new research has shown just how critical the ozone layer is to the surface temperature of the Earth. Without an ozone layer, our planet would be 3.5 Kelvin cooler. Many feedback and forcing mechanisms play a role in stabilizing and setting Earth’s overall average temperature. In

Greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high, with yearly emissions equivalent to 54 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. Humanity has caused surface temperatures to warm by 1.14 °C since the late 1800s – and this warming is increasing at an unprecedented rate of over 0.2 °C per decade. The highest temperatures recorded over land

A single injection of an experimental gene therapy treatment may be all that is required to permanently stop a female cat from reproducing, according to a small, proof-of-concept study. Of the more than 600 million-some domestic felines that wander our planet, an astounding 80 percent are believed to be strays, void of owners or homes.

A lone polar bear, marooned on a shrinking slab of sea ice, has become a heart-wrenching poster child for the effects of climate change in the Arctic. New climate models from an international team of researchers predict that in as few as 10 years, that iconic creature could have nowhere left to stand in the

Bringing your garden indoors and growing the right plants on your office wall (along with some sophisticated tech) could scrub the air of several common toxic pollutants, new research suggests. The findings come from scientists at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in Australia, who investigated whether a vertical wall system fitted with indoor plants

The colorful chaos of a wildflower meadow is a much ‘greener’ alternative to a perfectly manicured patch of grass, a team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge says. Cultivating a lawn is a highly popular, centuries-old tradition in much of the Western world. Yet as great as these uniform blankets of green are

In spite of advances in making laboratory-cultured meat products taste like the real deal, we’re yet to see a single factory pumping chicken nuggets out of a vat. That might not be such a bad thing, according to a recent study by researchers from the University of California, Davis (UCD), and the University of California,

Humanity’s consumption comes at a cost to a wide variety of planetary systems that depend on one another for sustainability. Like dominoes, instability in one leans heavily on others in line, creating a set of boundaries that can cause serious problems if breached. Past studies have warned our appetites have stressed at least a few

Fungi pose a significant threat to crops worldwide, scientists warn in a new commentary, with increasingly “devastating” effects on our food supply. We tend to worry more about pathogens that sicken humans directly, especially viruses and bacteria. But while corn smut and stem rust might not scare us like Ebola or E. coli, maybe they

Diplomats from 175 countries gathering in Paris for plastics treaty talks on Monday may want to pack an umbrella, but not just because there’s a chance of rain. France’s capital will also be showered during the five-day talks by billions of microplastic particles falling from the sky, according to the first-ever plastics pollution weather forecast.

A decades-old global environmental pact has averted huge amounts of sea ice loss in the Arctic, new research shows. Banning ozone-depleting gases under the historic 1987 Montreal Protocol has delayed the first, feared ice-free Arctic summer by as much as 15 years, the study found – once again demonstrating that global treaties can work to

Current policies to limit global warming will expose more than a fifth of humanity to extreme and potentially life-threatening heat by century’s end, researchers warned Monday. Earth’s surface temperature is on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.8 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels by 2100, pushing more than two billion people – 22 percent of

France is preparing for temperatures of 4 degrees Celsius (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels in the country by century’s end as the world falls short in meeting climate change targets, a cabinet minister warned Sunday. Christophe Bechu, minister for ecological transition, told the weekly JDD paper that his government was no longer banking on