From the air, the massive crater resembles a pink virus floating against a pool of green. But from the ground, the destruction is clear and devastating: A 33-foot (10 meter) wide, 13-foot (4 meter) gouge into the earth that began in the 1940s with an Allied sortie and ended Sunday morning in a massive blast

An intense heat wave is set to bake Europe in coming days, and it could be historic, potentially shattering records across a large portion of the continent. The heat wave is expected to peak between Wednesday and Friday, when a swath from Spain to Poland is expected to see temperatures at least 20 to 30

An ancient water conservation technique once used in Peru could be making a comeback in the modern era, as the country struggles with extreme dry seasons amidst a population rise. Researchers estimate the technique – used by indigenous peoples of the region – is at least 1,400 years old. It involves diverting water from streams

You might think that plastic pollution on land and sea is old news by now, but it’s taken on a new form we’ve only just noticed: Researchers have identified a crust of plastic particles building up on shoreline rocks. This ‘plasticrust’ isn’t just a worrying symbol of the garbage piling up in our oceans. The coating

Underneath the salty waters of the North Atlantic ocean, geologists have discovered a giant aquifer of freshwater, hidden from view just off the US coast. While the vast size of this massive cache is surprising, it’s not entirely unexpected. Signals of the water first showed up in the 1970s, but until now, nobody suspected that

In the pitch black waters 759 meters (2500 feet) below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a thin, undulating arm emerges from the gloom. Suddenly, it splits, and what was a lone, curious appendage is a writhing bouquet of tentacles until, finally, an honest-to-God giant squid blooms from the darkness and attacks. Then, the

Great news! Humankind’s greatest-ever engineering project is nearing completion. Soon we will have warmed the Earth enough to get rid of all those pesky ice sheets and other frozen areas. The finish line is in sight. If we all work together for the next thousand years, we’ll finally reach our goal! NASA has been tracking

This time last year the roughly half-a-million people who live in Cape Town were in a panic. Their city was three months away from becoming the first major metropolis to fully deplete its water sources, and as the saga unfolded, the whole world watched in earnest. Today, in Chennai – India’s sixth largest city –

Just under half a century ago a system of satellites codenamed Hexagon was circling the globe and snapping high-resolution shots of the changing landscape… not to mention a Russian airfield or two. With the Cold War long melted, those images were declassified back in 2002, providing rich pickings for all kinds of research. Now scientists have

Boaty McBoatface is no longer just an internet sensation – it’s also a valuable contributor to climate change research. In 2016, the Natural Environment Research Council asked internet users to name its new research ship. But when “Boaty McBoatface” won the poll, they decided the moniker would be better suited to one of the ship’s

You can now visualise our climate crisis for almost anywhere on Earth, thanks to a stunning interactive tool that will make you see red in every possible way. Last year, climate scientist Ed Hawkins unveiled a powerful schematic for visualising global temperature changes: coloured ‘warming stripes’ communicating how the world has been getting hotter since

Ice is melting in unprecedented ways as summer approaches in the Arctic. In recent days, observations have revealed a record-challenging melt event over the Greenland ice sheet, while the extent of ice over the Arctic Ocean has never been this low in mid-June during the age of weather satellites. Greenland saw temperatures soar up to

If you’ve seen photos of the Los Angeles reservoir covered in millions of black balls, you might have wondered two things. One: what the heck are they? And two… could you swim in them? Derek from Veritasium recently answered the first question in a video that went viral, with more than 32 million views and

Late last month scientists undertook a pretty amazing feat, successfully installing five automated weather stations across the Himalayan region, including the highest weather station in the world, near the very top of Mount Everest. In a long-form feature by National Geographic writer Freddie Wilkinson, the international team explain how they battled extreme weather, record crowds

As rain deluged the Midwest this spring, commercial fisherman Ryan Bradley knew it was only a matter of time before the disaster reached him. All that water falling on all that fertilizer-enriched farmland would soon wend its way through streams and rivers into Bradley’s fishing grounds in the Gulf of Mexico, off the Mississippi coast.

Simultaneous heat waves scorched land areas all over the Northern Hemisphere last summer, killing hundreds and hospitalizing thousands while intensifying destructive and deadly wildfires. A study published this week in the journal Earth’s Future concludes that this heat wave epidemic “would not have occurred without human-induced climate change.” The alarming part? There are signs record-setting

If you had asked a botanist just a few years ago how many plant species have perished in modern times, their estimate would probably number fewer than 150. The most exhaustive study thus far has now quadrupled that amount. Ever since 1753, when Carl Linnaeus “the father of modern taxonomy” put together his classification of plant

The world is changing as temperatures rise, and just as some parts of the planet are predicted to become uninhabitable, others are heading in the opposite direction – including the freezing cold wastelands of Siberia, new research shows. Siberia and the wider Asian Russia region accounts for 77 percent of Russia’s land area but just 27

Despite being grown and consumed for over two decades, there’s still a huge amount of misinformation and confusion that surrounds genetically modified (GM) foods. Researchers tell us to ignore the myths about GM foods, given the overwhelming scientific consensus that GM crops are safe to eat and deliver huge benefits in farming. While the evidence

The crust of floating ice that forms over Antarctica’s Weddell Sea every winter is home to a baffling mystery. Every now and again, a huge hole will appear, exposing the dark, icy waters below. Why do the holes appear in some years and not others? Why do they appear at all? It’s never really been

Flooding swamped parts of the Southeast over the weekend, with as much as a foot of rain falling in western North Carolina. At the same time, the Mississippi River continued its long-lasting assault on communities along its banks. Near St. Louis, the crest over the weekend was the second-highest on record. Just the latest high-water

On average, 8.8 million tons of plastic enters the ocean every year. The maximum amount could be closer to 14 million tons – about the weight of 2 million elephants. Most plastics take hundreds of years to break down. And even then, they just splinter into very small pieces called microplastics, which will likely never

Humanity has been climbing a treacherous path, and now, looking down from such great heights, our footprints are clear to see. In the middle of May, carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in our planet’s atmosphere climbed over and above 415 parts per million (ppm) for the first time since the dawn of our species. That was a

The world has learned many lessons from the Chernobyl disaster, a devastating nuclear power plant accident that recently rejoined our cultural conversation thanks to a new series on HBO. Though many elements of the disaster are still shrouded in mystery, we know a few things for certain: On April 26, 1986, the core of a nuclear

A doomsday ending to climate change is not inevitable, but the situation is becoming ever more desperate. Without immediate and drastic action, reminiscent of efforts during World War II, a new analysis predicts that by 2050, climate change could become an “existential threat to human civilisation” that can never be undone. The new report, co-written

Retelling the 1986 Chernobyl disaster is an exercise in unburying the truth. In the wake of the world’s worst nuclear power plant accident, which forced the city of Pripyat in what was then part of the Soviet Union to evacuate after being exposed to toxic levels of radiation, Soviet officials publicly downplayed the incident. To

In the crop fields of Argentina, bees have been building nests for their young out of some strange materials. For the first time, scientists have found bee nests made entirely out of plastic waste. A lot of plastic in the form of packaging comes into farms, and often makes its way into the landscape. The

Deep below the frozen wastelands of Antarctica, scientists have discovered ancient tectonic plate structures that are having a huge impact on melting patterns around the continent’s largest ice shelf. The hidden rock, in place for hundreds of millions of years, is controlling water flow around the gigantic Ross Ice Shelf. This shelf currently acts as

Tornadoes have been popping up every day in the US as if coming off an assembly line. They’re part of an explosion of extreme weather events, including record flooding, record cold and record heat. Wednesday brought more of the same, with tornado watches in the Midwest and Atlantic seaboard and 37 million Americans facing an

The citizens of St. Paul Island off the coast of Alaska are used to finding the occasional seabird washed up on the shore. But until recently, dead tufted puffins were rare finds, especially during the winter months. Now, something has changed. By the time January drew to a close in 2017, the number of puffin carcasses

Between 1990 and 2005, the Philippines lost 32.3 percent of its forest cover. Illegal logging has historically been a huge issue for the country, but now the Philippines House of Representatives has put forward a new way of dealing with the problem: a bill that requires students to plant 10 trees each before graduating. House Bill

Nature is constantly posing for that perfect shot. Many of us might be lucky to see it, but few are ever in the right position to capture the moment.  Canadian photographer Steve Biro happened to be at the right place at just the right time. The result is a stunning image of a bald eagle

Human bodies cannot function properly above a certain altitude. We work best at sea level, where oxygen levels are adequate for our brains and lungs. But if climbers want to summit Mount Everest, the tallest peak in the world at 29,029 feet (8,848 meters or 5.5 miles) above sea level, they have to brave what’s

One of the most profound similarities between Earth and Mars, one which makes it a popular target for research and exploration, is the presence of water ice on its surface (mainly in the form of its polar ice caps). But perhaps even more interesting is the presence of glaciers beneath the surface, which is something

With the death of Tam, the last male Sumatran rhino in Malaysia, another nail has been hammered into the species’ coffin. Now, only one female Sumatran rhino named Iman remains in the country, ending efforts to produce offspring. Tam fell ill in late April, losing his appetite and energy, and the decline was rapid. On

There are a handful of major science institutions around the world that keep track of the Earth’s temperature. They all clearly show that the world’s temperature has risen in the past few decades. One of those institutions is NASA. NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Science Studies (GISS) is located in New York City. Recently, they

Scientists have discovered a ‘unique archive’ of ocean water that still exists virtually undisturbed from the last Ice Age some 20,000 years ago. Palaeoceanography – which investigates the makeup of ancient oceans lost to history – invariably relies on proxy methods, since such bodies of water have inevitably long since disappeared. But if you have

Over the past few days a pair of spectacular fireballs have graced Australia’s skies. The first, in the early hours of Monday, May 20, flashed across the Northern Territory, and was seen from both Tennant Creek and Alice Springs, more than 500km apart. [embedded content] The second came two days later, streaking over South Australia

The window for climate action is closing before our very eyes, and as emissions continue to rise, researchers at Stanford are asking us to consider the lesser of two evils. In a new commentary, the authors propose a wild idea that would intentionally release more carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere, while getting rid of

The Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting. Scientists have known this for years, but they’re only now realising how quickly that melting is happening. Greenland’s ice is melting six times faster now than it was four decades ago; the ice sheet is sloughing off an average of 286 billion tons of ice per year. In

It’s been almost exactly one year since US scientists reported a mysterious surge in ozone-destroying chemicals, known as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). Banned in 1987 under the globally signed Montreal Protocol, there was only one explanation: somewhere out there, in an unknown location, someone must have gone rogue, setting back progress on the ozone hole by a

There’s no doubt we have too much plastic in our oceans, and it’s all our fault. But an unexpected source of support might help us to solve this terrible environmental problem: marine microbes that eat plastic, breaking the ubiquitous waste material down. In new research, an international team of scientists studied how microbial communities build

Hurricane season doesn’t start until June 1, but the National Hurricane Center announced Monday evening that Subtropical Storm Andrea had formed. Called a subtropical storm because it has a blend of both tropical and nontropical characteristics, it is packing peak winds of 40 mph (64 kilometres per hour). The storm could strengthen slightly through Tuesday

Between 1946 and 1958, the US government tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands. It later dumped radioactive waste from the tests into a crater on one of the islands, placing an 18-inch-thick concrete dome over the horrifying sludge. Because the crater was only supposed to be a temporary storage solution, the bottom of

Climate breakdown is already having a massively negative impact on the world’s wildlife, but it seems there are even more ways animals can be harmed by our negligence. Marine biologists have just demonstrated for the first time that low oxygen levels in the water can send marine invertebrates blind. With rising global temperatures already lowering

When Victor Vescovo’s submarine hit the floor of the Mariana Trench, it sent the sediment swirling. “At bottom,” the Texas businessman-turned-extreme-explorer said into his headset. “Repeat: at bottom”. In a control room more than 35,850 feet (10.9 km) above, Vescovo’s dive team clapped and cheered. Congratulations were in order: they had just set a record.

Did you know that there are forests in the Arctic? Lush underwater forests of large brown seaweeds (kelps) are particularly striking in the Arctic, especially in contrast to the land where ice scour (scraping of sea ice against the sea floor) and harsh climates leave the ground barren with little vegetation. Kelp forests have been

Reactor number four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant suffered an explosion during a technical test on April 26, 1986. As a result of the accident, in the then Soviet Union, more than 400 times more radiation was emitted than that released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima (Japan) in 1945. It remains the