Environment

A NASA satellite captured harrowing images of carbon monoxide in the atmosphere due to the wildfires that continue to rage in the Amazon rainforest. NASA collected new data from their Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) instrument, measuring levels of carbon monoxide at an altitude of 18,000 feet (5,500 meters) from August 8 to 22, according to

Up to 800,000 hectares of the unique Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground in Bolivia between August 18 and August 23. That’s more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years. Experts say that it will take at least two centuries to repair the ecological damage done by the fires, while

The “lungs of the planet” are burning. As thousands of fiery infernos rage across the Amazon rainforest, tropical vegetation, trees, and the fauna they house are being razed. Since August 15, more than 9,500 new forest fires have started across Brazil, primarily in the Amazon basin. This year so far, scientists have recorded more than

A vibrant pinkish-coloured seaweed that grows in temperate tropical waters could end up being a huge aid in reducing greenhouse gases, if scientists in Australia have their way. Researchers are currently looking into ways to sustainably mass-produce the crimson-hued algae – called Asparagopsis taxiformis – after a study five years ago demonstrated it almost completely

America under President Trump might not own Greenland (yet), but decisions made by his administration will help determine the ice-covered island’s long-term fate and ours. US emissions of greenhouse gases, as well as emissions from other countries, have tipped the balance to make Greenland a major contributor to global sea-level rise. It’s no secret that

When it comes to harnessing renewable wind energy, the European Union is not even close to reaching its full potential, according to a new study. If a wind turbine was placed on every suitable spot of land, research shows it could provide more than 100 times the wind energy currently produced on shore. Calculated at

The simulations have been run, and it’s official: even today, a nuclear war between the US and Russia would plunge the planet into a nuclear winter, with clouds of soot and smoke covering the planet. Globally, temperatures would plunge by around 9 Kelvin (9 degrees Celsius or 16 degrees Fahrenheit) on average, due to the

A dramatically changing climate is going to have a lot of negative side effects we didn’t predict, and scientists have just found a new one: really cranky spiders. A heating climate may or may not increase the frequency of tropical storms, but it probably will make them more intense. Scientists are also predicting an increase

Scientists in the US have flown directly through an exceedingly rare atmospheric phenomenon known as a ‘fire cloud’ – and they captured the unique, “otherworldly” moment on camera. Researchers with NASA and the NOAA were investigating smoke produced by the Williams Flats wildfire in Washington when they seized the opportunity to fly inside the rare

Death came swiftly for Aldo Machado’s honey bees. Less than 48 hours after the first Apis mellifera showed signs of sickness, tens of thousands lay dead, their bodies piled in mounds. “As soon as the healthy bees began clearing the dying bees out of the hives, they became contaminated,” said Machado, vice president of Brazil’s Rio

In 1901, a geological map of Iceland’s Central Highlands depicted the Okjökull glacier as a large swathe of ice spanning 38 square kilometres. By 1945 it had shrunk to just 5 square kilometres. Not long after 2005, it was all but gone. In 2014, Okjökull lost its glacier status; now, it’s just a shield volcano

Plastic pollution has reached the Antarctic wilderness. It’s at Earth’s highest peak, and its deepest chasm. And yet, the extent of this insidious plague can still take us by surprise. According to new research, plastic has now turned up camouflaged as ordinary pebbles. These small chunks of plastic – called pyroplastics – are created when

In its new special report on climate change and land, the IPCC calls for more effective and sustainable land management, and more sustainable food consumption. But who is the onus on to go vegetarian, or look after land better? You, me, the “global elite”? The world’s poorest people, or perhaps the many millions of newly-wealthy

Data from thousands of surface monitoring stations worldwide, including ocean buoys in the Pacific and land-based thermometers dotting the continents, show that July 2019 was the warmest month on Earth since at least 1850. Berkeley Earth, an independent climate monitoring and research organization, released data Thursday showing last month beat August 2016 for the title

Greenland is known for its glaciers, but in the past month, the island has shed ice and taken on fire. Scientists didn’t expect to see Greenland melt at this rate for another 50 years: By the last week of July, the melting had reached levels that climate models projected for 2070 in the most pessimistic

While a team of researchers from the US Geological Survey (USGS) was analysing rainwater samples for nitrogen pollution, they found something they weren’t expecting – plastic. In a new report, aptly titled “It is raining plastic”, the team explain that plastics were identified in over 90 percent of the rainwater samples they took at eight different

You may have heard the tired argument that if carbon dioxide levels are going up, it’s going to be great for boosting the growth of trees. It’s true – to an extent. But there’s a really important detail we must not miss. Plants, including trees, are growing faster thanks to what is known as the

From a sizzling scorcher in the South to severe storms in the east and Mid-Atlantic, a ring of fire weather pattern will bring summer hazards to more than 40 million Americans for the first part of this week. Heat alerts stretch more than 1,000 miles from San Angelo, Texas, to Jacksonville, Florida, a region where

The world cannot avoid the worst impacts of climate change without making serious changes to the ways humans grow food, raise livestock and manage forests, according to a landmark study Thursday from an international group of scientists. The sprawling report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) examines how land use around the

Turkish Airlines Flight 1 had just 45 minutes left in its eight-hour-plus journey from Istanbul to New York on March 10, when the Boeing 777 suddenly shook violently and plunged, injuring passengers and members of the flight crew. The plane made an emergency landing at John F. Kennedy International Airport, where 28 passengers and two

In a desperate attempt to re-freeze the Arctic, designers have proposed a wacky and futuristic iceberg-making submarine. By bringing together a fleet of these huge vessels, the team hopes to create new ice fields that will ultimately help balance polar ecosystems. The radical geoengineering proposal was recently awarded second prize in an international competition organised

There are precious few places left in the United States where you can still view a “pristine” night sky, according to a new study in the Journal of Environmental Management. Situated far from the glare of city and small town lights, these places offer the same unimpeded view of the cosmos that our ancestors saw

Within the past hundred years, water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of the human population. As water supplies continue to shrink, some parts of the world are facing a looming crisis. As of 2019, 17 countries in total are now experiencing “extremely high” levels of baseline water stress, according to

We all know that Antarctica’s ice is melting into the ocean faster than ever, but we haven’t had a lot of information on how exactly that ice makes its way across the continent. A team of scientists has now pored over decades of satellite data to change this, and have developed the most precise map of

How much can you learn from a microscopic drop of ancient seawater? More than you might think, a new study shows. Researchers have analysed a series of such drops and arrived at an estimate that the process that underpins Earth’s plate tectonics may have started some 600 million years earlier than previously thought. Plate tectonics – the

July was likely the hottest month in recorded history, according to new data from the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) released last Thursday. According to the report, findings from the Copernicus Climate Change Program indicate that temperatures recorded in the first 29 days of July were as hot or marginally hotter than the previous record month,

A Canadian surveillance plane was scanning the waters of Gulf of St. Lawrence when it made a grisly discovery: The carcass of a North Atlantic right whale, one of some 400 remaining in the world, was drifting in the current, much of its skin sloughed off. From there, the news would only get worse. The

When one thinks of Greenland, images of an icebound, harsh and forbidding landscape probably come to mind, not a landscape of ice pocked with melt ponds and streams transformed into raging rivers. And almost certainly not one that features wildfires. Yet the latter description is exactly what Greenland looks like today, according to imagery shared

Not every volcanic eruption is a Mount Vesuvius-like catastrophe, with rivers of fire and flying rock that rains down on unsuspecting Pompeiians. Sometimes, volcanoes’ summits collapse, forming miles-wide depressions called calderas, which are peppered by eruptive vents. When rivulets of magma force their way out of these vents, those small eruptions can spew dangerous amounts

Spare a thought for the Juan de Fuca tectonic plate, not long for this world (in tectonic plate terms) as it slowly slides under the continent of North America. Geologists are hoping it can help solve one of the biggest mysteries in their field – how tectonic plates die. The Juan de Fuca plate is

The probable culprit behind a mysterious cloud of radioactive particles detected floating above much of Europe in 2017 appears to have been identified. The radiation spike – in the form of an extremely high airborne concentration of the radioactive isotope ruthenium–106 – was detected by scientists in October 2017, but the source of the dramatic

Over 200 Svalbard reindeer have been found dead on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. That’s one of the highest recorded death tolls since population monitoring commenced in 1978, and scientists believe climate change played a key role. According to a report on the Norwegian Polar Institute’s website, the reindeer (Rangifer tarandus platyrhynchus) suffered a lean

If this headline looks familiar to you, that’s because we wrote an almost identical one in 2016. Except back then, we were freaking out because we’d used a year’s worth of Earth’s resources by August 8. Now, three years later, we’ve accomplished this worrying milestone more than a week earlier. This year, July 29th marks Earth

The warmer it gets, the more people crank up the air conditioning (AC). In fact, AC is booming in nations across the world: it’s predicted that around two thirds of the world’s households could have an air conditioner by 2050, and the demand for energy to cool buildings will triple. But unless the energy comes

If you think climate change is only gradually affecting our natural systems, think again. Our research, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, looked at the large-scale impacts of a series of extreme climate events on coastal marine habitats around Australia. We found more than 45 percent of the coastline was already affected by extreme weather

I am a scientist who researches climate hazards. This week I have published research on the potential for a catastrophic cyclone-heatwave combo in the global south. Yet over the past few days I have been approached by various media outlets to talk not about that hazard, but about the unfolding UK heatwave and climate change.

The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and after the hottest June ever recorded on Earth, the region is literally on fire. From Greenland to Siberia to Alaska, huge swathes of flame and smoke are wrapping themselves around the upper Northern Hemisphere of our planet, like a suffocating scarf.

A historic heat wave is bringing unprecedented temperatures to Western Europe, and is poised to expand northeastward to Scandinavia and into the Arctic by late this weekend. Once above the Arctic Circle, the weather system responsible for this heat wave could accelerate the loss of sea ice, which is already running at a record low

Over the past two millennia, the world’s climate has gone through its fair share of ups and downs, but what is happening right now stands out in stark contrast. Two new papers have demonstrated that peak warming and cooling events before the Industrial era – such as the so-called Little Ice Age and the Medieval

This month the world has been celebrating the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the Moon. But this week sees another scientific anniversary, perhaps just as important for the future of civilisation. Forty years ago, a group of climate scientists sat down at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts for the first meeting

In 1901, a geological map of Iceland’s Central Highlands depicted the Okjökull glacier as a large swathe of ice spanning 38 square kilometres. By 1945 it had shrunk to just 5 square kilometres. Not long after 2005, it was all but gone. In 2014, Okjökull lost its glacier status; now, it’s just a shield volcano with no glacial

Cigarette butts left in grass and soil can harm nearby plant growth, according to a new study. The study led by Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England found that a cigarette butt can cut down the germination, or development, of plants, adding to concerns about discarded cigarette remnants as an under-acknowledged, but widespread, pollutant. Cigarette

A massive 19th century storm in the pacific United States opened up a 300-mile-long (480-km-long) sea that stretched through much of the central part of California. And it looks like the state is due for another megaflood. For 43 days, from late 1861 to early 1862, it rained almost nonstop in central California. Rivers running down

The giant West Antarctic Ice Sheet is at a tipping point, scientists have warned, and it’s going to take something dramatic to save it from complete collapse – something like blowing 7.4 trillion tons of artificial snow on top of it. That’s the conclusion of a new study into how the destabilisation of the ice

Coral reefs are one of the most threatened ecosystems on our planet, and in the past two decades alone, half of the coral in Florida has died off completely. Global warming is known to be a deadly factor, but rising ocean temperatures are only part of the story. Thirty years of research in the Looe

Seeing countless renewable energy records broken and milestones passed has been a constant source of encouraging news for our planet. Now, we have yet another impressive stat to celebrate: in the first half of 2019, Scotland generated enough energy from wind power to supply its homes twice over. Specifically, turbines generated 9.8 million megawatt-hours of electricity between January

Those who persist in denying the reality of human-caused climate change have resorted to scraping the very bottom of the barrel. Last week, climate deniers at several blogs and news outlets jumped on a new “paper” that supposedly “proves” the vast majority of climate scientists are wrong. Except, according to a scientific review from the

 A team of Russian and Norwegian scientists just made a grim, timely discovery. Just one week after a nuclear-powered Russian submarine caught fire, killing 14 sailors, researchers sent a remote submarine to collect samples around the sunken wreckage of another nuclear sub, which caught fire in 1989 leading to the deaths of 42 crew members.