It’s been snowing in Siberia. But instead of waking to a white winter wonderland, residents in Russia’s coal basin are living through a dark, industrial nightmare. Three separate cities within the coal-mining region of Kemerovo in southwest Siberia have been blanketed in a thick, black deluge of toxic snow, polluted by ever-present coal dust that

Soft, squishy, ancient spiders are hard to investigate – they don’t fossilise as easily as bones or exoskeletons. So you can imagine how excited researchers were to find 10 brand new spider fossils in a relatively unexplored area called the Jinju Formation. The Jinju Formation is a geological area of South Korea from the Mesozoic era,

An ambitious new analysis of the world’s forests found that there’s space to plant 1.2 trillion new trees – a number that would absorb more carbon than human emissions. According to the new data, ETH Zurich researcher Thomas Crowther told The Independent, trees are “our most powerful weapon in the fight against climate change.” Crowther

The Great Barrier Reef just can’t catch a break. Year after year, this global treasure has been battered by cyclones and beaten by bleaching events. Now, with little time to recover, a part of the reef is being kicked while its down. An exceptional year of rainfall in Queensland, Australia has caused a huge flood

Most of us have been caught out by weather forecasts that didn’t quite turn out as predicted, but today’s sophisticated models can make reasonably decent guesses up to 10 days in advance. Now a newly developed computing technique promises to push that limit out even further. If the system fulfils its initial promise, we could

“Nurdles” may sound cute but they pose a huge risk to the marine environment. Also known as “mermaid tears”, these small plastic pellets are a feedstock in the plastic industry. Instead of being converted into household items, many end up in the ocean, collecting toxins on their surfaces and being eaten by marine wildlife. Not

The seabed is not flat and smooth like the shimmering ocean above it. It’s a jagged, uneven landscape of submerged mountains and valleys, all hidden from sight – but not from science. By analysing the isotopic composition of the rocks that make up these underwater mountains networks – called mid-ocean ridges – scientists can identify

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle. It’s not enough. When it comes to the crisis of mounting plastic waste, we’re still coming up short on ways to plug the flow. Soon, we might be able to add ‘rewind’ to that list – thanks to a new technique for turning the polypropylene that makes up a proportion of plastic

Greenland is covered in one of the largest ice sheets on the planet, but underneath its frozen exterior, the landscape is more pockmarked than we once thought. Buried underneath two kilometres of ice, researchers think they have found a second huge impact crater, hiding in the northwest corner of the world’s largest island. As scientists

When you’re older, your hometown will feel different. That’s true for everybody. But for people living today, the changes will be impossible to ignore. We usually measure climate change in terms of rising temperatures. But scientists say there’s another way of thinking about it: spatial displacement. In a new study, researchers say cities in North

By now, you’ve probably heard that the Arctic is not doing so well. It’s warming faster than the rest of the world, blue lakes are bubbling with methane gas, and Arctic soils could be releasing carbon that’s been trapped there since ancient times. But there’s a sliver of good news – a new study suggests

Fences have risen around kindergartens. Special vehicles transport military personnel to their work sites. Residents of the island settlement are afraid to leave their homes. Novaya Zemlya is a Russian archipelago stretching into the Arctic Ocean. It once played host to Soviet nuclear tests, including the largest human-made explosion, when the “king of bombs” detonated

In recent years, scientists have been warning us about the disappearance of a type of creature we think we wouldn’t miss much – but the dramatic fall of insect numbers across the world has been driven into sharp focus by a new report which warns of a “catastrophic” collapse of natural ecosystems. A newly published

Prior to Columbus’s arrival in the Americas in 1492, the area boasted thriving indigenous populations totalling to more than 60 million people. A little over a century later, that number had dropped close to 6 million. European contact brought with it not only war and famine, but also diseases like smallpox that decimated local populations.

You know you’re a tough nut when the two options that could explain your continued existence are either having spent the last ice age in a cave buried by a sheet of ice, or having ‘fast’ travelled between continents in the last few tens of thousand years. But those are the two most likely stories

Some 115,000 years ago, Homo sapiens were still living in bands of hunter gatherers, largely confined to Africa. We still shared the globe with the Neanderthals, although it’s not clear we had met them yet. And though these various hominids didn’t know it, the Earth was coming to the end of a major warm period.

Humans are in the process of herding the world’s largest animals right over the brink of extinction, and the main driving force is our insatiable appetite for meat. It’s a dire warning, and it comes from the first analysis to look at how humans have impacted the world’s “megafauna”. Bringing together over 300 species of unusually

Five different organizations that track temperatures have all come to this conclusion: 2018 ranked among the five warmest years on record, landing in fourth place. All of them – NOAA, NASA, Berkeley Earth, the United Kingdom’s Hadley Centre and the Japan Meteorological Agency – crunched the numbers using different methods, but they each arrived at

The humble honeybee can use symbols to perform basic maths including addition and subtraction, shows new research published today in the journal Science Advances. Despite having a brain containing less than one million neurons, the honeybee has recently shown it can manage complex problems – like understanding the concept of zero. Honeybees are a high

It’s been an exciting week for scientists in Hawaii after a puffy, disturbing-looking ‘marshmallow’ of a whale carcass keeps coming back to land. On top of that, a famous great white shark has popped up nearby, having travelled all the way from Mexico. The poor, deceased sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) has been an unwelcome guest

By the end of the century, if not sooner, the world’s oceans will be bluer and greener thanks to a warming climate, scientists reported Monday. And while the shift in color will be all but imperceptible to the human eye, it could hint at the profound changes in store for a wide array of marine

While living under the path of aircraft is usually no cause for concern, you might want to keep an umbrella handy: a new study shows planes flying over patches of rain or snow can boost precipitation levels by as much as 14 times. This strange meteorological phenomenon is all down to the design of the

Four years ago, this island arose out of almost nothing: a sprawling formation of jutting rock popping up in the South Pacific, where once there were only waves. This unbelievable place – emerging in between two existing islands of the Kingdom of Tonga – has no official name, but the locals call it Hunga Tonga-Hunga

Extreme cold weather can produce unusual phenomena, from so-called sea smoke to slushy ocean waves. As atmospheric scientist Scott Denning explains, these striking events are caused mainly by the behavior of water at very cold temperatures. Why do lake and ocean waters appear to steam during cold snaps? There are three phases, or states, of

It may be the biggest wild card in the climate system. Scientists have long feared that the so-called “overturning” circulation in the Atlantic Ocean could slow down or even halt due to climate change – which would have enormous planetary consequences. But at the same time, researchers have a limited understanding of how the circulation

There aren’t many corners of the world left untouched by humanity. Recent research has highlighted that just 23 percent of the planet’s land surface (excluding Antarctica) and 13 percent of the ocean can now be classified as wilderness, representing nearly a 10 percent decline over the last 20 years. And more than 70 percent of what

On the evening of January 30, some Chicagoans were startled by seriously loud noises. It was difficult to pinpoint where they were coming from. Those noises probably weren’t gun shots or fireworks; although it hasn’t been confirmed by authorities, it’s most likely the people were experiencing a weird phenomenon known as ‘frost quakes’. These booming

With temperatures 50 degrees Fahrenheit below the freezing point of water (-46 degrees Celsius), the shoreline of Lake Michigan has turned into an icy winter wonderland that kind of makes you forget how bitterly, miserably cold it is outside. According to Tom Skilling, a longtime Chicago forecaster and WGN-TV’s chief meteorologist, Lake Michigan has never

Antarctica is not in a good place. In the space of only decades, the continent has lost trillions of tonnes of ice at alarming rates we can’t keep up with, even in places we once thought were safe. Now, a stunning new void has been revealed amidst this massive vanishing act, and it’s a big

The fact of the matter is I don’t know exactly how cold it got at my house today. The mercury thermometer on our porch only goes down to -30 degrees Fahrenheit (-34.4 Celsius). The digital thermometer in our backyard weather station bottoms out at -40 Fahrenheit (-40 Celsius). For roughly two hours on Wednesday this

New Yorkers looking out the window this afternoon were met with a windy wall of snow. That was a “snow squall” – a sudden onset of heavy snowfall accompanied by wind gusts. The National Weather Service (NWS) issued a snow-squall warning for residents of parts of New York and New England, advising them to limit travel and stay

Few national parks have been hit harder by the government shutdown than Joshua Tree National Park, a nearly 800,000-acre protected area in Southern California known for its rocky landscape and stunning throng of centuries-old trees. The number of people visiting the park has climbed continuously over the past several years. In 2017, it attracted about

Every spring in the Netherlands, the resident great tits (Parus major) build their nests in tree cavities, hatch their young, and send a new generation of fluffy little black-and-gold featherballs into the sky. Then along comes the pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), migrating from Africa for the summer, and taking up the abandoned nests to raise

In Australia, snakes sometimes slither into suburban backyards and homes. When the weather gets warm, they lounge in the sun. When it gets hot, they seek cool places: a wall crevice, under a refrigerator, under a barbecue grill, behind an air-conditioning unit. When it gets too hot and dry, they seek places with moisture, as

A record-breaking cold wave is sending literal shivers down the spines of millions of Americans. Temperatures across the upper Midwest are forecast to fall an astonishing 50 degrees Fahrenheit (28 degrees Celsius) below normal this week – as low as 35°F below zero. Pile a gusty wind on top, and the air will feel like

Climate change is pulling back the curtain and exposing an Arctic landscape not seen by the Sun in 40,000 years or more. Baffin Island is a rocky, frozen wonderland, located in the Arctic circle between Greenland and the northern coast of Canada. With its deep fjords and ancient glaciers, it’s the perfect place to study

The most severe outbreak of frigid arctic air in years is set to surge over the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes by the middle of next week. A large lobe of the polar vortex, the zone of frigid air winding around the North Pole, is breaking off, and temperatures will plunge as much as 40

No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy that it generates. The solar industry has been snagged on this branch for a while, but in the past year alone, a series of four papers has ushered in

Feeding a global population of 10 billion – the overwhelming number we’re predicted to hit by 2050 – will be extremely difficult, but scientists say it is not impossible. A radical new diet has the potential to improve public health, save countless lives, and protect our planet for future generations, according to a huge group of researchers.

Once sewage is drained of water, treated, and dried – what the heck do you do with it? Well, some of it ends up as fertiliser, but a massive 30 percent of our poop leftovers is sent to landfill to rot, or just sits in storage. What a waste. Especially when, according to researchers from

Sir David Attenborough has seen more of the planet and its wonders than most humans ever will. And on Monday, the famous naturalist and British television broadcaster warned that it had changed so rapidly and profoundly because of human-driven climate change that we risk destroying our earthly home. “The only conditions modern humans have ever

As climate change alters the world around us, scientists are warning that the impacts on groundwater reserves could take a century to catch up – which means it’ll be our grandchildren dealing with the fallout of the effects on their water supply. Groundwater – fresh water cached underground in soil and between rocks – takes

With another year on the horizon, millions of people on social media are partaking in a viral new craze. It’s called the #10YearChallenge, and the dare is simple: share two photos of yourself taken a decade apart and laugh at the contrast. It was all fun and games – until we involved the environment. Even

The future of coffee production is looking darker than the contents of your morning cup of joe. A deadly combination of climate change, disease and deforestation is gradually pushing a multi-billion-dollar industry right to the edge. Researchers at UK’s Kew Gardens have calculated that out of the 124 coffee species known to science, nearly 60

We’ve had chances. Lots of chances. But humanity has a history of squandering chances, despite everything we know about climate change. Despite everything riding on us addressing it. As it happens, the odds may still be in our favour. A new study estimates there’s a 64 percent chance that peak global average temperature rise can

It’s been compared to crop circles, or the strange handiwork of aliens. Others say it looks like the Moon, if it somehow materialised in the chilly waters of the Presumpscot River. But this massive churning formation in the city of Westbrook, Maine isn’t evidence of something from outer space, but rather a bizarre and brilliant

Every year, ocean waves are getting stronger and more destructive – and according to new research, it’s only going to get worse. A new study has found a correlation between warming oceans and wave size and strength, suggesting that the more things heat up, the more destructive our oceans will become. Ocean waves are built by the

Australia is sweltering through an intense heatwave this week that’s scorching the country from coast to coast with temperatures as high as 49.3 degrees Celsius (120.7 degrees Fahrenheit). In numerous locations, temperature records have already been broken, with minimum overnight temperatures in three towns of 33°C (91°F) showing even the night offers no escape from