Focus: Climate Channel Featured Story TOP

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An archeological dig in Italy reveals that prehistoric humans made it through a major natural disaster by cooperating with each other – and that's a lesson for our future.

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A range of less than one degree Fahrenheit (or half a degree Celsius) of climate warming over the next century could make all the difference when it comes to the probability of future ice-free summers in the Arctic.

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CSU faculty researchers find that marine plants could play a big role in reducing ocean acidification, a devastating side effect of climate change.

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A new paper by Northern Arizona University professor Andrew Richardson published in the journal Scientific Data describes a vast network of digital cameras designed to capture millions of images documenting seasonal changes of vegetation across North America.

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Forests across the United States—and especially forest soils—store massive amounts of carbon, offsetting about 10 percent of the country's annual greenhouse gas emissions and helping to mitigate climate change.

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Researchers from the University of Notre Dame warn climate change can not only influence the geographic distribution of a species in response to changing conditions — it could also affect the evolutionary trajectories of interbreeding species.

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A new study has found that for every $1 spent to exceed building codes and make new structures more hazard-resistant, society saves $4. Retrofitting saves $6. Doing both could prevent 600 deaths, 1 million injuries and 4,000 cases of post-traumatic stress disorder.

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New research by the University of Delaware and other institutions reveals that water over continental shelves is shouldering more atmospheric carbon dioxide, which may have implications for scientists studying how much carbon dioxide can be released into the atmosphere while keeping warming limited.

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Tiny particles fuel powerful storms and influence weather much more than has been appreciated, according to a study in the Jan. 26 issue of the journal Science. The tiny pollutants – long considered too small to have much impact on droplet formation – are, in effect, diminutive downpour-makers.

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Different kinds of aerosols released into the atmosphere can affect cloud formations and influence weather patterns, according to a team of researchers that includes a Texas A&M University atmospheric scientist.

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Facing a climate crisis, we may someday spray sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere to form a cloud that cools the Earth, but suddenly stopping the spraying would have a severe global impact on animals and plants, according to the first study on the potential biological impacts of geoengineering, or climate intervention.

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New research from a Florida State University scientist has revealed a surprising relationship between surging atmospheric carbon dioxide and flower blooms in a remote tropical forest.

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Organisms infected by parasites may respond differently to changes in temperature than their uninfected counterparts, according to new research from the University of Georgia.

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A study from University of Utah atmospheric scientist Tim Garrett and colleagues finds that the air in the Arctic is extraordinarily sensitive to air pollution, and that particulate matter may spur Arctic cloud formation. These clouds, Garrett writes, can act as a blanket, further warming an already-changing Arctic.

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It may take until the 2060s to know how much the sea level will rise by the end of this century, according to a new Rutgers University–New Brunswick-led analysis. The study is the first to link global and local sea-level rise projections with simulations of two major mechanisms by which climate change can affect the vast Antarctic ice sheet.

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Global temperatures drop; November still warm

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Major clusters of summertime thunderstorms in North America will grow larger, more intense, and more frequent later this century in a changing climate

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Volcanism is sometimes like food poisoning, where the Earth spews forth unstable material. New research from Michigan Technological University, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh and ETH Zurich shows that a significant pulse of volatile carbon was released from the Earth’s mantle around 500 million years ago. But why?

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A new study co-authored by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) addresses concerns over the many Arctic shorebird populations in precipitous decline. Evident from the study is that monitoring and protection of habitat where the birds breed, winter, and stopover is critical to their survival and to that of a global migration spectacle.

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One of the saltiest bodies on Earth, an analog to how water might exist on Mars, shows signs of being one piece of a larger aquifer.

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Cornell landscape architecture graduate students are wrestling with Coney Island’s tenable, livable resilience in the face of nature aiming to reclaim the island. By semester’s end, the students will develop 36 ways to keep Coney Island inhabitants happy.

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Using a sophisticated computer model, scientists have demonstrated for the first time that a new research approach to geoengineering could potentially be used to limit Earth’s warming to a specific target while reducing some of the risks and concerns identified in past studies, including uneven cooling of the globe.

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Human disturbance of tropical rainforests in Madagascar including wildfires, burning and timber exploitation, have led to reduced rainfall and a longer dry season, further pushing the already critically endangered Greater Bamboo Lemur to the brink of extinction.

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Financial losses could increase by more than 70 percent by 2100 if oceans warm at the worst-case-scenario rate predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, according to a new study. The study used hurricane modeling and information in FEMA's HAZUS database to reach its conclusions.

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A team of researchers discovered persistent dry and warm biases in the central U.S. that was caused by poor modeling of atmospheric convective systems Their findings call for better calculations with global climate models.

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When a normally cold stream in Iceland was warmed, the make-up of life inside changed as larger organisms thrived while smaller ones struggled. The findings carry implications for life in a warming climate.

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Explosive volcanic eruptions in the tropics can lead to El Niño events, those notorious warming periods in the Pacific Ocean with dramatic global impacts on the climate, according to a new study.

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A hardy ocean drone made a first-ever attempt to surf across Antarctica’s stormy Drake Passage gathering data about ocean mixing.

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Hidden in plain sight – that’s how researchers describe their discovery of a new genus of large forest tree commonly found, yet previously scientifically unknown, in the tropical Andes. Researchers from the Smithsonian and Wake Forest University detailed their findings in a study just released the journal PhytoKeys.

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Using FEWSion, a new mapping system funded by the National Science Foundation that allows scientists to quickly analyze changing information, a team of researchers were able to see how Hurricane Harvey will impact food and energy production and determine how the water supply aligns and interacts.

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Coral skeletons are the building blocks of diverse coral reef ecosystems, which has led to increasing concern over how these key species will cope with warming and acidifying oceans that threaten their stability. New research provides evidence that at least one species of coral build their hard, calcium carbonate skeletons faster, and in bigger pieces, than previously thought.

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In recent decades, change has defined our environment in the United States. But, says a new University of Wisconsin-Madison study, while those changes usually result in poor water quality, lakes have surprisingly stayed the same.

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A new study from Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis validates that the central core of the East Antarctic ice sheet should remain stable even if the West Antarctic ice sheet melts.

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In a new paper published in Nature, Research Assistant Professor Christopher Schwalm of NAU’s Center for Ecosystem Science and Society (Ecoss) shares the results of a study investigating the impact of more frequent droughts on ecosystem resiliency—and how this phenomenon could endanger the land carbon sink.

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July 2017 Global Temperature Report

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An endangered bat species with a UK population of less than 1,000 could be further threatened by the effects of global warming, according to a new study led by the University of Southampton.

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A new UW statistical study shows only 5 percent chance that Earth will warm less than 2 degrees, what many see as a "tipping point" for climate, by the end of this century.

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Human-caused habitat loss looms as the greatest threat to some North American breeding birds over the next few decades. The problem will be most severe on their wintering grounds, according to a new study published in the journal Global Change Biology.

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A new Northwestern University study suggests that paying people to conserve their trees could be a highly cost-effective way to reduce deforestation and carbon emissions and should be a key part of the global strategy to fight climate change.

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A new integrated climate model developed by Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other institutions is designed to reduce uncertainties in future climate predictions as it bridges Earth systems with energy and economic models and large-scale human impact data.

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Unmitigated climate change will make the United States poorer and more unequal, according to a new study published today in the journal Science. The poorest third of counties could sustain economic damages costing as much as 20 percent of their income if warming proceeds unabated. States in the South and lower Midwest, which tend to be poor and hot already, will lose the most, with economic opportunity traveling northward and westward. Colder and richer counties along the northern border and in the Rockies could benefit the most as health, agriculture and energy costs are projected to improve.

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Climate change from rising levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) is having two major effects in our seas - global warming and ocean acidification - and the combination of these threats is affecting marine life from single organisms to species communities.

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Urban climatologist Ariane Middel is developing a new tool to stay cool.

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Teamwork provides insight into complicated cloud processes that are important to potential environmental changes in the Arctic.

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An analysis of stalagmite records from White Moon Cave in the Santa Cruz Mountains shows that 8200 years ago the California coast underwent 150 years of exceptionally wet and stormy weather. It is the first high resolution record of how the Holocene cold snap affected the California climate.

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An area of West Antarctica more than twice the size of California partially melted in 2016 when warm winds forced by an especially strong El Niño blew over the continent, an international group of researchers has determined.

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Researchers at Tulane University have developed a subsidence map of coastal Louisiana, putting the rate at which this region is sinking at just over one third of an inch per year.

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Global Temperature Report: May 2017