Earth’s temperature has increased by 1°C over the past century, and most of this warming has been caused by carbon dioxide emissions. But what does that mean locally? A new study published in Nature Climate Change pinpoints the temperature increases caused by CO2 emissions in different regions around the world. Using simulation results from 12 global climate models, Damon Matthews, […]
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Ocean temperatures first collected during one of the great 19th-century voyages of exploration confirm one of the consequences of climate change: humans have managed to warm even the deepest parts of the ocean. A new study in Nature Climate Change calculates that the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean has doubled in the last 18 years. A third of […]
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Across the world, bats are in trouble from climate change – not only through collisions with the wind turbines that are intended to mitigate its effects, but from what the increasing warmth does to their ability to find their prey. Bats often get a bad press, portrayed as disease-spreading bloodsuckers. In fact, they perform a vital role as pollinators, seed […]
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The last study showed that the world has about 3 trillion trees. That is over the estimate of 400 billion in previous studies. Researchers did a count by actually going out and physically counting trees, using satellite imagery, ground survey, and national forest inventories. Even though we have lost trees from fires, drought, and insect outbreaks there are still more […]
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The largest solar storm since 2005 swept across the planet this week, forcing airlines to reroute flights and disrupting communications from global positioning satellites. This spontaneous blast of solar radiation may have affected power grids and high-frequency radio communications in the northern latitudes, said the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. A number of airlines, which route some U.S.-Asia flights over […]
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Results from a new climate reconstruction of how Antarctica’s ice sheets responded during the last period when atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) reached levels like those expected to occur in about 30 years, plus sediment core findings reported in a companion paper, suggest that the ice sheets are more vulnerable to rising atmospheric CO2 than previously thought. Details appear in two […]
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Global warming hits plateau. . . What does that mean for the threat of catastrophic climate change? Why has the warming trend slowed? Climatologists aren’t sure. What they do know is that the average air temperatures at the earth’s surface have risen only about 0.2 degrees Fahrenheit since 1998—the hottest year of the 20th century—even as humanity has continued to […]
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There’s no question that our species has had a dramatic impact on the planet’s physical environment, particularly over the last few centuries, with the rise of modern industry, transportation, and infrastructure. But as new research shows, humans have been transforming the landscape, with lasting impacts, since long before the start of the Industrial Era. Scientists from MIT and the University […]
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The warming of the world’s oceans is penetrating radar. They discovered two causing a glacier the size of California in massive undersea valleys beneath the East Antarctica to melt, and scientists fear ice sheet, one of which is 3 miles wide, its collapse could eventually cause global Those canyons allow warm, salty water sea levels to rise by as much […]
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A new NASA study on the Antarctic Ice Sheet says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers. The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that […]
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