Climate Change

Tokyo, Japan — Scientists investigating fungal biodiversity on glaciers undergoing rapid ice loss in the Canadian High Arctic have found that such glacier retreat is causing loss of habitat for fungi on glaciers. A paper describing the researchers’ findings appeared in the journal Sustainability on Jan. 29. From the plight of polar bears to unprecedented […]

Hong Kong — Using multiple high-resolution satellite datasets, researchers from the Department of Civil Engineering at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) and Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) found that tropical carbon loss has doubled over the past two decades due to excessive forest removal in the tropics. The tropics are an important […]

Cambridge, UK — Researchers have observed extremely high rates of melting at the bottom of the Greenland Ice Sheet, caused by huge quantities of meltwater falling from the surface to the base. As the meltwater falls, energy is converted into heat in a process like the hydroelectric power generated by large dams. An international team […]

Paris, France — Many mountain populations—in the Andes or Himalayas, for example—rely on glaciers for their water. Yet changes in glacial water reserves, like predictions of sea level rise, greatly depend on glacier volume and thickness, both of which have been poorly evaluated—until now. By analysing over 800,000 pairs of satellite images, researchers from the […]

Orono, Maine — Melting and sublimation on Mount Everest’s highest glacier due to human-induced climate change have reached the point that several decades of accumulation are being lost annually now that ice has been exposed, according to a University of Maine-led international research team that analyzed data from the world’s highest ice core and highest […]

Logan, UT — For many, an ideal forest is one that looks the same as it did before European colonizers arrived. As today’s forests are hit with disturbances like fire, drought, and insect invasions, restoration efforts often attempt to nudge the landscape back to this ‘natural’ state. But historical conditions are becoming increasingly hard to […]

Philadelphia, PA — If sperm can’t swim, life can’t go on. And a new study suggests that when evolution hit upon an effective strategy for making sperm move, it stuck with it.  A molecular pathway governing sperm motility is shared between corals, sea urchins, and even humans, according to research by a team from Penn’s […]

La Jolla, CA — Scientists have carefully studied the intricacies of how individual organisms live and act together in groups known as biological collectives. In “superorganisms” such as bee colonies, the interactions of the individual members add up to benefit the entire colony. Details have been elusive on how colonies make decisions in the face […]

New York, NY — Something big happened to the planet about a million years ago. There was a major shift in the response of Earth’s climate system to variations in our orbit around the Sun. The shift is called the Mid-Pleistocene Transition. Before the MPT, cycles between glacial (colder) and interglacial (warmer) periods happened every […]

Cambridge, UK — A study led by the University of Cambridge has found that periodic mass outbreaks of leaf-munching caterpillars can improve the water quality of nearby lakes – but may also increase the lakes’ carbon dioxide emissions. Outbreaks of caterpillars of invasive gypsy moths, Lymantria dispar dispar, and forest tent caterpillar moths, Malacasoma disstria […]

Durham, NC — It’s hard to know what climate change will mean for Earth’s interconnected and interdependent webs of life. But one team of researchers at Duke University says we might begin to get a glimpse of the future from just a few ounces of microbial soup. Every drop of pond water and teaspoon of […]

Berkeley, CA — Mountain snowpacks around the world are on the decline, and if the planet continues to warm, climate models forecast that snowpacks could shrink dramatically and possibly even disappear altogether on certain mountains, including in the western United States, at some point in the next century. A new study led by researchers at […]