Bill Johnson visits Round Spot 9 in Great Salt Lake’s Farmington Bay. His team of University of Utah geologists is monitoring fresh groundwater that is emerging on the lake’s exposed playa, forming strange mounds in numerous places. Credit: Brian Maffly, University of Utah As Great Salt Lake’s levels continue to …
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More phytoplankton in Southern Ocean can help combat global warming
Credit: One Earth (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.oneear.2025.101354 New international research led by Professors Willy Baeyens and Yue Gao of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), published in One Earth, demonstrates that plankton is not only the basis of the marine food chain but also a crucial natural ally in combating global warming. …
How a slight change in weather could have made Germany’s deadly floods even worse
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain The devastating floods that killed nearly 200 people in Germany four years ago could have been even more damaging, new research suggests. The floods in July 2021 were among the worst disasters in German history. At least 196 people died in Germany, 43 people died in …
Swiss glaciers hit annual tipping point weeks early
Huss and colleagues on the Gries glacier in 2022. The snow and ice accumulated last winter by Switzerland’s glaciers has already melted away, a monitoring service said, with Friday marking the alarming second-earliest arrival on record of the tipping point known as glacier loss day. All further melting between now …
Arctic Ocean remained open to life during ice ages, study suggests
By analyzing ancient ocean seafloor sediments and running detailed climate simulations, the research team found no evidence for the presence of a thick ice shelf. Instead, this study paints a picture of an Arctic that despite being cold and icy, still had open water areas that allowed for biological activity …
Hydrothermal systems may have supplied essential phosphorus for early life
Schematic image of this study. Credit: Tsukamoto and Kakegawa et al. Understanding where and in what quantities essential elements for life have existed on Earth’s surface helps explain the origin and evolution of life. Phosphorus is one such element, forming the backbone of DNA, RNA, and cellular membranes. On Earth’s …
New fossils from Earth’s most famous extinction show climate tipping point was crossed
Pre-extinction tropical rainforest seed fern, Gigantopteris, (giant leaves). Credit: Dr Zhen Xu. The collapse of tropical forests during Earth’s most catastrophic extinction event was the primary cause of the prolonged global warming which followed, according to new research. The Permian–Triassic Mass Extinction—sometimes referred to as the “Great Dying,” happened around …
Everglades ecosystems show mixed reactions to rising sea levels
Yale School of Environment scientists conduct research in 2021 on how sea-level rise and other disturbance are influencing the health of mangroves in the Florida Everglades, including their ability to sequester carbon. Credit: Malone Disturbance Ecology Lab Scientists have discovered that changes in climate and water levels are reducing the …
Study reveals uneven land sinking across New Orleans, raising flood-risk concerns
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain Parts of New Orleans and its surrounding wetlands are gradually sinking, and while most of the city remains stable, a new study from Tulane University researchers suggests that sections of the region’s $15 billion post-Katrina flood protection system may need regular upgrades to outpace long-term land …
Tiny ocean migrants play a massive role in Southern Ocean carbon storage, study finds
A schematic representation of our calculations of the seasonal vertical carbon transport by mesozooplankton, krill, and salps during winter of the Southern Ocean. Credit: Limnology and Oceanography (2025). DOI: 10.1002/lno.70120 A new study has revealed that small but mighty zooplankton—including copepods, krill, and salps—are key players in the Southern Ocean’s …
Tech giants’ net zero goals verging on fantasy: Researchers
AI is driving a rapid increase in energy use in the tech sector, and the CO2 emissions that come with it. The credibility of climate pledges by the world’s tech giants to rapidly become carbon neutral is fading fast as they devour more and more energy in the race to …
How crushed stone could help fight climate change
Indian laborers pluck tea leaves at a plantation. From sugar plantations in Brazil to tea estates in India, crushed rock is being sprinkled across large stretches of farmland globally in a novel bid to combat climate change. The technique is called enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and aims to speed up …
Analysis casts doubt on ancient drying of northern Africa’s climate, raising new questions about early human evolution
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain A study led by researchers from Brown University finds that rainfall patterns across northern Africa remained largely stable between 3.5 and 2.5 million years ago—a pivotal period in Earth’s climate history when the Northern Hemisphere cooled and places like Greenland became permanently glaciated. The new findings, …
Strange Atlantic cold spot linked to century-long slowdown of major ocean current
Atlantic sea surface temperature trend between 1900-2005 (color shading in °C) for the average of six observation datasets. Credit: Kai-Yuan Li/UCR For more than a century, a patch of cold water south of Greenland has resisted the Atlantic Ocean’s overall warming, fueling debate among scientists. A new study identifies the …
Marine snow provides new clues about the export of carbon to the deep sea
Marine snow—a mixture of dead plankton, waste, mucus, and other organic material slowly sinking from the ocean’s surface—is an important, but poorly understood, part of the ocean carbon cycle. Credit: Colleen Durkin As Earth’s largest carbon reservoir, the ocean locks carbon away from the atmosphere. However, scientists still struggle to …
Global carbon emissions on track to exhaust 1.5°C budget in three years, study warns
Credit: CC0 Public Domain The central estimate of the remaining carbon budget for 1.5°C is 130 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) (from the beginning of 2025). This would be exhausted in a little more than three years at current levels of CO2 emissions, according to the latest Indicators of …
Tree rings reveal increasing rainfall seasonality in the Amazon
Extreme river flood levels reach several meters depth, as indicated by the darker shade on the bark of this tree from seasonally flooded forests. Credit: Bruno B L Cintra, University of Birmingham Scientists have used clues locked into tree rings to reveal major changes in the Amazon’s rainfall cycle over …
Carbon dioxide removal methods could worsen marine oxygen loss, study warns
Schematic of the different marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) methods discussed in this study. Pink shading indicates possible reduction in dissolved oxygen resulting from the respective open-ocean biotic mCDR activity via enhanced respiration in the water column, green shading for iron fertilization and artificial upwelling indicates fertilization-induced enhanced photosynthesis in …
Researchers track smaller air pollution particles across US skies
Researchers at WashU determined the concentration of submicron particulate matter over the United States, with the darker red areas holding higher concentrations. These are the smallest particles of air pollution, which could make them more detrimental to human health. Credit: Atmospheric Composition Analysis Group Air pollution causes health problems and …
NASA sensor on space station eyes contamination off California coast
True color Sentinel-2 image of the Tijuana River Estuary and coastal ocean. This image (collected on 24 March 2023) captures a wastewater plume. Location of field deployed spectroradiometer is indicated with a yellow star. Credit: Science of The Total Environment (2025). DOI: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2025.179598 An instrument built at NASA’s Jet Propulsion …
