Earth’s oldest known wildfires raged 430 million years ago
Bits of charcoal entombed in ancient rocks unearthed in Wales and Poland push back the earliest evidence for wildfires to around 430 million years ago.…
Bits of charcoal entombed in ancient rocks unearthed in Wales and Poland push back the earliest evidence for wildfires to around 430 million years ago.…
Antarctica’s Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers are losing ice more quickly than they have at any time in the last few thousand years, ancient penguin…
Earthquakes have rocked the planet for eons. Studying the quakes of old could help scientists better understand modern tremors, but tools to do such work…
Winds howl at over 300 kilometers per hour, battering at a two-story wooden house and ripping its roof from its walls. Then comes the water.…
Cooler, higher locales may not be very welcoming to some hummingbirds trying to escape rising temperatures and other effects of climate change. Anna’s hummingbirds live…
In the unceasing battle against dust, humans possess a deep arsenal of weaponry, from microfiber cloths to feather dusters to vacuum cleaners. But new research…
In 2007, 22-year-old P. Ramesh’s groundnut farm was losing money. As was the norm in most of India (and still is), Ramesh was using a…
Massive earthquakes don’t just move the ground — they make speed-of-light adjustments to Earth’s gravitational field. Now, researchers have trained computers to identify these tiny…
No matter how you slice it, climate change will alter what we eat in the future. Today, just 13 crops provide 80 percent of people’s…
“Fungi Fridays” could save a lot of trees — and take a bite out of greenhouse gas emissions. Eating one-fifth less red meat and instead…
One common chemical in sunscreen can have devastating effects on coral reefs. Now, scientists know why. Sea anemones, which are closely related to corals, and…
The food we eat is responsible for an astounding one-third of global greenhouse gas emissions caused by human activities, according to two comprehensive studies published…
Earth’s crust may have gone on the move roughly 3.8 billion years ago. A change in the chemistry of ancient zircon crystals from different bygone…
Coastal cities around the globe are sinking by up to several centimeters per year, on average, satellite observations reveal. The one-two punch of subsiding land…
With soils rich for cultivation, most land in the Midwestern United States has been converted from tallgrass prairie to agricultural fields. Less than 0.1 percent…
Climate change amped up the rains that pounded southeastern Africa and killed hundreds of people during two powerful storms in early 2022. But a dearth…
It doesn’t have to be this way. The world already has the know-how and tools to dramatically reduce emissions from fossil fuels — but we…
It was one of the biggest climate change questions of the early 2000s: Had the planet’s rising fever stalled, even as humans pumped more heat-trapping…
When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick up their trees. Tropical forests help cool the average global temperature…
The first global atlas of ocean light pollution shows that large swaths of the sea are squinting in the glare of humans’ artificial lights at…
Even in a world increasingly battered by weather extremes, the summer 2021 heat wave in the Pacific Northwest stood out. For several days in late…
The powerful impact that created a mysterious crater at the northwestern edge of Greenland’s ice sheet happened about 58 million years ago, researchers report March…
For thousands of years, members of the Kitasoo/Xai’xais First Nation in Canada have prized the mountain goats that roam the craggy peaks of British Columbia’s…
Octopuses living in the deep sea off the coast of California are breeding far faster than expected. The animals lay their eggs near geothermal springs,…
Neither adaptation by humankind nor mitigation alone is enough to reduce the risk from climate impacts, hundreds of the world’s scientists say. Nothing less than…
A bevy of craters formed by material blasted from the carving of another, larger crater — a process dubbed secondary cratering — have finally been…
Sunlight may have helped remove as much as 17 percent of the oil slicking the surface of the Gulf of Mexico following the 2010 Deepwater…
A quirky material that behaves like a mishmash of liquid and solid could be hidden deep in the Earth. Computer simulations described in two studies…
In the cold, dark depths of the Arctic Ocean, a feast of the dead is under way. A vast community of sponges, the densest group…
A small number of “ultra-emitters” of methane from oil and gas production contribute as much as 12 percent of emissions of the greenhouse gas to…
Yesterday’s scorching ocean extremes are today’s new normal. A new analysis of surface ocean temperatures over the past 150 years reveals that in 2019, 57…
On January 15, an underwater volcano in the island nation of Tonga erupted with the explosive force of a nuclear bomb, and it may not…
Extremes in rainfall — whether intense drought or flash floods — can catastrophically slow the global economy, researchers report in the Jan. 13 Nature. And…
Avalanches of ash, gas and rock that cascade downhill during volcanic eruptions may be even more dangerous than scientists had realized. Pulses of high pressure…
What’s in a number? The goals of the 2021 United Nations’ climate summit in Glasgow, Scotland, called for nations to keep a warming limit of…
Some of the world’s volcanic hot spots may be fueled by molten material that originates surprisingly close to Earth’s surface. While some of the hottest…
Africa’s “Great Green Wall” initiative is a proposed 8,000-kilometer line of trees meant to hold back the Sahara from expanding southward. New climate simulations looking…
Sterility gene for mosquito control — Science News, December 18, 1971 Scientists are working hard to find a substitute for DDT in the control of…
NEW ORLEANS — Warmer winters could make twisters more powerful. Though tornadoes can occur in any season, the United States logs the greatest number of…
The demise of a West Antarctic glacier poses the world’s biggest threat to raise sea levels before 2100 — and an ice shelf that’s holding…
No one likes a cheater, especially one that prospers as easily as the grass Bromus tectorum does in the American West. This invasive species is…
The Southern Ocean is still busily absorbing large amounts of the carbon dioxide emitted by humans’ fossil fuel burning, a study based on airborne observations…
When it comes to storing carbon in the ground, fungi may be key. Soils are a massive reservoir of carbon, holding about three times as…
Hurricane Lizards and Plastic SquidThor HansonBasic Books, $28 As a conservation biologist, Thor Hanson has seen firsthand the effects of climate change on plants and…
A surprising amount of plastic pollution in the ocean may wind up in a previously overlooked spot: the skeletons of living corals. Up to about…
Environmental advertising: A question of integrity— Science News, November 27, 1971 A new report published by the Council on Economic Priorities clearly outlines facts showing…
When it comes to fidelity, birds fit the bill: Over 90 percent of all bird species are monogamous and — mostly — stay faithful, perhaps…
It’s hard to imagine what Earth might look like in 2500. But a collaboration between science and art is offering an unsettling window into how…
Over decades, centuries and millennia, the steady skyward climb of redwoods, the tangled march of mangroves along tropical coasts and the slow submersion of carbon-rich…
Scattered across a swath of the Atacama Desert in Chile lie twisted chunks of black and green glass. How the glass ended up there, sprinkled…
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