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.…
Category: Earth
Ancient penguin bones reveal unprecedented shrinkage in key Antarctic glaciers
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…
Ancient zircons offer insights into earthquakes of the past
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…
Scientists hope to mimic the most extreme hurricane conditions
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.…
High altitudes may be a climate refuge for some birds, but not these hummingbirds
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…
Biocrusts reduce global dust emissions by 60 percent
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…
Farmers in India cut their carbon footprint with trees and solar power
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…
Machine learning and gravity signals could rapidly detect big earthquakes
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…
These six foods may become more popular as the planet warms
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…
Replacing some meat with microbial protein could help fight climate change
“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…
How some sunscreens damage coral reefs
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…
How much does eating meat affect nations’ greenhouse gas emissions?
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…
Ancient zircons may record the dawn of plate tectonics
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
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…
More than 57 billion tons of soil have eroded in the U.S. Midwest
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 intensified deadly storms in Africa in early 2022
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…
A UN report says stopping climate change is possible but action is needed now
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…
A global warming pause that didn’t happen hampered climate science
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…
Forests help reduce global warming in more ways than one
When it comes to cooling the planet, forests have more than one trick up their trees. Tropical forests help cool the average global temperature…
Even the sea has light pollution. These new maps show its extent
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…
How did we get here? The roots and impacts of the climate crisis
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 mysterious Hiawatha crater in Greenland is 58 million years old
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…
Culturally prized mountain goats may be vanishing from Indigenous land in Canada
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…
Some deep-sea octopuses aren’t the long-haul moms scientists thought they were
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,…
A UN report shows climate change’s escalating toll on people and nature
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…
An ancient impact on Earth led to a cascade of cratering
A bevy of craters formed by material blasted from the carving of another, larger crater — a process dubbed secondary cratering — have finally been…
Sunlight helps clean up oil spills in the ocean more than previously thought
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…
Weird ‘superionic’ matter could make up Earth’s inner core
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…
Deep-sea Arctic sponges feed on fossilized organisms to survive
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…
Satellites have located the world’s methane ‘ultra-emitters’
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…
The past’s extreme ocean heat waves are now the new normal
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…
What the Tonga volcano’s past tells us about what to expect next
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…
Intense drought or flash floods can shock the global economy
Extremes in rainfall — whether intense drought or flash floods — can catastrophically slow the global economy, researchers report in the Jan. 13 Nature. And…
Volcanic avalanches of rock and gas may be more destructive than previously thought
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…
Climate change communication should focus less on specific numbers
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 volcanic hot spots may have a surprisingly shallow heat source
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’ could have far-reaching climate effects
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…
50 years ago, scientists were genetically modifying mosquitoes
Sterility gene for mosquito control — Science News, December 18, 1971 Scientists are working hard to find a substitute for DDT in the control of…
How a warming climate may make winter tornadoes stronger
NEW ORLEANS — Warmer winters could make twisters more powerful. Though tornadoes can occur in any season, the United States logs the greatest number of…
Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier ice shelf could collapse within five years
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…
Invasive grasses are taking over the American West’s sea of sagebrush
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 swallowing large amounts of humans’ carbon dioxide emissions
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…
Fungi may be crucial to storing carbon in soil as the Earth warms
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…
A new book shows how animals are already coping with climate change
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…
Corals may store a surprising amount of microplastics in their skeletons
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…
50 years ago, corporate greenwashing was well under way
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…
Albatrosses divorce more often when ocean waters warm
When it comes to fidelity, birds fit the bill: Over 90 percent of all bird species are monogamous and — mostly — stay faithful, perhaps…
How climate change may shape the world in the centuries to come
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…
A new map shows where carbon needs to stay in nature to avoid climate disaster
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…
An ancient exploding comet may explain why glass litters part of Chile
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…