Climate change could turn some blue lakes to green or brown
Some picturesque blue lakes may not be so blue in the future, thanks to climate change. In the first global tally of lake color, researchers…
Category: Earth
50 years ago, scientists dug into Pangaea’s past lives
Before Pangaea — What? — Science News, September 30, 1972 The continents as we know them resulted when the protocontinent Pangaea broke apart and its…
Gas flares are leaking five times as much methane than previously thought
In many oil and gas producing regions, flames light the sky. The flares burn off 98 percent of the escaping natural gas, oil and gas…
Big questions inspire the scientists on this year’s SN 10 list
Inspiration doesn’t play by any set rules. It can come from anywhere and strike when it’s least expected. A first hint of a big idea…
Robin Wordsworth re-creates the atmosphere of ancient Mars
Visitors to the village of Drumnadrochit, on the western shore of Scotland’s murky Loch Ness, come to see the nearby ruins of Urquhart Castle or…
A Caribbean island gets everyone involved in protecting beloved species
The coral reef, once bustling with more than 5,000 long-spined sea urchins, became a ghost town in a matter of days. White skeletons with dangling…
Mangrove forests expand and contract with a lunar cycle
The glossy leaves and branching roots of mangroves are downright eye-catching, and now a study finds that the moon plays a special role in the…
Here’s how olivine may trigger deep earthquakes
Cocooned within the bowels of the Earth, one mineral’s metamorphosis into another may trigger some of the deepest earthquakes ever detected. These cryptic tremors —…
How Kenyans help themselves and the planet by saving mangrove trees
On the fringe of Kenya’s Gazi village, 50 kilometers south of Mombasa, Mwatime Hamadi walks barefoot on a path of scorching-hot sand toward a thicket…
Passing through the Milky Way’s arms may have helped form Earth’s solid ground
Earth’s journey through the Milky Way might have helped create the planet’s first continents. Comets may have bombarded Earth every time the early solar system…
How to make recyclable plastics out of CO2 to slow climate change
It’s morning and you wake on a comfortable foam mattress made partly from greenhouse gas. You pull on a T-shirt and sneakers containing carbon dioxide…
Underground heat pollution could be tapped to mitigate climate change
The secret to efficiently heating some buildings might lurk beneath our feet, in the heat that humans have inadvertently stored underground. Just as cities warm…
Flower shape and size impact bees’ chances of catching gut parasites
Bees that land on short, wide flowers can fly away with an upset stomach. Common eastern bumblebees (Bombus impatiens) are more likely to catch…
How to build better ice towers for drinking water and irrigation
There’s a better way to build a glacier. During winter in India’s mountainous Ladakh region, some farmers use pipes and sprinklers to construct building-sized cones…
50 years ago, a new theory of Earth’s core began solidifying
How the Earth got its core – Science News, July 1, 1972 In the beginning, scientists believe there was an interstellar gas cloud of all…
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…
Scientists are racing to save the Last Ice Area, an Arctic Noah’s Ark
It started with polar bears. In 2012, polar bear DNA revealed that the iconic species had faced extinction before, likely during a warm period 130,000…
Climate change may be shrinking tropical birds
In a remote corner of Brazil’s Amazon rainforest, researchers have spent decades catching and measuring birds in a large swath of forest unmarred by roads…
A mineral found in a diamond’s flaws contains the source of some of Earth’s heat
When it comes to knowing what actually lies deep inside the Earth, diamonds are a geologist’s best friend. A tiny bit of rock trapped inside…
Earth’s lower atmosphere is rising due to climate change
Global temperatures are rising and so, it seems, is part of the sky. Atmosphere readings collected by weather balloons in the Northern Hemisphere over the…
Earth will warm 2.7 degrees Celsius based on current pledges to cut emissions
This year was supposed to be a turning point in addressing climate change. But the world’s nations are failing to meet the moment, states a…
Here’s how ice needles sculpt patterns into cold, rocky landscapes
Neat rings, stripes and swirls embellish many cold, rocky landscapes. Although these beautiful stone patterns look like humanmade artwork, they’re all natural. Scientists have long…
How these sea-loving mangroves ended up far from the coast
Nearly 200 kilometers from the sea, red mangroves thrive in the rainforests along the San Pedro Mártir River on the Yucatán Peninsula. But how did…
Earth is reflecting less light. It’s not clear if that’s a trend
The amount of sunlight that Earth reflects back into space — measured by the dim glow seen on the dark portions of a crescent moon’s…
Work on complex systems, including Earth’s climate, wins the physics Nobel Prize
Earth’s climate is a vastly complex system on a grand scale. On a microscopic level, so is the complicated physics of atoms and molecules found…