Environment

There’s a pervasive notion in our society that nature is something outside, over there, other, from what we are as humans. From religious texts teaching that God provided humans with dominion over Earth, to futuristic literature pitching nature as our past and human ingenuity and technology as our future, the narrative that humans are beyond

An enormous Antarctic iceberg whose journeys were probably the most well-documented in history has now melted away to nothing in the Atlantic ocean.  A68 cracked off the Larsen C ice sheet on the Antarctic Peninsula in 2017 as one of the biggest icebergs ever. At the time, it measured 2,240 square miles (5,800 square kilometers), about the

Google Earth gives you a fascinating 3D tour of the planet in your web browser, and the app’s newest feature lets you look back from the current day all the way to 1984 – so you can see how climate change has changed the face of Earth over the last 37 years. Google itself has

Our plastic pollution problem has become so bad that microplastics are now embedded in the regular cycles of the atmosphere, circulating around the planet like oxygen or water, according to a new study. Plastic particles sent up into the air from ocean spray and road surfaces travel across continents and reaching the most remote spots

Early into the pandemic it became clear that something was wrong: the first signs of a tangential and potentially deadly threat emerging in the wake of COVID-19. It was an old problem, in truth, but one given fresh potency as humans scrambled to protect themselves from the coronavirus. As production of single-use face masks and

Few things excite biologists more than contemplating the parts of the world still relatively free of human damage. For the last 30 years, scientists intent on protecting Earth’s biodiversity have sought to enshrine targets for preserving and expanding these remaining areas of wilderness. But what actually is wilderness, and how do we know when we’ve

New Zealand will force banks to reveal the impact their investments have on climate change under world-first legislation intended to make the financial sector’s environmental record transparent, officials said. Commerce Minister David Clark said the law would make climate reporting mandatory for banks, insurance companies and investment firms. “Becoming the first country in the world

Japan’s decision to release more than one million tonnes of treated radioactive water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea has stirred fierce controversy. Here are some questions and answers about the plan, expected to take decades to complete. What is the processed water? Since the 2011 nuclear disaster, radioactive water has accumulated

The last ice age persisted for over 100,000 years. An ice-bound eternity by any stretch of the imagination, but this long winter was not completely frozen into stillness. During the Last Glacial Period, which ended approximately 12,000 years ago, climate change existed as a powerful phenomenon, much as it does now, albeit for different reasons.

The scorching destruction of Australia’s Black Summer bushfires between 2019 and 2020 provided an ominous glimpse of fire’s reach in our hotter, dryer world, and the impact of the unprecedented inferno is still being measured. Just weeks ago, scientists observed that the amount of smoke spewed from the blaze into the atmosphere rivaled that of

A confluence of warm water is threatening to topple the very pillars that keep the ‘Doomsday Glacier’ afloat.  The first measurements ever performed below the icy tongue of Antarctica’s Thwaites Glacier have now revealed a previously underestimated flow of warm water from the east.  This inflow of heat is mixing with other waters below the

Trees are the Earth’s lungs – it’s well understood they drawdown and lock up vast amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But emerging research is showing trees can also emit methane, and it’s currently unknown just how much. This could be a major problem, given methane is a greenhouse gas about 45 times more

Even after a year of coronavirus lockdowns and shutdowns, global emissions of greenhouse gases are still increasing at an unrelenting rate.  Today, according to initial measurements from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), global levels of carbon dioxide emissions are higher than they have been at any given time in the past 3.6 million years.

Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are

While some blue-green algae (or more accurately – cyanobacteria) are critical to us for their nitrogen-fixing abilities, others can also become dangerous pests of our own making. Climate change and agricultural run-off are causing a once normal environmental process to spiral out of control more often, and a new study has shown that a particularly dangerous toxin produced

A possible second leak has been found in a Florida wastewater reservoir that risks flooding nearby communities with millions of gallons of contaminated water, authorities said Monday. “An infrared drone identified a signature that could indicate a second breach” at the Piney Point reservoir on Tampa Bay, said Jake Saur, public safety director in Manatee

Globally, only one in 50 new cars were fully electric in 2020, and one in 14 in the UK. Sounds impressive, but even if all new cars were electric now, it would still take 15-20 years to replace the world’s fossil fuel car fleet. The emission savings from replacing all those internal combustion engines with

Ice sheet melting at the end of the last ice age may have caused sea levels to rise at 10 times the current rate, a study published Thursday by a team led by scientists from Britain’s Durham University said. Based on geological records, the researchers estimate that oceans worldwide rose 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) per

For well over a thousand years, cherry blossoms in Japan have held the scent of spring and reflected the transient beauty of nature itself. Today, these falling flowers also carry the gravity of climate change. In 2021, after an unusually warm spring, Kyoto has burst into color far sooner than expected. To date, this is the

If fossil fuel companies in the United States were made to pay for the real environmental and health costs of their products, a new model suggests it would set them back roughly $62 billion dollars every year.  Today, that huge sum of money is implicitly subsidized by taxpayers. “Fossil fuel companies benefit in a big

The United States is home to nearly 2,000 active landfills. Each day, these enormous piles of garbage can leach well over 2 million liters of liquid per site into the soil, contaminating local water with potentially toxic substances. These liquid-based pollutants are an immediate threat to both the environment and human health, yet figuring out

Climate change has wrought major changes to ocean stability faster than previously thought, according to a study published Wednesday, raising alarms over its role as a global thermostat and the marine life it supports. The research published in the journal Nature looked at 50 years of data and followed the way in which surface water

Like a tourist on a cruise ship, the by-the-wind sailor jellyfish (Velella velella) spends its days drifting aimlessly through the open sea, gorging itself on an endless buffet of complementary morsels. The jelly straddles the ocean’s surface with a rigid sail poking just above the water and an array of purple tentacles dangling just underneath. As the

As the enormous weight of Alaska’s glaciers rapidly melts away, the land underneath is rising upwards once again, like a feathery pillow after pressure is removed. According to a new model, that rebounding motion could be causing local tectonic plates to strain at their seams, making it easier for earthquakes to occur. Comparing ice loss,

Fishing trawlers that drag big nets along the ocean floor potentially release more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the world’s commercial aviation industry. The first study to estimate the real carbon footprint of bottom trawling globally has found this type of fishing releases roughly 1.47 billion tonnes of aqueous CO2 from the marine soil

In the delicately tangled web of an ecosystem, snapping certain anchor lines can bring the whole thing tumbling down faster than severing other threads. Now, researchers have found that the species we see as most valuable and worth protecting often aren’t the ‘threads’ most critical to maintaining the complex ecological webs we rely on. Ecologist

The bushfires that ravaged Australia between 2019 and 2020 were so huge that they spewed as much smoke into the stratosphere as a large volcanic eruption, with serious consequences for the environment, according to a study published Thursday in the journal Science.  The stratosphere is the second layer of the atmosphere, right above the troposphere

The skies in Beijing turned orange recently, thanks to what was widely-reported as a massive sandstorm. The problem, at least in terms of public health, is that it was not actually a sandstorm. It was a dust storm. This might sound like an act of geological pedantry, but it represents a crucial difference, and it

If we want to predict our planet’s future under climate change, we must better understand what has happened on Earth before, even hundreds of thousands of years in the past. New research into the Ethiopian Highlands during the Last Glacial Period helps do just that. As well as answering some geological questions, it has also raised up

First, it swallowed a car. A few hours later, two terraced buildings. At 9pm on January 20, a crater measuring 4 sq. meters appeared in Walmer Street, Manchester. Another sinkhole shocked local Scottish walkers, swallowing a section of coastal path between Dysart and West Wemyss on February 4. And, in early March, a sinkhole in

Beijing has been enveloped in one of its most severe sandstorms in over a decade, which has combined with air pollution to create a toxic, gritty haze that turned skies orange and made the skyline disappear.  The sandstorm hit the Chinese capital on Monday morning (March 15) after gale-force winds from Mongolia blew dust from

It’s no secret that the world’s largest tropical rainforest, the Amazon, is under immense pressure, nearing an ecological tipping point and at risk of collapsing. But the situation is much worse than perhaps we realize, according to new research that suggests the Amazon’s bleak future has arrived in the wake of rampant deforestation.   The new

Reforestation is one of the ways we have of trying to mitigate climate change, but choosing where to plant trees is a more complex decision than you might think. This is why researchers have now come up with an interactive map showing the best spots to reforest in the US. It’s called the Reforestation Hub,

The climate crisis is affecting our planet to such an extent, summers in the Northern Hemisphere could last half the year by 2100, scientists have warned. This doesn’t mean longer days lounging in the sunshine, but dramatic impacts on human health, agriculture, and ecology. While an extended period of balmy weather might initially sound appealing,

Indoor cannabis production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the environmental effects vary significantly depending on where it is being grown, according to our new study. The lights used to grow weed indoors use a lot of electricity, but facilities require a lot of energy to maintain a comfortable environment for the

The sea is rising, but that’s not all. Scientists say current assessments of global sea-level rise have disregarded an important phenomenon affecting coastal regions – an oversight that means the ongoing specter of sea-level rise is even more ominous than we knew. While the global average of sea-level rise attributable to melting ice masses in

A regime change of almost unimaginable scale has taken place in the natural world, reflecting humanity’s vast and growing dominance over one of our planet’s most vital resources: freshwater. In what researchers say is the first global survey of human impacts on the water cycle, scientists have used NASA satellite measurements to remotely quantify changes

For now life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn’t always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that’s rich in methane and low in oxygen. This probably won’t happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes, it’s

When you think of bees, a hive humming with activity probably comes to mind. But most of the world’s 20,000 bee species don’t call a hive home. These wild species lead solitary lives instead, and around 70 percent of them build nests underground where they raise their offspring on the nectar they gather from flowers.

Near the Markha River in Arctic Siberia, the earth ripples in ways that scientists don’t fully understand. Earlier this week, NASA researchers posted a series of satellite images of the peculiar wrinkled landscape to the agency’s Earth Observatory website. Taken with the Landsat 8 satellite over several years, the photos show the land on both sides of the

A giant iceberg, more than 20 times the size of Manhattan, just split off from Antarctica’s Brunt Ice Shelf. This dramatic breakup comes after a major crack formed on the shelf in November 2020 and continued to grow until the ‘berg finally broke off Friday morning (Feb. 26). The so-called “North Rift” crack is the

Pollen grains from flowering plants were meant to fly, sometimes travelling hundreds of kilometres on the wind. Now it appears that the climate crisis has accelerated that travel, making allergy season in some areas of the world start earlier, last longer, and get more severe each year. In the past three decades, warmer temperatures from

It should be simple. When temperatures on Earth get hotter, huge amounts of water ice trapped in giant glaciers begin to thaw, releasing water into the oceans, and causing sea levels to rise. It’s the story of our lives. By contrast, when global temperatures plummet, which happens during ice ages, sea levels proceed to drop,

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) sea currents are vital in transporting heat from the tropics to the Northern Hemisphere, but new research suggests climate change might knock the AMOC out of action much sooner than we anticipated. That could have profound, large-scale impacts on the planet in terms of weather patterns, upending agricultural practices,

The amount of sunlight reaching Earth’s surface has been fluctuating for decades now, and a new study supports the idea that human activity is to blame. In the late 1980s, researchers first noticed a steady decline or ‘dimming’ in Earth’s brightness in various parts of the world, including a near 30 percent drop in sunlight

They contaminate the air we breathe, tea we sip, water we drink, and food we eat. They’re strewn across the deepest ocean trenches and the highest mountains. They’re in fish, insects, whales, corals, and our own poo. They’re even showing up in human placentas. Microplastics are everywhere. But we still have no idea what, if

An oil rig explosion off the coast of Louisiana killed eleven workers on 20 April 2010. The world then watched helplessly as BP’s oil gushed out into the Gulf of Mexico for 87 days, killing untold millions of marine animals. Dolphins that survived one of the worst environmental disasters ever, still appear to be suffering

Fish poop is full of carbon, and the ocean is full of fish poop. A new study estimates up to 16 percent of all the carbon in the world’s oceans come from fish faeces, fish breath, and other fish excretions.  That’s roughly 1.65 billion tons of carbon flushed into the depths each year, and all