Environment

Global warming isn’t the cause of slowdown in a huge circulation pattern in the Atlantic Ocean, which is, in fact, part of regular, decades-long cycle that will affect temperatures in coming decades, according to a new study. Oceanographers are concerned about the long-term stability of the Atlantic Ocean circulation, and previous studies show that it

Rhinos in Australia might seem like an insane proposition – after all, we’ve had historically bad luck with introduced species. But on reflection it’s not quite as crazy as it sounds. There are five species of rhinoceros in the world: two in Africa and three in Asia. The world of all five species is being

This brand-new baby snake wouldn’t have been on this world long when it died in the Cretaceous period. But in an interesting twist of fate, it was encased in resin and found by humans 99 million years later in Myanmar. The snake fossil is tiny – missing a head and with about 97 bones all

“A red sky at night is a shepherd’s delight! A red sky in the morning is a shepherd’s warning.” Perhaps this saying came to mind if you caught a spectacular sunrise or sunset recently. Since biblical times and probably before, proverbs and folklore such as this developed as a way for societies to understand and

A brush fire turned into a “firenado” along the Colorado River on Saturday as shocked bystanders filmed the horrifying blaze. An Arizona couple was driving near the state border of Blythe, California on Saturday when they came across the flames. What started out as a brush fire turned into a “firenado,” or a fire tornado,

We have some bad news. Those amazing white sandy beaches in Hawaii and similar places are not just finely milled pieces of rock. Instead, that beautiful sand is at least partially made up of fish poop. Lots and lots of fish poop. The species responsible are parrotfish - large and colourful tropical fish that live in coral

We only have fifteen years. That’s how long experts say it will be before thousands of miles of American internet cables will be submerged by rising seas. A new analysis has overlaid sea level incursion projections on top of maps of critical internet infrastructure in the US, to discover that ‘locked in’ climate change by

It materialised out of almost nowhere. Thousands of years after disappearing from human sight and knowledge, an ancient ‘henge’ site has been discovered hidden within the archaeological landscape of Ireland’s Brú na Bóinne. To reveal this long-forgotten structure, it took a chance intersection between an aerial drone flight and a brutal hot streak that’s been

Hawaii’s continuously erupting Kīlauea has been pretty busy this week, creating short-lived islands and hurling lava bombs at unsuspecting tourists over the last few days. On Monday morning, a lava bomb (a flying chunk of molten rock) hit a tour boat, injuring 23 people, and damaging the boat roof and railing. According to officials, 13

Large algae seaweeds known as kelp have been able to float some 20,000 kilometres (12,427 miles) from the southernmost reaches of the Indian and Atlantic oceans all the way to the shores of Antarctica – a trip previously thought to be impossible. Not only is it an incredible journey, it’s the first hard proof that

Australia is responsible for over 13 thousand tonnes of plastic litter per year. At the end of June 2018, the Australian government released an inquiry report on the waste and recycling industry in Australia. One of the recommendations was that we should phase out petroleum-based single-use plastics by 2023. This means a real social shift,

An 11 million-ton iceberg is parked precariously close to the tiny village of Innaarsuit — a glacial faceoff that pits 169 residents of Greenland against the biggest iceberg many have ever seen. Their fate could be entirely dependent on the weather forecast. If a strong enough wind blows at the right time, the berg could

If you’re the type who fusses over recycling and using cold water to save the planet, boy do we have some news for you. Research shows that the best ways to cut down on your carbon footprint are actually not the ones typically recommended by governments and textbooks. And there’s one life choice in particular

Thirteen thousand years ago, an ice age was ending, the Earth was warming, the oceans were rising. Then something strange happened – the Northern Hemisphere suddenly became much colder, and stayed that way for more than a thousand years. For some time, scientists have been debating how this major climatic event – called the “Younger

Photos of what might be a dead juvenile blue whale have recently surfaced online, allegedly showing the catch of Icelandic whalers. It’s a species that the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) says hasn’t been deliberately killed since 1978. If confirmed, this will cause serious problems for the whalers in question, as it’s

Want to see something really amazing? Well, you can enjoy this video of an iceberg breaking off Helheim Glacier in eastern Greenland. Filmed by scientists on June 22, it shows an absolutely huge 6.4-kilometre (4-mile) chunk of ice making a break for the sea. Iceberg calving, as it is known, is not unusual. It’s a

For weeks, the UK has been gripped by a punishing, record-breaking heatwave. While conditions on the ground may be unprecedented, what’s happening underneath it comes as an even bigger shock. Aerial archaeologists combing the wilted Welsh countryside have discovered a transforming landscape revealing a forgotten legacy of ancient monuments – a faded map of centuries-old

As the world warms up, millions of us turn up the air conditioning, and that dependence on cooling technology could be causing hundreds of deaths by 2050. That’s the conclusion of researchers studying the impact of air con that relies on coal, gas, and oil for its power. More power for more cold air means

One of the largest icebergs ever documented is still mostly intact one year after it broke off Antarctica, despite losing a big chunk and having its northern flank smashed to bits. The huge ice block, called A68 or A68a, calved from the Larsen C ice shelf in July 2017. It’s hard to say exactly when

When Sudan the white rhino was put down by his carers earlier this year, it confirmed the extinction of one of the savannah’s most iconic subspecies. Despite decades of effort from conservationists, including a fake Tinder profile for the animal dubbed “the most eligible bachelor in the world”, Sudan proved an unwilling mate and died

When the warmer weather strikes, our gardens and outdoor spaces become a perfect oasis for rest and relaxation. But as nice as the hot weather might be, extreme conditions and record-breaking temperatures can wreak havoc on your plants. There’s of course no question, that when it’s hot, plants will need watering, but knowing when’s the

The Pine Island Glacier is known to be the fastest-melting glacier in Antarctica, responsible for around a quarter of the continent’s ice loss. According to new research though, a warming planet isn’t the only reason the glacier is losing ice. Based on an analysis of the water surrounding the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which the

From the normally mild summer climes of Ireland, Scotland and Canada to the scorching Middle East, numerous locations in the Northern Hemisphere have witnessed their hottest weather ever recorded over the past week. Large areas of heat pressure or heat domes scattered around the hemisphere led to the sweltering temperatures. The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reports

Authorities have been able to drain some of the water from the cave where a Thai soccer team has been trapped for 12 days, which may allow the team to avoid using diving equipment and almost walk out. Rescuers can now enter the cave up until the third chamber located about 1.5 kilometers (1 mile)

We will likely never know how life on Earth started. Perhaps in a shallow sunlit pool. Or in the crushing ocean depths miles beneath the surface near fissures in the Earth’s crust that spewed out hot mineral-rich soup. While there is good evidence for life at least 3.7 billion years ago, we don’t know precisely

A 28-year-old rhinoceros named Najin and her daughter, Fatu, are the only northern white rhinos on the planet. They live at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya under constant armed guard. Both animals are infertile. In March, veterinarians euthanized Sudan, Najin’s father and the last male rhino of their kind. Once Najin and Fatu die, so

One of the areas where artificial intelligence really excels is in working out scenarios with a huge number of complex variables – like how radiation might spread after an accident at a nuclear power plant. This is the focus of a new AI system developed in Japan, and it’s showing us more accurately than ever

News is out today that the entire genome of the koala has been sequenced. This means we now have a complete read-out of the genes and other DNA sequences of this iconic marsupial mammal. Knowing the full set of koala genes deepens our knowledge of koalas (and other Australian mammals) in many ways. Now we

In one fell sip, Seattle on Sunday became the first major US city to ban drinking straws, an environmentally friendly move that leaders hope will spark a nationwide conversation about small, everyday changes that people can make to protect the planet. A decade ago, the city adopted an ordinance requiring that all one-time-use food-service items

Atop Mount Lico in northern Mozambique is a site that few have had the pleasure of seeing – a hidden rainforest, protected by a steep circle of rock. Though the mountain was known to locals, the forest itself remained a secret until six years ago, when Professor Julian Bayliss spotted it on satellite imagery. It

The broad legalisation of marijuana in California might be a big win for trade, tax, and lovers of a toke, but it could be a serious threat to one bushy-tailed little predator. Populations of Humboldt martens (Martes americana humboldtensis) have already been struck down thanks to years of shrinking habitat. But it’s taken the proliferation

Last year, 39 million acres of forest cover was lost from the world’s tropics. The good news is that this figure is a little lower than the record amounts of canopy destroyed in 2016. But that’s pretty much the only silver lining here. A less generous interpretation of the data suggests there’s no sign of

Just how cold can it get on Earth? Colder than we thought, apparently. A new study of satellite data reports that valleys in Antarctica’s ice sheets can reach close to minus 100 degrees Celsius (or minus 148 degrees Fahrenheit). Very chilly then, and significantly below the previous record of minus 93 degrees Celsius (minus 135

It’s the biggest environmental whodunit of the year, and after following a trail of clues, The New York Times may have cracked the case on why ozone-destroying chemicals are once again polluting our atmosphere. The unexpected and mysterious surge in illegal chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) appears to be coming from Xingfu, a rural industrial town in

A vast mass of hot rock is welling up underneath Vermont and extending into other subterranean regions below New England, new research shows. Scientists used a network of thousands of seismic measurement devices in the largest geological study of its kind, detecting the enormous blob upwelling under Vermont, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts – and possibly

The presence of illicit drugs and their metabolites in river water is a new and growing type of environmental hazard – and, according to new research, is putting at further risk an already critically endangered species of eel. The European eel spends its life living in waterways across Europe, migrating to the ocean to breed

The central section of the San Andreas Fault in California is moving in an unexpected way, scientists say, creating a series of ‘slow earthquakes’ that increase the likelihood of a major quake striking in the future. It was previously thought that slow and steady movements in this area were safely releasing pent-up energy along the faultline,

The world’s highest mountain has, in the last few decades, turned into the world’s highest-altitude rubbish dump, thanks to wealthy tourists who mindlessly leave a trail of disgusting refuse in their wake. Since explorer Sir Edmund Hillary reached the 8,848-metre (29,029-foot) peak of Everest – known as Chomolungma in Tibet and Sagarmatha in Nepal –

In the future, seas will rise far higher than they are today. The question is whether it happens quickly or slowly. There’s enough ice stacked on top of Antarctica to raise seas around the globe by almost 200 feet. While it takes time for major changes to occur with that much ice, Antarctica is melting

We know. We’ve been told. The plastic waste that has been piling up in our oceans is out of control. But sometimes, when the problem is so far away, we can lose track of how dire the situation truly is. A viral video from researchers in the South Pacific has put the consequences of our actions

The most complete analysis to date measuring ice sheet changes in Antarctica reveals Earth’s southernmost continent has lost some 3 trillion tonnes of ice over the past quarter-century. A collective effort by over 80 scientists across the world used satellite data to determine estimates of ice-sheet mass balance between 1992 and 2017, ultimately calculating that

For centuries – millennia even – they’ve towered over the savannah like giants from another world, but their long, almost immortal watch is at last beginning to fade. The African baobab, the largest and longest-living tree among all angiosperm (flowering) plants, is in the midst of a deadly crisis, with new research finding several of

In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches. On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, when the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse. Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes

Scientists have reported finding traces of plastic and hazardous chemicals in Antarctica, which before now was the last part of the planet that remained mostly untouched by the damaging effects of human activity. Samples of water and snow, collected over a three-month period earlier this year, paint a sorry picture of the environmental consequences of

One minute, you’re chilling on a mountain. The next you’re being dwarfed by the biggest Moon you’ve ever seen – one that seems to be coming right down to rest on Earth’s surface. That’s what appears to be happening in this video on NASA’s Astronomy Picture of The Day (APOD) site for 4 June 2018.

They call Alaska the last frontier, but as the largest American state grapples with global warming happening twice as fast as anywhere else in the US, nobody knows for sure where its vast, changing landscape is headed. Our best guess comes in the form of a new analysis sourced from over 30 years of satellite

It was an unprecedented blip out of nowhere in 1982. For the first time, scientists confirmed the first earthquake in Antarctica – but it wouldn’t be the last. As the decades passed, researchers detected eight more seismic events in East Antarctica. And then all hell seemingly broke loose, with sensors picking up 27 earthquakes in

Dozens of people have been killed, and with many more missing, after Volcán de Fuego (Fuego) in Guatemala erupted on 3 June 2018. In recent years, Fuego has regularly ejected small gas and ash eruptions, which hold little risk to surrounding populations. But Fuego also has a reputation for producing larger explosive eruptions. These larger