The Emperor penguin’s future is looking bleak if global temperatures continue to rise and melt sea ice, scientists have warned. At nearly four feet tall, Antarctica’s largest sea bird became a global icon thanks to films like March of the Penguins and Happy Feet, but if temperatures continue to rise, it faces extinction. Unlike other…
Ancient Antarctica was much warmer and wetter than previously suspected, a new study has found. The climate was suitable to support substantial vegetation – including stunted trees – along the edges of the frozen continent. By examining plant leaf wax remnants in sediment core samples taken from beneath the Ross Ice Shelf, the research team…
Thank goodness for granite. If not for the formation and subsequent erosion of large quantities of metal-rich granite on a supercontinent that formed billions of years ago, the evolution of multicellular life—including us—could have been stifled or delayed, according to a new study. For much of its history, life on Earth existed as only single-celled…
Climate change is widely expected to disrupt future fire patterns around the world, with some regions, such as the western United States, seeing more frequent fires within the next 30 years, according to a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with an international team of scientists. By the…
The common sundew drosera rotundifolia grows in rain-fed bogs across much of northern Europe. These habitats have few nutrients, so the plant needs to boost its nitrogen intake by trapping midges and other insects with its sticky leaves. But human activities involving burning fossil fuels for transport and industry have greatly increased levels of nitrogen…
The final round of negotiations leading up to next week’s Rio+20 summit begins with countries very much at odds on key issues. The draft agreement would improve energy, water and food security in poorer countries, phase out fossil fuel subsidies and boost ocean protection. But with three days of negotiations left, only 20% has been…
Natural fluctuations alone do not explain warming in the upper layers of the planet’s oceans, confirms a new computer modeling study. The ingredient necessary to fully account for rising water temperatures in the last 50 years? Humans’ greenhouse gas emissions. While attributing global warming to humans is hardly a new conclusion, this study adds to…
A study of rocks in Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Syria provides powerful support for the theory that a major impact helped wipe out mammoths and other megafauna, and destroyed a major prehistoric culture. They’ve discovered melt-glass material dating back nearly 13,000 years, and formed at temperatures of 1,700 to 2,200 degrees Celsius. The new data…
The latest draft text that 180 governments are expected to sign up to at the end of the Rio+20 Earth summit has been leaked to the Guardian. According to the UN, only about 20% of the wording has been agreed, so with just three days formal negotiating time before world leaders arrive in Brazil, and…
NASA scientists say they’ve made a discovery in the Arctic Ocean ‘as dramatic and unexpected as finding a rainforest in the middle of a desert’. When its Icescape expedition punched through three-foot thick sea ice, the team found waters richer in the microscopic marine plants known as phytoplankton than any other ocean region on Earth….