This month we are expecting to see a record ice melt in the Arctic. But this is not a world record we can celebrate. This is a wake-up call from planet Earth. The Arctic is home to millions of people, including Inuit whose ancestors first settled thousands of years ago. It is also a unique…
The recent Antarctic Peninsula temperature rise and associated ice loss is unusual but not unprecedented, according to research. Analysis of a 364m-long ice core containing several millennia of climate history shows the region previously basked in temperatures slightly higher than today. However, the peninsula is now warming rapidly, threatening previously stable areas of ice, the…
The Antarctic Peninsula, which juts out about 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) from the western flank of the frozen continent, is one of the fastest warming places on Earth. In the past 50 years, the air temperature has increased by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius). While this rate of warming is highly unusual, it…
A new analysis of complex interactions between humans and the environment preceding the 9th century collapse and abandonment of the Central Maya Lowlands in the Yucatán Peninsula points to a series of events — some natural, like climate change; some human-made, including large-scale landscape alterations and shifts in trade routes — that have lessons for…
While many scientists have some dire warnings against us trying to geoengineer our way out of the climate crisis, others don’t necessarily see it that way and are working on new methods to solve the problem. Researchers are studying the idea of cloud brightening, utilizing ships to shoot salt water high into the atmosphere over…
Guess who’s not talking about climate change? Besides the usual suspects, we can now add some unusual ones: most of the major media outlets in the U.S., according to a new analysis from Media Matters for America, a media watchdog website. In the face of last month’s record heat wave in the U.S., Media Matters…
The authors of a Harvard study published in Nature Climate Change gathered their data from an unlikely source—the trip accounts of the Massachusetts Butterfly Club. Over the past 19 years, the amateur naturalist group has logged species counts on nearly 20,000 expeditions throughout Massachusetts. Their records fill a crucial gap in the scientific record. Once…
The Arctic Ocean’s ice cover is shrinking at a record pace this year after higher-than-average temperatures hastened the annual break-up of the sea ice. The area of ocean covered by ice shrank to 1.9 million square miles on average for a 5-day period, according to the latest data from the U.S. National Snow and Ice…
According to a NOAA-led paper published in the journal Conservation Biology, high levels of background noise, mainly due to ships, have reduced the ability of critically endangered North Atlantic right whales to communicate with each other by about two-thirds. From 2007 until 2010, scientists used an array of acoustic recorders to monitor noise levels, measure…
When well-meaning campaigners want us to pay attention to global warming, they often end up pitching beyond the facts. And, while this may seem justified by a noble goal, such “policy by panic” tactics rarely work, and often backfire. Remember how, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore (and many others) claimed…