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Time just flies by, and that was especially true during the first half of November 2009, when the Earth's daily spin around its axis became 0.1 milliseconds shorter. You can blame that lost time on the waters around Antarctica. More »
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In the most comprehensive analysis of its kind to date, scientists have used NASA satellites to gauge just how much of the world's ice has been lost to the oceans. Their results? Data collected over eight years of the past decade indicates that melting ice raised sea levels worldwide by an average of 1.48 millimeters. More »
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The first, moss-like plants emerged on land about 470 million years ago. In just 25 million years, they stripped the planet of vital minerals, wrecked Earth's carbon cycle, started an ice age, and caused a mass extinction of marine life. More »
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From 1550 to 1850, Earth mysteriously got colder. Communities from Greenland to the Alps were swallowed up by glaciers, and bodies of water like the Baltic Sea and Manhattan Harbor froze over. But what caused this Little Ice Age? More »
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In the last several hundred years, human activity has shifted large quantities of the world's carbon from long-term storage (i.e. carbon bound up in rocks, fossil fuels, and forests) into forms of short-term storage such as croplands and pastures, which tend to store less carbon for shorter periods of time. More »
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Siberia enjoys a well-deserved reputation as one of the coldest places on Earth. But the last time the planet got really cold, Siberia apparently didn't go along for the ride, providing animals a warm oasis from the Ice Age. More »
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If my parents had shown me this video when I was five, I would have broken my habit of leaving the lights on whenever I left a room much sooner. More »
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The winter wind in Scotland was angry yesterday, and at the top of its shit list were turbines and trampolines. More »
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Get excited, people. The critically acclaimed BBC documentary series Frozen Planet is slated to begin airing stateside on March 18th, but here's the really good news: the controversial final episode addressing climate change? It will be airing in the U.S., after all. More »
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The final episode of Frozen Planet — the popular new series from the creators of Planet Earth — addresses the impending threat of climate change on the Earth's poles. In the episode, which will air on BBC One on December 7th, narrator David Attenborough is expected to claim that the Arctic could be completely devoid of ice by 2020. More »
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The congressional supercommittee responsible for trimming 1.5 trillion dollars from the US federal budget has failed to deliver, triggering a decade-long, 1.2-trillion-dollar budget-slash set to begin in 2013. More »
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According to a report published today by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), greenhouses gas levels in Earth's atmosphere have reached a record high. What's more, the report indicates that the rate of that increase shows no signs of slowing down. In fact, it's accelerating. More »
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Earth's species are shrinking. As temperatures rise, plants and animals the world over are adapting, some more quickly than others, by becoming smaller — a trend that scientists say could have serious implications for ecological diversity the world over. More »
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Ocean levels have risen several inches over the last century, and that's only likely to increase going forward. Most of that is related to climate change — but now scientists may have discovered a hidden factor in all this: irrigation. More »
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This map is the result of one very busy month of data collected by NASA's Aquarius instrument, offering the first ever global map of the ocean surface's saltiness. This information has potentially profound implications for our understanding of changing climates. More »
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If you've ever been inspired to develop a phone or tablet app that addresses issues of climate change, the global economy, or space exploration, listen up. More »
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The Ice Age can be explained by some well-placed specks of iron. Adding dust to the waters around Antarctica can supercharge plankton growth, causing global temperature drops. To stop climate change, we need a whole lot of iron filings. More »
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Though pundits have argued that the "bell curve" of human intelligence favors big-skulled northerners, a new study shows definitively that large heads have nothing to do with intelligence. More »
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While the climate on the surface of Mars is pretty much completely dry, it's still possible that, every so often, it snows on Mars. These hellish storms would move at hurricane speeds and dump four inches of snow every hour More »
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Ceres and Vesta are two of the largest asteroids in the Belt, and their power extends far beyond the band of rocks they inhabit between Jupiter and Mars. Astronomers have discovered that these asteroids' gravitational effects introduced "strong chaos" into the Earth's orbit, making it impossible to know the exact path the Earth took around the sun before 60 million years ago. More »
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It's hard to imagine, but about 55 million years ago, Antarctica was ice-free and full of lush forests. Now analysis of ancient pollen has revealed when the last Antarctic vegetation died out...and what's next for the continents's vast ice sheets. More »
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The fact that sea levels are rising probably won't come as a huge surprise. But we now have some much-needed historical context for the melting icecaps and rising waters...and there's zero doubt that, in geological history, higher sea levels meant higher temperatures. More »
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James Jaros' new novel Burn Down the Sky offers a disturbing take on the post-global-warming dystopian setting. Our civilization is no more, thanks to skyrocketing temperatures and a catstrophic water shortage — and then there's the deadly "Wicca" virus. More »
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For the last few years the sun has been kicking back and relaxing. A lot. Although a huge solar flare recently made headlines, the surface of the sun has been quiet lately. Sunspots have been more scarce than they've been in the last 200 years. All solar activity is low. And it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while. The sun is likely in an 11-year cycle that will bottom out in 2013 or 2014. But why is the sun being so very cool lately? More »
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Human artifacts recently discovered in the United Arab Emirates date back at least 100,000 years, which means our ancestors might have left Africa up to 125,000 years ago...twice as long ago as previously thought. What's going on here? More »
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Climate has been the secret driver of history, particularly in the preindustrial world. Empires and kingdoms rose to power when it was warm and wet and toppled when it became cool and dry...and climate might not be done guiding history. More »
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Our dependence on plants shot up from 1995 to 2005, according to a new NASA study. Here's a map that shows which regions use more carbon than they produce (red) and which regions produce more than they use (green). More »
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Climate change could have devastating consequences for much of the world's ecosystems, but at least one area might benefit. Ancient rain forests thrived during severe warming millions of years ago, helping to create today's species diversity. More »
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These days, Antarctica is the coldest, driest place on Earth. What little life it harbors clings to the edges of the continent. But that wasn't always true. 45 million years ago, Antarctica was a lush rain forest, teeming with life. More »
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If global temperatures rise just 21 degrees Fahrenheit, half of humanity will be cooked. A recent study shows that the planet doesn't have to warm up very much before it becomes unlivable. And the death blow comes from humidity. More »
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It sounds like a supervillainous plot, but Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov has vowed that Moscow will see no snow this winter. Luzkhov is pushing through a plan to ensure that the city's trademark blizzards land in someone else's backyard. More »
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Global warming often evokes images of melting icecaps, disappearing landmasses, and natural disasters. But the results aren't always so dire. For the Incas, global warming meant 400 years' prosperity and growth, allowing them to create a formidable empire. More »
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A team of scientists at Cal-Tech think they might have found a way to save the planet from global warming: breed faster. The more of us there are, the more nitrogen we take out of the atmosphere, cooling the planet. More »
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One Earth just doesn't cut it anymore. As our population grows and we continue to consume resources at an alarming rate, we’ll need the equivalent of a second Earth by 2030 to maintain our current lifestyle. That’s the finding of the latest report from the World Wildlife Fund. And since we don’t have a spare lying around, it’s time to make a drastic change. More »
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Here's a dried-out lake in the Chaco region of Paraguay, 400 km north of Asuncion. The region has been experiencing an unprecedented drought that's lasted months, and the government has declared a State of Emergency. (That's a dead cow in the background.) Perhaps not coincidentally, yesterday the Australia-based Global Carbon project said our global carbon output from burning fossil fuels increased 2.9 percent from 2006 to 2007 — at the very high end of scenarios that the International Panel on Climate Change had predicted. That translates to a possible rise in global temperature of 11 degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century. More »
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Late last week, the science ship Tara returned from its mission to study climate change in the polar ice region. Here it is, about to dock in Norwegian Spitzberg. Its long journey through the polar region left it deliberately stuck in ice off the coast of Siberia for 500 days. If you look at the photograph below, of the ship leaving on its voyage, you can see that it's built very much like a large sailboat. More »
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