Environment

In the wet, muddy places where America's rivers and lands meet the sea, scientists from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory are unearthing clues to better understand how these vital landscapes are evolving under climate change.... Read more

Melting sea ice in the fast-warming Arctic Ocean is not making it easier for sailors to navigate a legendary shortcut between Europe and Asia despite popular belief, scientists said Thursday.... Read more

In a sun-baked village north of Morocco's capital Rabat, Mustapha Loubaoui and other itinerant workers wait idly by the roadside for farm work made scarce by a six-year drought.... Read more

Here's a troubling phrase hurricane forecasters hate but often hear: "It's just a Category 1. Nothing to worry about."... Read more

Californians are familiar with landslides that occur around storms, when saturated soil and rock loses its grip and slips from its perch on the substrate. These types of landslides can be triggered by intense rainfall, and incoming storms can be a warning that neighborhoods need to evacuate.... Read more

A new study finds a significant impact of the Madden-Julian Oscillation (MJO) and El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) on coral bleaching events in the Great Barrier Reef (GBR).... Read more

In a revelation that highlights the fragile balance of our planet's atmosphere, scientists from China, Germany, and the U.S. have uncovered an unexpected link between massive wildfire events and the chemistry of the ozone layer. Published in Science Advances, this study reveals how wildfires, such as the catastrophic 2019/20 Australian... Read more

The Tibetan Plateau hosts the world's largest permafrost region in the middle and low latitudes. Compared to the high-latitude Arctic permafrost, the permafrost here is thinner, warmer, and more sensitive to global warming. The active layer is a crucial zone for energy exchange between permafrost and the atmosphere, effectively reflecting... Read more

You can think of our atmosphere as a big chemistry set, a global churn of gaseous molecules and particles that constantly bounce off and change each other in complicated ways. While the particles are very small, often less than 1% of the thickness of human hair, they have outsized impacts.... Read more

Turbulence, temperature changes, water vapor, carbon dioxide, ozone, methane, and other gases absorb, reflect, and scatter sunlight as it passes through the atmosphere, bounces off the Earth's surface, and is collected by a sensor on a remote sensing satellite. As a result, the spectral data received at the sensor is... Read more

Severe droughts in the Amazon basin over the past two decades have caused low water level periods to last around a month longer than usual, triggering profound impacts on the local population.... Read more

New Monash research has untangled the influence of regional climate drivers, including the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) and the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (El Niño), on the Antarctic Ice Sheet. Snow accumulation and surface melting are two important processes that are key to predicting how Antarctica will contribute to future sea... Read more

The retreat of high mountain glaciers has accelerated since the 1980s, resulting in increased glacier runoff. However, it remains uncertain whether melting mountain glaciers enhance or release greenhouse gases, and whether areas exposed to glacier retreat emit or absorb such gases.... Read more

When it comes to inland surface water bodies, saline lakes are unique. They make up 44% of all lakes worldwide and are found on every continent including Antarctica. These lakes' existence depends on a delicate balance between a river basin's water input (precipitation and inflows) and output (evaporation and seepage).... Read more

Production has yet to begin, but TotalEnergies' controversial East African oil project is already taking a dire environmental toll in Uganda's largest national parks, a leading conservationist group said Friday.... Read more