Environment

In California's 2022-2023 winter season, the state faced nine atmospheric rivers (ARs) that led to extreme flooding, landslides, and power outages—the longest duration of continuous AR conditions in the past 70 years. Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently conducted a study using machine learning to understand these... Read more

The EU wants to ensure greater sustainability in agricultural trade with the Global South—with the aim of minimizing the environmental and climate-damaging effects of importing crops such as soya, palm oil, coffee, and cocoa. However, this aspiration is often not fulfilled in practice.... Read more

Although the troposphere is often thought of as the closest layer of the atmosphere to the Earth's surface, the planetary boundary layer (PBL)—the lowest layer of the troposphere—is actually the part that most significantly influences weather near the surface. In the 2018 planetary science decadal survey, the PBL was raised... Read more

A new study from Charles Darwin University (CDU), Monash University and The University of Newcastle has presented almost 100,000 estimates of groundwater recharge rates across Australia, by far the largest known database of its kind.... Read more

Plastic is ubiquitous. It's in the clothes we wear, wrapped around the food we eat and in the toothpaste we use. It floats in the oceans and litters the snow on Mount Everest.... Read more

A recent study published in the PNAS shows that western Central Asia has experienced a long-term drying trend over the past 7,800 years. This discovery, based on the analysis of a stalagmite from the Fergana Valley in Kyrgyzstan, adds a critical piece to the understanding of westerly-influenced hydroclimatic patterns in... Read more

An international team of researchers, led by Professor Jin Wu from the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has made a promising advancement in mapping plant functional traits from space using time-series satellite data. The study, published in Remote Sensing of Environment, showcases the innovative... Read more

Trains carrying loads of coal bring with them higher rates of asthma, heart disease, hospitalization and death for residents living nearest the rail lines, according to a new study from the University of California, Davis.... Read more

Cancer-causing flame retardants found in everyday things like plastics, furniture, fabrics and electronics can be sucked up by the skin and absorbed into the bloodstream in 24 hours, scientists have found.... Read more

A letter from members of the Scientists' Coalition for an Effective Plastics Treaty has been published in the journal Science days before the fourth session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC-4) begins in Ottawa, Canada. With some discussions to focus on the mandate for—and then the designation and development of—a... Read more

Land subsidence is overlooked as a hazard in cities, according to scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Virginia Tech. Writing in the journal Science, Prof Robert Nicholls of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at UEA and Prof Manoochehr Shirzaei of Virginia Tech and United Nations... Read more

Drylands in the western United States are currently in the grips of a 23-year "megadrought," and one West Virginia University researcher is working to gain a better understanding of this extreme climate event.... Read more

Asbestos has been found in mulch used for playgrounds, schools, parks and gardens across Sydney and Melbourne. Local communities naturally fear for the health of their loved ones. Exposure to asbestos is a serious health risk—depending on its intensity, frequency and duration—as it may lead to chronic lung diseases.... Read more

The idea that earthquakes release stress by a single strong quake along a single fault plane may need to be corrected. A recent study by researchers from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) with the participation of the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and international partner institutions points out... Read more

The deadly heat wave that hit Africa's Sahel region in early April would not have occurred without human-induced climate change, according to a study by the World Weather Attribution (WWA) group published Thursday.... Read more