Sci/Tech

Boulder, Colo. – The consequences of a warming climate frequently dominated the news this summer, from devastating wildfires and floods to deadly heat waves across the globe. Reducing harm from climate change is a challenging endeavor, and it requires comprehensive public education. Thus, the question arises: How can climate change science be made most accessible […]

September 13, 2023 – A new study updates the planetary boundary framework and shows human activities are increasingly impacting the planet and, thereby, increasing the risk of triggering dramatic changes in overall Earth conditions. For over 3 billion years, the interaction between life (represented by the planetary boundary, Biosphere Integrity) and climate have controlled the […]

September 11, 2023 – The globe was hot and humid. The sea was teeming with life. Early squids, eel-like fish and sea worms hunted smaller animals. Above ground, however, nothing stirred. The animals had not yet crawled ashore. That was what the Earth looked like about 450 million years ago at the end of the […]

The severe global threat posed by invasive alien species is underappreciated, underestimated, and often unacknowledged. According to a major new report by the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), more than 37,000 alien species have been introduced by many human activities to regions and biomes around the world. This conservative estimate is now […]

September 5, 2023 – The US continues to face stark inequalities in preterm birth and mortality rates between mothers of differing socioeconomic status and race, finds a new report led by UCL researchers. The study, published in JAMA Paediatrics, examined data from the US National Centre for Health Statistics Birth Infant/Death Dataset, of over 12 million preterm […]

August 30, 2023 – Coastal wetlands and coral reef islands will struggle to grow fast enough to keep pace with rising sea levels driven by climate change, according to a new study published in Nature. The study was conducted by an international team that includes a Tulane University researcher. The findings show that the future of marshes […]

The monitoring of the early stages of the Ozone Hole over the South Pole during 2023 by the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)has detected a slightly earlier development. Lower ozone column values in comparison to the previous 43 years of satellite observations, together with other key indicators, mark an early start to the ozone hole […]

In 2018, researchers from NOAA’s Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Nautilus Live observed thousands of octopus nesting on the deep seafloor off the Central California coast. The discovery of the “Octopus Garden” captured the curiosity of millions of people around the world, including MBARI scientists. For three years, MBARI and collaborators used high-tech tools […]

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a pair of reports that provide guidance for strengthening wildfire preparedness across the United States, including specific actions that communities can take to save lives when there is not enough time to safely evacuate all residents. NIST has also created a new website with guidance […]

Like much of the planet, Southern California is expected to experience more heat waves in the future due to Earth’s changing climate. And some of these will feel increasingly humid, as long-term forecasts call for muggy spells more typically associated with Florida or eastern Texas. To begin to understand what these changes could mean across […]

August 21, 2023 – In 2006, the Tripod Complex Fire burned more than 175,000 acres in north-central Washington. The fire, which was within the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest, was more than three times the size of Seattle. Yet while considered severe at the time, even larger wildfires in 2014, 2015 and 2021 have since dwarfed Tripod. […]

August 14, 2023 – A Monash University-led study has proposed a solution for the urgent need to capture real-time data on the impact of climate change-related events on human health, healthcare workforces, and healthcare systems at the point of care. As the global community faces growing climate challenges, the study calls for action, collaboration, and […]

Irvine, Calif., Aug. 14, 2023 —As butterflies flit among flowers, they don’t all view blossoms the same way. In a phenomenon called sexually dimorphic vision, females of some butterfly species perceive ultraviolet color while the males see light and dark. University of California, Irvine biologists have discovered that in at least one species, the variation results […]

The Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), implemented by the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts on behalf of the European Commission with funding from the EU, routinely publishes monthly climate bulletins reporting on the changes observed in global surface air temperature, sea ice cover and hydrological variables. This month, highlights about sea surface temperature are […]

NASA is sending a trio of miniature rovers to the Moon to see how well they can cooperate with one another without direct input from mission controllers back on Earth. A teamwork-minded experiment to demonstrate new technology, the CADRE (Cooperative Autonomous Distributed Robotic Exploration) project marks another step the agency is taking toward developing robots that, by […]

As Earth’s climate continues to warm, extreme and anomalous weather events are becoming more common. But predicting and analyzing the effects of what is, by definition, an anomaly can be tricky. Scientists say museum specimens can help. In the first study of its kind, published in Nature Communications Biology, researchers at the University of Florida used natural history specimens […]

July 27, 2023 – Roughly six million Black people moved away from the American South during the Great Migration between 1910 and 1970, hoping to escape racial violence and discrimination while pursuing economic and educational opportunities. Now, research has uncovered a link between this historic event with present-day inequalities and implicit biases. In a new Social Psychological […]

According to ERA5 data from the EU-funded Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S), the first three weeks of July have been the warmest three-week period on record and the month is on track to be the hottest July and the hottest month on record. These temperatures have been related to heatwaves in large parts of North […]

Assessments of the health impacts of the non-sugar sweetener aspartame are released today by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Joint Expert Committee on Food Additives (JECFA). Citing “limited evidence” for carcinogenicity in humans, IARC classified aspartame as possibly carcinogenic to humans (IARC Group […]