Sci/Tech

Climate change is a complicated phenomenon with a variety of both abrupt and gradual effects that scientists are working hard to uncover. Emerging findings on how various ecosystems are responding to a changing climate, stemming from long-term research conducted through the National Science Foundation’s 40-year-old Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, have now been published in […]

In late May of 2021, 172 runners set out to tackle a 100-kilometer (62-mile) ultramarathon in northwestern China. By midday, as the runners made their way through a rugged, high-elevation part of the course, temperatures plunged, strong winds whipped around the hillslopes and freezing rain and hail pummeled the runners. By the next day, the […]

Excessively hot nights caused by climate change are predicted to increase the mortality rate around the world by up to 60% by the end of the century, according to a new international study that features research from the UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health. Ambient heat during the night may interrupt the normal physiology […]

The huge amount of water vapor hurled into the atmosphere, as detected by NASA’s Microwave Limb Sounder, could end up temporarily warming Earth’s surface. When the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano erupted on Jan. 15, it sent a tsunami racing around the world and set off a sonic boom that circled the globe twice. The underwater eruption in […]

Researchers call for a new “Climate Endgame” agenda and say far too little work has gone into understanding the mechanisms by which rising temperatures might pose a “catastrophic” risk to society and humanity: For instance, if temperature rises are worse than many predict or cause cascades of events we have yet to consider, or indeed […]

A collaboration led by scientists at Nagoya University in Japan has investigated the nature of dark matter surrounding galaxies seen as they were 12 billion years ago, billions of years further back in time than ever before. Their findings, published in Physical Review Letters, offer the tantalizing possibility that the fundamental rules of cosmology may differ […]

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified for the first time in domestic environmental samples the bacteria that causes a rare and serious disease called melioidosis. The bacteria, Burkholderia pseudomallei or B. pseudomallei, was identified through sampling of soil and water in the Gulf Coast region of Mississippi. It is unclear how […]

July 27, 2022 – While children receiving chemotherapy routinely undergo hearing tests, adults don’t, and a new study by UC San Francisco reports for the first time that significant hearing issues often occur among adult survivors of the most common forms of cancer. The researchers found that more than half the survivors in their study […]

Future human explorers on the moon might have 99 problems but staying warm or cool won’t be one. A team led by planetary scientists at UCLA has discovered shady locations within pits on the moon that always hover around a comfortable 63 degrees Fahrenheit. The pits, and caves to which they may lead, would make […]

The Colorado River is in trouble—Lakes Powell and Mead, the two major reservoirs fed by the river, reached record lows this year nearing 25% capacity. An ongoing megadrought, impacts from climate change and systematic overuse have created a deep management crisis. Although there is growing public acknowledgement that cuts in consumptive use are inevitable and […]

Historically, the scientific community has relied on educating the public in order to increase agreement with scientific consensus. New research from Portland State University suggests why this approach has seen only mixed results.  “Human opposition to scientific consensus is an extremely important topic. For many years, smart people thought that the way to bring people […]

Water resources will fluctuate increasingly and become more and more difficult to predict in snow-dominated regions across the Northern Hemisphere by later this century, according to a comprehensive new climate change study led by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). The research team found that, even in regions that keep receiving about the same […]

Scientists from the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service are predicting very high levels of surface ozone pollution across a large region of Europe as temperatures soar. Meanwhile, wildfires have been increasing across southern Europe. Scientists at The Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS) are warning very high levels of ozone pollution in southern Europe caused by the […]

July 18, 2022 – A new national study shows which Americans are least likely to be prepared to take necessary actions when faced with disasters such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires. Researchers found that households led by women, those with children under age 18, renters, those of low socioeconomic status, African Americans and Asians were […]

In 2019, astronomers observed the nearest example to date of a star that was shredded, or “spaghettified,” after approaching too close to a massive black hole. That tidal disruption of a sun-like star by a black hole 1 million times more massive than itself took place 215 million light years from Earth. Luckily, this was […]

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA […]

By firing lasers finer than a human hair at tiny grains of a mineral extracted from beach sand, Curtin researchers have found evidence of an almost four billion-year-old piece of the Earth’s crust that lies beneath the South-West of WA. In a new finding that helps explain the planet’s evolution from uninhabitable to life supporting, […]

LA JOLLA, CA – It can be a bit smellier than other ways of monitoring COVID-19, but analyzing wastewater is a cheaper, faster and more accurate way for public health officials and researchers to detect rising cases. Bits and pieces of the SARS-CoV-2 virus are flushed down toilets and washed down sinks by infected individuals; […]

Ask any space explorer, and they’ll have a favorite photograph or two from their mission. For Katie Stack Morgan, the deputy project scientist for NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, the first close-up image of layered rocks at the base of Jezero Crater’s ancient river delta holds a special place in her heart. The image of the […]

Today, NOAA inaugurated the nation’s newest weather and climate supercomputers with an operational run of the National Blend of Models. The new supercomputers, first announced in Febuary 2020 with a contract award to General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT), provide a significant upgrade to computing capacity, storage space and interconnect speed of the nation’s Weather and Climate Operational […]