Science Daily: Climate News

A key component of the Gulf Stream has markedly slowed over the past century -- that's the conclusion of a new research paper.

Climate researchers have found a link between hurricanes that form in the Atlantic Ocean - and threaten the United States - and a weather system in East Asia. A jet stream originating in East Asia carries an atmospheric wave to the Atlantic Ocean that affects wind shear - a key element in whether tropical storms develop.

A group of researchers has discovered why the western subarctic Pacific Ocean, which accounts for only 6 percent of the world's oceans, produces an estimated 26 percent of the world's marine resources.

A new study warns that even with some lockdown measures staying in place to the end of 2021, without more structural interventions global temperatures will only be roughly 0.01°C lower than expected by 2030. However, the study estimates that including climate policy measures as part of an economic recovery plan with strong green stimulus could prevent more than half of additional warming expected by 2050 under current policies.

Glaciers in the Southern Alps of New Zealand have lost more ice mass since pre-industrial times than remains today, according to a new study. The study mapped Southern Alps ice loss from the end of the Little Ice Age -- roughly 400 years ago -- to 2019. It found that relative to recent decades, the Southern Alps lost up to 77% of their total Little Ice Age glacier volume.

For the first time, a team of chemists has lifted the hood on the mechanics involved in the mysterious interplay between sunlight and molecules in the atmosphere known as 'roaming reactions', which could make atmospheric modelling more accurate.

Atmospheric and oceanic conditions are primed to fuel storm development in the Atlantic, leading to what could be an 'extremely active' season, according to forecasters.

Researchers report that anthropogenic sources of carbonyl sulfide (OCS), not just oceanic sources, account for much of the missing source of OCS in the atmosphere. Their findings provide better context for estimates of global photosynthesis (taking up CO2) using OCS dynamics.

Seafood is the most highly traded food commodity globally, with tropical zone marine fisheries contributing more than 50% of the global fish catch, an average of $USD 96 billion annually. Available scientific evidence consistently shows that tropical marine habitats, fish stocks and fisheries are most vulnerable to oceanic changes associated with climate change. However, telecoupling, or linkages between distant human-natural systems, could generate cascades of climate change impacts from the tropics that propagate to other 'extra-' tropical natural systems and human communities globally.

With COVID-19 dominating the headlines, searches for climate change are on the decline. That worries authors of a new study showing that even brief, involuntary attention to environmental issues moves people to care more and act.

One million years ago, the extinction of large-bodied plant-eaters changed the trajectory of life on Earth. The disappearance of these large herbivores reshaped plant life, altered fire regimes across Earth's landscapes, and modified biogeochemical cycling in such a way that Earth's climate became slightly colder.

Marine heatwaves across the world's oceans can displace habitat for sea turtles, whales, and other marine life by 10s to thousands of kilometers. They dramatically shift these animals' preferred temperatures in a fraction of the time that climate change is expected to do the same, new research shows.

A new study which provides a global estimate of rock cover on the Earth's glaciers has revealed that the expanse of rock debris on glaciers, a factor that has been ignored in models of glacier melt and sea level rise, could be significant.

Ecologists have discovered that the food hoards pygmy owls collect in nest-boxes ('freezers') for winter rot due to high precipitation caused by heavy autumn rains and if the hoarding has been initiated early in the autumn. The results of the study show that climate change may impair predators' foraging and thus decrease local overwinter survival.

Marketers can lead how their companies can use the cost and demand effects of reducing the carbon footprint of their products to determine the profit-maximizing design.

The study reveals that the rate at which carbon is captured from the atmosphere at Harvard Forest nearly doubled between 1992 and 2015.

Experts have reconstructed the depth of the Southern Ocean at key phases in the last 34 million years of the Antarctic's climate history.

The RCP 8.5 carbon emissions pathway is the most appropriate for conducting assessments of climate change impacts by 2050, according to a new article. Long dismissed as an alarmist or misleading worst-case scenario, the authors argue that is actually the closest approximation of both historical emissions and anticipated outcomes of current global climate policies, tracking within 1% of actual emissions.

Researchers have discovered why the tropics and a handful of other areas across the globe have become the most biodiverse places on the planet.

A large number of the valley networks scarring Mars's surface were carved by water melting beneath glacial ice, not by free-flowing rivers as previously thought, according to new research. The findings effectively throw cold water on the dominant 'warm and wet ancient Mars' hypothesis, which postulates that rivers, rainfall and oceans once existed on the red planet.