Science Daily: Climate News

As wildfires burn more often across the Western U.S., researchers are working to understand how extensively blazes burn. Their investigation, aided by machine learning techniques that sort fires by the conditions that precede them, not only reveals that the risk of wildfire is rising, but also spells out the role moisture plays in estimating fire risk.

Biologists have discovered how some corals managed to survive a globally unprecedented heatwave, in a first-ever study that provides new hope for the long-term survival of coral reefs in the face of climate change.

A considerable number of existing and proposed post-2020 biodiversity targets are at risk of being severely compromised due to climate change, even if other barriers such as habitat exploitation are removed argue researchers. According to their analysis, global warming accelerates the loss of biodiversity. Vice versa, measures to protect biodiversity may also mitigate the impacts of climate change.

Particulate emissions from cooking stay in the atmosphere for longer than previously thought, making a prolonged contribution to poor air quality and human health, according to a new study.

Researchers can predict where and when uranium is released into aquifers and suggest an easy fix to keep this naturally occurring toxin from contaminating water sources.

A study of pond sites in the Cascades found greater amphibian diversity in sites with beaver damns. Red-legged frogs and northwestern salamanders, which develop more slowly, were detected almost exclusively in dammed sites.

A new study shows that strong and rapid action to cut emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will help to slow down the rate of global warming over the next twenty years.

Over the past several decades, marine protected areas (MPAs) have emerged as a favored conservation tool. By protecting marine species and safeguarding habitat, these reserves help buffer ecosystems against natural and human-made shocks alike.

In Finland, the majority of the glacial and warm interval records have been interpreted to represent only the last, Weichselian, glacial cycle that took place 11,700-119,000 years ago. Researchers have now revised the crucial part of the existing stratigraphic documentation in southern Finland. The new findings show that a considerable part of the warm interval records extends further back in time than earlier thought. The new results change the established conceptions about glacial history in the area.

Large amounts of new particles can form in the valleys of the Himalayas from naturally emitted gases and can be transported to high altitudes by the mountain winds and injected into the upper atmosphere.

In the past 20 years, Central Europe has experienced six summer heat waves and droughts. Until now, however, it was unclear what factors led to these extreme events.

Researchers quantify the economic costs of California wildfires in 2018, finding they totaled more than $150 billion, and the costs extended far beyond burned areas.

Preserving the world's peatlands --- and the vast carbon stores they contain -- is vital to limiting climate change, researchers say.

A team of researchers understands more about the melting of the Greenland ice sheet. They discovered a flow of hot rocks, known as a mantle plume, rising from the core-mantle boundary beneath central Greenland that melts the ice from below.

Researchers have shown that abrupt climate change occurred as a result of widespread decrease of sea ice. This scientific breakthrough concludes a long-lasting debate on the mechanisms causing abrupt climate change during the glacial period. It also documents that the cause of the swiftness and extent of sudden climate change must be found in the oceans.

Scientists have released a new activity data product application for marine animal tracking. The technology is designed to remotely track and transmit data gathered on an animal's activity levels over several months along with the temperatures and depths they experienced.

How do plant roots store carbon? Researchers found that the energy a plant devotes to its roots depends on proximity to other plants: when close together, plants heavily invest in their root systems to compete for finite underground resources; if far apart, they invest less. As about a third of the world's vegetation biomass (and carbon) is belowground, this model provides a valuable tool to predict root proliferation in global earth-system models.

Sailing from Hobart, twenty researchers hope to capture the most detailed picture yet of how marine life in the Southern Ocean captures and stores carbon from the atmosphere.

The coastal protection coral reefs currently provide will start eroding by the end of the century, as the world continues to warm and the oceans acidify. The rate of erosion of calcium carbonate on coral reefs will overtake the rate of accretion on the majority of present-day reefs by the end of the century.

A small group of volcanic islands in Alaska's Aleutian chain might be part of a single, undiscovered giant volcano, say scientists. If the researchers' suspicions are correct, the newfound volcanic caldera would belong to the same category of volcanoes as the Yellowstone Caldera and other volcanoes that have had super-eruptions with severe global consequences.