Category Archives: Climate Change

Monarch butterfly population on decline, public asked to help

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is encouraging people to help the monarch butterfly population. It said the monarch population is in decline, so it's asking the public and scientists to track and report monarch sightings. “If some evil demon caused all butterflies to be extinct tomorrow, it wouldn’t be the end of the…

Around 0.9 billion hectares of land worldwide would be suitable for reforestation, which could ultimately capture two thirds of human-made carbon emissions. The Crowther Lab of ETH Zurich has published a study in the journal Science that shows this would be the most effective method to combat climate change. The Crowther Lab at ETH Zurich investigates nature-based…

Nearly a quarter of West Antarctic ice is now unstable

By combining 25 years of European Space Agency satellite altimeter measurements and a model of the regional climate, the UK Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) have tracked changes in snow and ice cover across the continent. A team of researchers, led by Professor Andy Shepherd from the University of Leeds, found that Antarctica's…

Mexico’s Monarch Butterflies Are in Grave Danger. Scientists Are Moving an Entire Forest to Save Them.

Tree by tree, Mexican scientists are planting the first stages of a new forest in the mountains of the country’s central Michoacan state. They’re taking saplings from oyamel fir trees further down the mountain and creating a new home for them higher up. Three and a half years ago, the first batch of transplanted trees…

Continued sea-level rise on East and Gulf coasts detailed

Researchers at William & Mary's Virginia Institute of Marine Science have issued the first annual update of their sea level "report cards," marking 50 years of water-level observations from 1969 through 2018. These web-based charts -- available online at https://www.vims.edu/research/products/slrc/index.php -- project sea level out to the year 2050 based on an ongoing analysis of tide-gauge records…

Massive restoration of world’s forests would cancel out a decade of CO2 emissions, analysis suggests

Replenishing the world’s forests on a grand scale would suck enough carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to cancel out a decade of human emissions, according to an ambitious new study. Scientists have established there is room for an additional 1.2 trillion trees to grow in parks, woods and abandoned land across the planet. If such a goal were…

Why are insects in decline, and can we do anything about it?

What is the sixth mass extinction? Many scientists think the current worldwide annihilation of wildlife is the beginning of a huge loss of species on Earth. It has happened five times in the last 4bn years, as a result of meteorite impacts, long ice ages and huge volcanic eruptions. But this one is the result not of…

Scripps Institution Scientists Study Imperial Beach As Sea Level Rises

San Diego scientists who are interested in rising sea levels recently spent a chunk of time in the coastal community of Imperial Beach. They were there to see the impact of a storm swell on top of an astronomical high tide. The low-lying city is nearly surrounded by water and the community faces real and immediate…

Early Thanksgiving Counts Show a Critically Low Monarch Population in California

The California overwintering population has been reduced to less than 0.5% of its historical size, and has declined by 86% compared to 2017. Each year, during a three-week period around Thanksgiving, scores of volunteers fan out through coastal California to find and count overwintering monarch butterflies as part of the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. The results…

Burmese python invasion in Florida a hidden legacy of Hurricane Andrew

Watch the CBSN Originals documentary, "Burmese Python Invasion: Fighting Invasive Species," in the video player above. The full hour special premieres on CBSN Sunday, Oct. 28, at 8 p.m., 11 p.m. and 2 a.m. ET. It's been 26 years since Hurricane Andrew became the costliest storm in Florida's history, but today residents of the Sunshine State are…