Category Archives: Climate Change

WCS scientists have discovered a refuge for corals where the environment protects otherwise sensitive species to the increasing severity of climate change. The bad news is that the reefs are showing signs of being overfished and weak compliance with local fisheries laws needs to be reversed to maintain the fish that help to keep reefs…

Global temperatures could break through the 1.5°C barrier negotiated at the Paris conference as early as 2026 if a slow-moving, natural climate driver known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO) has, as suspected, moved into a positive phase. New research published in Geophysical Research Letters by University of Melbourne scientists at the ARC Centre of…

Ice cores drilled from a glacier in a cave in Transylvania offer new evidence of how Europe's winter weather and climate patterns fluctuated during the last 10,000 years, known as the Holocene period. The cores provide insights into how the region's climate has changed over time. The researchers' results, published this week in the journal…

With two decades in public office coming to a close, the Republican mayor of Miami looked to the future Friday and saw a coastal city threatened by rising seas. Referring to climate change as “the biggest challenge the city of Miami will ever face,” Tomás Regalado reserved a rare forward-thinking moment during a reflective 2017…

Between 56 million and 53 million years ago, Earth experienced a series of extreme global warming events that radically altered life on the planet. During the first event, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), carbon levels spiked and temperatures increased as much as 8 degrees Celsius (14.4 degrees Fahrenheit). A second event, known as the Eocene…

Scott Pruitt, the nation’s top environmental official, strongly rejected the established science of climate change on Thursday, outraging scientists, environmentalists, and even his immediate predecessor at the Environmental Protection Agency. “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact,…

Lawmakers are remaking NASA in order to leave parts of the agency’s earth science program untouched but remove its climate change research. It’s still unclear exactly how lawmakers plan to transform NASA’s mission, but Republicans and Trump administration officials have said they want the agency to focus on deep-space missions and away from climate change…

In 2015, in a moment of science communication genius, NASA created a mission called “OMG.” The acronym basically ensured that a new scientific mission — measuring how quickly the Oceans are Melting Greenland — would get maximum press attention. The subject is actually extremely serious. OMG amounts to a comprehensive attempt, using ships, planes, and other…

Changes in Extreme Weather and Climate Events Scientists study many aspects of change in extreme weather and climate events. These include: Frequency: Are events occurring more often than they did in the past? Intensity: Are events getting more severe, with the potential for more damaging effects? Duration: Are events lasting longer than "the norm"? Timing: Are events occurring earlier…