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The "mysterious" craters in Siberia have actually been caused by methane seeping from the melting permafrost. No rockets, no meteorites, no aliens - sorry, just global warming at it again.
The Aboriginal Martu people have been hunting kangaroos and sand monitor lizards for over 2,000 years. During this time, the natives have not only lived sustainably, but also became unwilling conservationists helping kangaroo populations grow by sparking wild fires that help them catch lizards, a study by researchers at University of Utah found. In other remote areas […]
Air conditioning may make your home cooler, but it's making your city hotter - cities can be even 3 degrees hotter than the surrounding environment, and ACs play a big role in that, a new study shows.
Big oil companies invest big chunks of their profits (which are bigger than many countries’) into climate change denial. As I wrote a while ago, 9 out of 10 top climate change deniers are linked with Exxon Mobil, the biggest private oil company. Still, there are some brilliant scientists working for oil companies, and they […]
Texas Professor Katharine Hayhoe is among the American Geophysical Union’s 2014 award-winners for science communication, announced on July 3. This is only the third time AGU has given an award for science communicaton, and they hope that she could help end – or at the very least quench – the war between religion and climate change […]
The Stanford News Service recently made an interview with Jon Krosnick, a Stanford professor of communication and of political science who conducts survey research on how people view climate change. It’s a most compelling read, one I advise those of you interested in the subject of climate change and the politics behind it to go through it. Some of […]
Are you a convinced climate change denier? Wanna make a quick buck? This is the thing for you! A physics professor is so fed up with people denying climate change, that he’s willing to offer $10.000 out of his own pocket to anyone who can scientifically disprove climate change. So what if the scientific community is […]
Last month, the Niels Bugge Cartoon Award asked illustrators and cartoonists from around the world to submit drawings based on a basic theme: climate. Oceans are in our hands,” they proclaimed, and participants from all around the world put forth their best interpretations (often satyrical) of the current climate situation. You can check their website to […]
The former popular landscape was an expanse of warped shapes, out of which some were as tall as a Manhattan skyscraper, and it was discovered by an ice-penetration radar loaded aboard NASA survey flights. According to the scientists who made the discovery, this could deepen the level of understanding concerning the way in which the […]
Whenever you’re eating a fish or some other marine creature, think just for a moment that it may actually be worth more as a CO2 storing machine than a food. First of all, let’s just make this clear: we’re unsustainably eating fish. If we continue current trends, we’ll soon be facing a massive fish crisis, […]
When we think of CO2 emissions, we generally tend to think of air pollution and global warming; we tend to ignore the fact that a huge part of all the CO2 emissions is absorbed by the oceans, and the oceans are becoming more and more acidic. The process is just getting started, and it’s gonna […]
A new study conducted by Dr Michael Kearney from the University of Melbourne explains that koalas actually hug trees to regulate their body temperature. This cute behaviour isn’t just a stage act, it’s quite important for koalas. In this study published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters showed that when it gets really hot, the animals […]
The British summer has always been a subject of fascination and annoyance, for its fickle, rainy nature. But a new study using supercomputers has shown that climate change will cause even more intense storms and rainfall, with flash flooding becoming a common occurrence. The study published in the journal Nature Climate Change shows the first evidence that […]
When I read this, I initially thought it was a joke – but sadly, that’s not the case. While the IPCC and virtually the entire scientific community is worried about climate change, warning about droughts and heat waves which will cause famine and water shortages, the GOP held a meeting where they decided that the IPCC is, […]
I like it when people talk about climate change. I even like it when they speak against climate change – as long as they bring arguments and act rationally. People shouldn’t be forbidden from talking about these kind of things, one way or another – everybody should be encouraged to look at the scientific facts, […]
News about glacial melting in Antarctica has been uniformly grim; the loss is likely unstoppable. News about melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet has been no better; Scientists had earlier believed that the losses in Greenland would eventually slow or stop, owing to the solid bedrock of the continent. Now, that view may also melt […]
We’ve already written about the damage done to the Antarctic ice sheet, and how sadly, its collapse seems irreversible. A new study has analyzed some of the consequences of that collapse – it could devastate global food supply, drowning vast areas of crop lands across the Middle East and Asia. The report urges the Obama administration […]
For 11 episodes now, the groundbreaking Fox and National Geographic Channel series Cosmos has taken a deep look at some of science’s most thorny aspects – from creationism and evolution, to industry funded science denial, giving science teachers something new and cool to show in class on Monday mornings. This coming Sunday will be the most […]
Butterflies and dragonflies with lighter colors are bettering their darker counterparts in the face of global warming. Science shows once again just how big of a fingerprint global warming has on all life on Earth – as temperatures get higher and higher, communities of butterflies and dragonflies consist of more lighter coloured species. Darker colored insects […]
Carbon dioxide levels throughout the northern hemisphere hit 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in human history in April – the ominous threshold has been reached, and it continues to go up. Time is running out I’m sad that I was right when I wrote: The Inevitable 2014 Headline: ‘Global CO2 Level Reaches […]
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet , a massive system of glaciers, is collapsing as a result of glacier melting (global warming). The process is most likely irreversible and cause a global sea lever rise of at least 10 feet, a pair of independent studies conclude. A warmer planet gives way to rising oceans Previously, the two-mile-thick […]
If current trends continue, by 2050, the elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere will cause many crops around the world to produce a reduced amount of nutrients, especially zinc and iron. Considering that about almost 1 in 3 people in the world (2 billion people) suffer from iron or zinc deficiencies resulting in a loss of […]
Arctic sea ice has seen a sharp decline over the past four decades, as the sea ice cover is shrinking and thinning, making scientists think an ice-free Arctic Ocean during the summer might be reached this century. According to researchers at the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and NASA the arctic region is experiencing longer […]
The scientists from the Australian Meteorology Bureau estimate that there’s a good chance that El Nino will form in the southern hemisphere’s winter (northern hemisphere’s summer). El Nino is a band of anomalously warm ocean water temperatures that periodically develop off the Pacific coast of South America. The results of this pattern are extreme weather […]
The already iconic global warming images with polar bears sadly floating on small chunks of ice have acted as a double edge sword – on one hand they were impacting visual representations of global warming, showing the extent of damage which has already been done, but on the other hand, they created the idea that […]
Oceanographers believe that Antarctica‘s oceanic waters, which are turning from briny to fresh in recent decades, are causing the shutdown of the Southern Ocean’s coldest, deepest currents. The cold currents, called the Antarctic Bottom Water, are basically cold, briny, underwater rivers flowing from the underwater edge of the Antarctic continent north toward the equator, very […]
I love Bill Nye, and I think the world needs more people like him. I don’t mindlessly follow him, I don’t always agree with what he does, but ultimately, his reasoning and actions speak very clearly to me. You can watch the video below and I highly recommend watching it to the very end, especially […]
A big part of the US and Canada is currently in the grip of a polar vortex – extreme colds, strong winds, cancelled flights and overall chaos in many parts of the continent – it’s big, and it’s nasty. But what is a polar vortex, and what’s causing it? What’s a polar vortex anyway? A […]
In 1959, an American geologist built a rock cairn 1.2 meters away from this glacier; he left a note, asking whoever finds it to measure the distance to the glacier. Today, that distance has grown up to 101.5 meters. Researchers who found the incredibly creative and unusual note say it’s highly unexpected for a scientist […]
By now, hopefully, most people understand the huge problems caused by global warming – but most people probably don’t understand just how bad things are. Even if all emissions would somehow magically stop right now, the Earth would continue to warm for hundreds of years, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate […]
An iceberg the size of Singapore has separated from Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier This kind of detachment is not uncommon, but rarely on this magnitude Singapore is an island-city-state, about the size of Budapest or Dubai Between November 9–11, 2013, a large iceberg finally separated from the calving front of Antarctica’s Pine Island […]
The climate crisis we are facing right now (which for one reason or another many people choose to ignore) has largely been caused by only 90 companies – which between them produced nearly two-thirds of the greenhouse gas emissions generated since the industrial revolution, new research suggests. The study was found that almost all these […]
Global warming is real, it’s affecting us all, and it’s gonna get worse – and we have nobody to blame but ourselves. The IPPC report The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific intergovernmental body with the purpose of providing ‘comprehensive scientific assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the […]
The past 12 months have been 0.22 degrees Celsius warmer than any other equivalent period prior to 2013, and Australia is steadily on track for the warmest year ever. Warmer and warmer A new Climate Council study, titled Off the Charts, says that the country has just had its warmest ever 12-month period, from 1 […]
Everybody was expecting it to be bad, but it’s just so incredibly bad: of the most powerful storms ever recorded killed at least 10,000 people in the central Philippines, a senior police official said on Sunday, as huge waves struck down poor villages and a developed city alike, destroying 70-80 percent of all buildings in […]
Improved disaster preparedness and early warning systems in the region greatly reduced the number of casualties caused by “Super Cyclone” Phailin – no less than 800.000 people were evacuated to shelters set up in temples, schools and government buildings to avoid the path of the 140mph cyclone. Phailin resulted in 23 casualties; a comparable cyclone, […]
The state of climate change was recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on climate change. Among important insights covering global warming, the U.N. panel of scientists have reached an unprecedented consensus stating there’s a 95% probability that all climate change is caused by human activities. The IPCC was established by the United Nations in 1988 to […]
It’s hard to find Kivalina on the map as it is, but soon it will be impossible – the place is quickly disappearing. Kivalina is a small Alaskan village whose inhabitants have relied on the sea for many generations. But due to a huge retreat of Arctic ice which left it very vulnerable to erosion […]
Just like we get a tan and our skin gets darker in response to sunlight exposure, whales increase the pigment in their skin as well, but not only do they do this, they also accumulate damage to the cells in the skin as they get older, just like humans. “Whales can be thought of as […]
A interesting, yet controversial discussion, among climate scientists is set around the runaway greenhouse effect. Basically, past a certain threshold when the incoming solar energy is greater than the energy a planet can emit back into space, equilibrium is broken and the planet’s atmosphere enters a positive feedback loop. In the case of Earth, when […]
When global temperatures rise, ice starts to thin down, and sometimes, it breaks down. When a big ice shelf collapses in Antarctica, it opened up prime ocean real estate, and delicate but ambitious creatures called glass sponges showed up, pretty much seizing the opportunity. Hexactinellid sponges are sponges with a skeleton made of four- and/or […]
Scuba divers have discovered a primeval underwater forest off the coast of Alabama – a cypress forest which was incredibly well preserved for over 50.000 years. The bald cypress forest was buried under ocean sediments (almost certainly sand), isolated from oxygen (which is the main enemy of preservation), thus preventing them from rotting; however, the underwater […]
From the 1950s, and especially from 1975, the global surface ocean has shown a significant and steady warming trend. However, since 2004, that warming seemed to stall. Researchers measuring the Earth’s total energy budget (the energy coming in from the Sun and the radiated heat) and they noticed that more heat was coming in then […]
If you’ve ever visited a cave, you probably know the golden rules: Watch you’re head, stay on the track, and keep your grase paws off the formations! Why the last one? Well, because the hands and dirt you have on your hands can impede their growth. But when you go inside a cave as a […]
Towering thunderstorms are a bad sign, often announcing a strong tropical cyclone – and NASA’s satellites observed just that. The TRMM satellite spotted thunderstorms reaching heights of almost 9 miles high within Tropical Storm Andrea, while the Aqua satellite provided an infrared view that revealed very cold cloud top temperatures that coincided with the towering […]
A paleoclimate study has shown that a huge mass of warm water stretched out from Indonesia over to Africa and South America four million years ago had a huge impact on tropical changes, suggesting that current climate models are a too conservative. The Pliocene era started 5.332 million years ago and lasted until 2.588 million […]
It’s important to understand that our planet’s climate consists of so much interconnected elements, that what happens someplace affects virtually the entire Earth. Thing is, few people realize the huge impact the warming in the Arctic has on global climate. At a news conference held on Tuesday, several researchers said that the melting ice may […]
You’ve probably heard it a few times: the climate is indeed warming up, but it’s all good, because the rate at which it is warming up is slowing down. But a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters analyzing ocean warming (which represents 90% of global warming) claims otherwise. Accelerating global warming Contrary to the […]
In one of the first articles I’ve ever written on ZME Science, all the way back in 2007 (has it really been 6 years? Wow!), I was telling you about an interesting plan of cooling global temperatures by fertilizing the world’s oceans with iron. This would in cause turn a phytoplankton explosion, which would suck […]
A NOAA paper published 4 years ago showed, almost beyond the shadow of a doubt, that climate change is irreversible for approximately for approximately 1000 years. Despite this and several other papers that had pretty much the same conclusions, people still believe that climate change is reversible in the near future; it’s not. We’ve reached […]
