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Typically, in the tundras, tree growth is hindered by very low temperatures, and usually, in the tundra, vegetation comprises of dwarf shrubs, sedges and grasses, lichens, etc. However, according to a recent study, plants and shrubs which colonized the Arctic tundra are starting to turn into small trees, a process which will accelerate global warming […]
A new source of methane, a gas which is many times more destructive for the environment than CO2 has been identified by scientists over vast areas of the Arctic, especially over the areas where the sea has melted. Researchers found massive amounts of methane being released in the atmosphere from the ocean through cracks in […]
A recently published study suggests that the Earth might have been visited by a giant space rock 13,000 years ago, an event which might have sparked an unusual cold period in the planet’s climate history. The Younger Dryas, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred […]
A recent study performed by a team of American/Chinese scientists shows that there’s a direct link between the progressive shrinking ice in the Arctic and in the increasingly harsher snowy winters in the US, Europe and China. In the year 2007, the level of Arctic sea ice hit a record low, which hasn’t recovered to this day. […]
For decades, classrooms were caught in a debate between creationism and evolution, and now, teachers will once again be caught in a somewhat similar discussion regarding climate change. Planting the seeds of ignorance Recently leaked documents from The Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank, revealed plans to pay a non-climate scientist to create school curricula […]
US-based scientists have successfully managed to engineer a microbe that reacts with seaweed to produce ethanol, and thus making it a new source of biofuel, an alternative to coal and oil. If the research can be applied at an economically feasible scale, it could finally set biofuels usage on an exponentially growth path, as seaweed […]
Apparently, parts of Greenland‘s southern bedrock rose by as much as three quarters of an inch after glaciers and ice sheets above its surface melted during 2010. In figures, 100 billion tons of ice melted that year according to Professor Michael Bevis who presented his findings at a conference in San Francisco this past Friday. The data […]
A new independent study conducted by researchers from Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, has concluded that natural climate variability is highly unlike to have contributed more than a quarter of the total dramatic temperature increase the Earth has faced since the 1950s. The study concludes that man made activities resulting in greenhouse […]
Antarctica is the most the arid place on Earth. Its climate is so rough, so hazardous that no permanent human populace can live there, however just a few million years ago the harsh plains of the south and north poles had a subtropical climate – a paradise for life. During a transition period of just 100,000 years, […]
Researchers lately pointed out that delaying measures against climate change will make them more expensive and less effective; however, countries most vulnerable to global warming are startled by recent proposal received from rich or major emerging economies to delay a global deal to curb greenhouse gases until at least 2020. With the Herculean task of […]
If the current pledges under the UN flag to cut carbon emissions are not improved, then it is estimated that the cost of meeting the world’s targets regarding global warming will rise by half, according to OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). Basically, these things have to be done, sooner or later, until it […]
Ulan Bator is a weird town; while some people live in skyscrapers, or big fancy villas, some still live in tents in the city outskirts. But they have plants to get even weirder: they want to keep the city cool by creating an enormous urban glacier. What they want to do is capture some of […]
Using a pair of satellites that monitor the Earth, NASA recorded over 10.000.000 fires throughout the planet; they then took the recorded material and created an animation with it, as can be seen below. The animation also includes vegetation, snow cover, cloud cover, surface temperatures, and more. Africa was by far the ‘hottest’ continent, being […]
For the first time, king crabs have been found on the edge of Antarctica, probably as a result of global warming, which has made this environment suitable for them, researchers claim. They suggest the crabs were washed in during an upsurge of warmer water, and that this can be extremely damaging to the local ecosystem […]
Studying the immense 2007 Anaktuvuk River fire, which burned 401 square miles and becoming the largest tundra fire on record, scientists have found that more carbon was spewed into the air in a few months than the entire Arctic tundra ecosystem normally absorbs in an average year. For the past 10,000 years tundra fires have been […]
According to a new study released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), tiny solid and liquid particles in the atmosphere, resulting from human and natural pollution, have kept the Earth from warming at the estimated level. The reduction of global warming effects by stratospheric aerosols has been significant for the past dozen years, […]
In the past decade, it seems that greenhouse has emissions have remained constant each year, despite no important improvements were made – on the contrary CO2 levels have increased dramatically. The reason, reports a team of academicians who sought to explain the bafflement, after tweaking a statistical model to include sulfur emissions, is that coal […]
There isn’t any news for anyone, I hope, that the Earth is on the heater right now, and as time passes and gas emissions in the atmosphere rise, you should be thinking about ordering that air conditioning faster. Yes, glaciers are melting, and like I mentioned before scientists have projected an increase in sea levels […]
Global warming is not an abstract element, it’s not harmless, and it doesn’t apply only to polar caps; it affects the entire world, including you and me. Taking a look at food prices Even though mundane things tend to become cheaper and cheaper, food has become more and more expensive in the past few years, […]
Late this Monday, the Mississippi crested in at 47.8 feet (14.5 meters), just less than a foot below the city’s record, set in 1937. As the river reaches nearby city neighborhoods and Shelby County suburbs, nature has “put the pin back in the grenade,” said county spokesperson Steve Shular. Floods are really nasty, but for […]
It is no longer a question if multi-meter sea level rises will happen, but only of when. According to the latest estimate from the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme it seems the accelerated climate change in the Arctic including a thaw of Greenland’s ice could raise world sea levels by up to 1.6 meters by […]
By means of a new mathematical model, scientists have been able to calculate the displacement of ice in glaciers along the years. This was achieved by using the spread of glacier debris and the lines where vegetation starts on the mountainsides to create a series of calculations determining the amount of ice that has melted […]
It’s another bad omen for life on Earth, as a colony of imperial penguins from the Antarctica peninsula has disappeared, probably due to the warming of ice caused by global warming. It was expected that penguins would greatly suffer from the warming, but this is the first documented case ever of the disappearance of a […]
Despite the obvious differences, Venus has a lot in common with our Mother Earth, and we can learn a lot from our neighboring planet that can be really useful in the future; such is the case with the high-altitude layer of sulphur dioxide discovered by ESA’s Venus Express. This was a mystery that caused quite […]
When Al Gore’s famous documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” was released it was intended to sensify the public towards the impeding danger of global warming. What it did in turn was to sprout panic and institute panic worldwide by stating that only an immediate, draconian response will save our planet from almost certain doom. Of […]
You know those days when you go to the beach, and it’s just too hot outside, so you have to use some cream and all ? Well, it’s a little harder if you’re a whale. A recent study conducted that a whole lot of whales displayed blisters caused by sun damage. Laura Martinez-Levasseur, from the […]
The problem of a water shortage has been on the table for quite a while now, and as time passes, it is becoming more and more of a probability. Especially the United States and other heavily populated and industrailized countries are threatened by this issue. A detailed analysis conducted by National Center for Atmospheric Research […]
The San Andreas fault is notorious for its unstable seismic nature, being the center stage for America’s most devastating earthquakes as well as the object of imagination for different artists. We’ve all marveled and even laughed at movies, magazines or comic books depicting scenes like a earthquake ravaged L.A. or a newly formed island state […]
Her name is Severn Suzuki, and here you have one of perhaps the most impressive speeches of all time, delivered by her (only a 12 year old at the time) at a UN meeting, at the Earth Summit in 1992. [After 5 minutes] An incredible story Severn Suzuki was born in a remarkable family, with […]
Where do birds go in the winter? That’s a question many of us asked, as kids. Well puffins are currently suffering from an increase in winter mortality, which is probably caused by the worsening of conditions in the North Sea. Using geolocation technology, this study tracked puffins and found that the population decreased by 30% […]
Global warming is one of the main concerns on everybody’s lips, causing more and more damage to the environment every year, sometimes in ways that seem hard to believe; everyday there seems to be a new report about something that went, is going, or will be going terribly wrong. However, in the early 1800s, the situation […]
Most of the talk about global warming revolves around carbon dioxide, sometimes giving the false impression that it alone is responsible for global warming and all its implications. However, numerous studies have revealed a new enemy, one almost as dangerous as carbon dioxide: soot. The black powdery pollutant is responsible for numerous climatic shifts, especially […]
A significant part of Australia’s east coast, including country’s biggest city, Sydney, has been engulfed by a shroud of red dust blown mostly from the desert outback. Visibility was so bad that most if not all flights were delayed, and of course, there were the usual folks who started screaming that this is the […]
Each of us can easily feel the effects of global warming especially now when we practically melt in our homes. However, it seems that there are some more… peculiar effects. Scientists have discovered that a wild species of sheep from the island of St. Kilda has begun to reduce their size as a result of […]
The mass extinction theory is… a theory, because there are still some blanks left in to fill by scientists; of course, there are those who try to fight it and find other theories and those that try to back it up and fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle. Now, the latter camp recorded […]
Despite whatever you may hear, it’s obvious that we still don’t have a clear understanding of the impact we’re having on the planet we call home; there are studies that show we’re totally destroying it, and there are studies that we’re an ant on a mountain, so it’s really hard to say for sure how […]
In almost every belief there’s an apocalypse, hanging above the believers’ head like the sword of Damocles. But as far as we know so far, such an apocalypse is yet to come; this is where Mike Moseley, a distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of Florida steps in, claiming that actually, the earliest American […]
It’s obvious that one of the biggest challenges the president elect has to face is rejuvenating the infrastructure; let’s talk about traffic jams for a bit. Everybody hates them, we all want to avoid them, but they exist. They are an unintended consequence of personal driving. Some transportation planners often speak about the fact that […]
We don’t usually want to face it, but the fact is that mankind is pushing virtually ever other species to the very brink of their existance, in our quest for resources of every kind. Just a few days aco, IUCN published a study which concluded that thirty-five percent of the world’s birds, 52 percent of […]
With the US economy tanking, natural disasters caused by climate change, several wars being fought in the world and with Italy announcing they will go back to nuclear power, it seems that nobody is looking deeper into the source of these problems and the solution that solving this problem brings. Climate change causes natural disasters, […]
It's one of the rarest phenomena you can see.
The quality of the place of your residence is defined by many characteristics, which include natural and man-made factors, and more or less obvious consequences of those. The thing is if you care about the food you’re eating, the air you’re breathing and the water you’re drinking, Denmark is the place to be at the […]
Whether we want to accept it or not, mankind has caused significant (to say the leased) damage to the amount of forests and habitats around the world. That’s why it’s so important for people, especially those in leading positions to take standing positions in protecting and increasing the area of forests around the world. It’s […]
Renewable energy has found a considerable support in wind farms, as more and more people seem to be adopting this green and cheap solution as a better alternative towards traditional energy. For example, Samsø, an island near Denmark, gets all its energy from renewable sources; the huge number of wind farms in which are being […]
It’s hard to say that during last year’s G8 summit the “world leaders” made promises and predictions that were just words for the voters without feeling ridiculous; I’m not one to fall for fine words that sounds identical to what you want to hear, but I was expecting at least few of those I heard […]
The environmental challenges we have to overcome (fast) cover virtually every field in human activity. Focuses such as finding green fuels, renewable and sustainable sources of energy and other related findings attract more people, more ideas, and visible steps are made towards the right direction. Probably the only concern is how fast and how effective […]
Think about China today; the country with the most people in the world, who’s surface is in the top 5 of the world, and who’s industry is really developing, relying almost entirely on pollutant non-green fuels, which caused an increased and even dangerous degree of pollution. Still, despite the fact that it’s area is […]
Who isn’t paying attention when Al Gore is talking? The impact he has on people from America and all around the world is just huge, hard to comprehend. He’s probably no saint, but he doesn’t have to be. Due to what he promotes, he managed to promote and help “green” ways of living, giving a […]
Credits A few miles inland from the Sea of Cortez, cracked earth contrasts with the clear, cloudless sky to create a beautiful yet cruel and unforgiving landscape. Here, resources are scarce and people are even fewer. Still, one man fights agains all these adversities; amid mosquitos, cactus, and an almost unbearable heat Carl Hodges manages […]
Photo by Stefan Everybody (or almost everybody) believes that no matter what, USA remains “polluter no. 1”. Don’t take my word for it, just ask BBC’s environment analyst Roger Harrabin – he says the same thing. The industry is by far the most developed, so that would seem logical, despite the fact the China and […]
