When spring arrives in the Arctic, both snow and sea ice melt, forming melt ponds on the surface of the sea ice. Every year, as global warming increases, melting sea ice leads to more and larger melt ponds. Melt ponds provide more light and heat for the ice and the underlying water, but now it turns out that they may […]
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“Colony collapse disorder” the mysterious, decade-long die-off among honeybees, is getting worse. A survey of about 5,000 beekeepers in the U.S. has found that they’ve lost about 42 percent of their colonies over just the past year. Even more alarming is the fact that honeybee deaths spiked in the summer, when bees are usually healthiest. “What we’re seeing with this […]
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“It has happened,” said Philip Bump. For the first time in human history, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels hit a daily average of 400 parts per million (ppm) last week. “There is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any point since 3 million years ago.” Back then, global temperatures were about 7 degrees higher, the Arctic was ice-free, […]
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Kīlauea is a currently active shield volcano in the Hawaiian Islands, and the most active of the five volcanoes that together form the island of Hawaiʻi. Located along the southern shore of the island, the volcano is between 300,000 and 600,000 years old and emerged above sea level about 100,000 years ago. The immediate effects of a volcanic eruption is […]
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Deep beneath Antarctica’s thick ice sheet, hidden from sunlight for millions of years, lies Lake Vostok – one of the most mysterious and scientifically intriguing places on Earth. This sub-glacial lake, buried under more than two miles of ice, could hold vital clues about life’s ability to exist in extreme environments, including the possibility of extraterrestrial organisms on icy moons […]
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Did you ever think that by using a live Christmas tree in your house that you were actually helping the environment? Real trees help the environment from the time they are planted until after the holiday season when they can be recycled. Did you know that the first artificial Christmas trees were actually made in the early 1930’s by a […]
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Sunspot activity may be entering a lull for the first time in almost 400 years, offering scientists a rare chance to gauge how solar conditions affect Earth’s climate. “This is highly unusual and unexpected” says Frank Hill, a researcher at the National Solar Observatory. Three new NSO studies suggest that the sun’s fluctuating magnetic field may soon become too weak […]
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Before the Flood, directed by Fisher Stevens, is a documentary that captures a three year personal journey of the Academy Award-winning actor and U.N. Messenger of Peace Leonardo DiCaprio. What was Leonardo Dicaprio’s Mission in Before the Flood? His mission was to explore the level of destruction climate change has caused around the world, and to sensitise the world’s nations […]
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Ahhh — to remember the glory days before dirty air descended on Delhi, a methane leak in California gassed thousands, and catastrophic smog in China prompted people to buy bottled air, of all things. Before the Industrial Revolution, the world was basically one big, serene Walden Pond, right? Wrong. Take off those rose-tinted glasses and get acquainted with the story of […]
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The largest solar storm since 2005 swept across the planet this week, forcing airlines to reroute flights and disrupting communications from global positioning satellites. This spontaneous blast of solar radiation may have affected power grids and high-frequency radio communications in the northern latitudes, said the U.S. Space Weather Prediction Center. A number of airlines, which route some U.S.-Asia flights over […]
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