Earth got off relatively easy last week after being hit by the biggest blast of solar radiation since 2005—but we may not be so lucky next time. Last week’s coronal mass ejection, in which a solar flare whipped an arc of magnetic particles toward Earth at 4 million mph, led some airlines to reroute flights away from the poles, where […]
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Why the oceans are in trouble! The oceans can no longer handle the damage brought on by the 7 billion people on Earth. Over the decades, the human race has over-fished specific species to near extinction, and polluted them with carbon dioxide emissions, toxic chemicals, garbage, and unrecycled plastics. A shocking new study, recently published in Science, warned […]
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Tropical groundwater may prove to be a climate-resilient source of freshwater in the tropics as intense rainfall favours the replenishment of these resources, according to a new study published in Environmental Research Letters. As climate observations show that global warming leads to fewer but more intense rainfalls, a clearer understanding of how these sources are replenished is crucial for developing […]
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On September 13, 1922, a temperature of 136°F was recorded at El Azizia, Libya. This was eventually certified by the World Meteorological Organization as the hottest air temperature ever recorded on Earth. The hottest air temperature ever recorded in the United States was on July 10, 1913 where it reached 134 in Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California. NASA scientists report […]
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The National Geographic Society has joined scientists from around the world in adding a fifth named ocean to the world map even though the idea is still not accepted by all countries. For World Oceans Day on Tuesday, the society announced it is recognizing the Southern Ocean, which circles Antarctica up to a latitude of 60 degrees South. It joins […]
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The newest professor in the University of Rhode Island’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences, Hollie Putnam, thinks some corals and shellfish might have good enough “memories” to buffer the changes in ocean chemistry that are resulting from the effects of climate change on coral reefs. A native of Minnesota who earned a doctorate at the University of Hawaii, […]
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We’ve heard a lot about the negative effects of climate change in the arctic and subarctic. But some Alaskans, like farmer Tim Meyers, are seeing warming temperatures as an opportunity. Now that potato harvest is underway at his Bethel farm, Meyers uses a giant potato washer, like a washing machine for root vegetables, to clean California white potatoes. They’re some […]
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A new NASA study on the Antarctic Ice Sheet says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers. The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that […]
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Over 15 years of observational data collected by NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory and the Australia Telescope Compact Array have given us a composite image of a tremendous cosmic blast. The image depicts an x-ray beam (blue) casts away from the black hole sitting at the center of Pictor A, a galaxy located 500 million light years from Earth. Other prominent […]
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European researchers have once again warned that the thinning of the Antarctic ice shelf means that the flow of glaciers on the frozen continent could accelerate, with a consequent rise in sea levels. They examine, in two separate studies, the increasingly precarious state of some of the ice shelf. When the shelf, consisting of ice floating on the ocean, melts, […]
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