As the planet faces the dawn of a sixth mass extinction, scientists are searching for clues about the uncertain road ahead by exploring how an ancient ecosystem collapsed and bounced back from traumatic upheavals. A new study follows the lengthy collapses and revival of South African ecosystems during one of the “big five” mass extinctions, the Permian-Triassic event, revealing unexpected […]
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In 2016, a Canadian novelist, Craig Russell — who is also a lawyer and a theater director in Manitoba — wrote an environmental cli-fi thriller titled “Fragment” about a major calving event along the ice shelf of Antarctica. The Yale Climate Connections website recently recommended the novel, published by Thistledown Press as a good summer read. Ironically, scientists in Antarctica are […]
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Long ago, in the largest canyon system in our solar system, vibrations from “marsquakes” shook soft sediments that had accumulated in Martian lakes. The shaken sediments formed features that now appear as a series of low hills apparent in a geological map based on NASA images. The map was released today by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS). This map of […]
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Climate change appears to be affecting the jet stream, altering the weather patterns over the U.S. so that regions can get “stuck” in extreme weather for weeks, a new study has found. The jet stream is the fast-moving, high-altitude air current that shuttles weather from west to east over North America and Europe. But the pronounced warming of the Arctic—where […]
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Scientists in the US who have been checking on the health of the Arctic over the last year are worried by what they’ve learned: it’s warmer, has less ice, and some of its animals and fish are facing new stresses. And in a surprise finding , which they cannot yet explain, the scientists discovered that green vegetation over much of […]
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UK researchers have unearthed ancient fossil forests, thought to be partly responsible for one of the most dramatic shifts in Earth’s climate in the past 400 million years. The fossil forests, with tree stumps preserved in place, were found in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago situated in the Arctic Ocean. They were identified and described by Dr Chris Berry of Cardiff […]
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Earth’s magnetic field is weakening, and could all but disappear within the next 500 years—exposing our planet to intense solar radiation that would scour its surface of life, Reuters.com reports. Researchers say I the geological record indicates that Earth’s * magnetic field tends to switch polarity f every 250,000 years—and that it’s about 550,000 years overdue for a swap, which […]
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How Climate Change Could Affect Our Diet Climate change and a shopping list? At first glance, it seems just a wrong correlation. Well, it is not! Climate change is already affecting our present and it will heavily influence our future. The extreme weather conditions brought by climate change are progressively increasing the risk of drought, floods, heat waves and wildfires, […]
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Cold-blooded animals like lizards, insects and fish have a preferred body temperature range at which they hunt, eat, move quickly and reproduce. Fear that a warming climate will constrict this temperature range underlies recent studies that warn of the detrimental effects of climate change on the activity and survival of cold-blooded animals. While not contradicting these warnings, a new paper […]
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It seemed like a good idea at the time. In 1972, Broward County, Fla., organized more than 100 boats to dump an estimated 700,000 tires into the Atlantic Ocean in hopes of sparking the growth of an artificial reef. Ultimately corals never grew on the bundles of tires, and over time the bundles became loose, causing damage to nearby natural […]
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