The monster forest fires rampaging across the Western states may soon be the norm, thanks to climate change. New research indicates that as rainfall diminishes and vegetation dries out on a warmer planet, the West is headed into a more fire-prone future,” wildfire specialist Max Moritz tells the Los Angeles Times. After studying satellite imaging of fires and data from […]
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According to National Geographic, the coldest place on Earth is the East Antarctic Ice Sheet with temperatures as low as minus 144 degrees Fahrenheit. The temperature reading was taken during the polar winter and is the lowest temperature ever recorded on the Earth. Russia’s Vostok Weather Station previously held the record for the lowest recorded temperature. However, that record has […]
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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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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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Earth’s temperature has increased by 1°C over the past century, and most of this warming has been caused by carbon dioxide emissions. But what does that mean locally? A new study published in Nature Climate Change pinpoints the temperature increases caused by CO2 emissions in different regions around the world. Using simulation results from 12 global climate models, Damon Matthews, […]
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One of the most common arguments of those skeptical of global warming is that the Medieval Warm Period (800-1400 AD) was as warm as or warmer than today. Using this as proof to say that we cannot be the cause of current global warming is a faulty notion based upon rhetoric rather than science. So what are the holes in […]
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Back in 2015 British researchers have reinforced recent evidence that melting in the Antarctic caused by the warming of the Southern Ocean could ultimately lead to global sea levels rising by around three meters. Their findings were in line with the results of a study that said six more decades of ocean warming could destabilize the ice beside the Amundsen […]
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Climate change may have helped to alter the course of history. A period of extreme and unprecedented cooling in the northern hemisphere 1,500 years ago may have reduced the eastern Roman empire, set the stage for a famine and a devastating pandemic that killed millions, and favored the rise of the Islamic forces that created the Arab empire. The so-called Little […]
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Geologists are convinced that humans have left a mark upon the planet that will detectable millions of years from now. Long after human civilization has perished, there could be a stratum of fossilized rock and a geological time zone that says: “We were here.” So there is a case for calling the present epoch “the Anthropocene” − probably dating from […]
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The Southwest and central Great Plains are likely to be hit in coming decades by the most prolonged megadrought in more than 1,000 years, a new climate study predicts. Scientists from NASA, Columbia University, and Cornell University created a long-term climate model after analyzing historical temperature records, carbon dioxide emissions, and drought trends from tree rings.The record shows that the […]
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