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Categories: Anthropology: Cultures, Geoscience: Earth Science

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The ocean is a global life-support system, and climate change causes such as ocean warming, acidification, deoxygenation, and nitrogen-deposition alter the delicate microbial population in oceans. The marine microbial community plays an important role in the production of greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane. Scientists have explored the climate change impact on marine microbes. Their research helps raise awareness about climate change severity and the importance of ocean resources.

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The ocean's capacity to store atmospheric carbon dioxide is some 20% greater than the estimates contained in the latest IPCC report. Scientists looked at the role played by plankton in the natural transport of carbon from surface waters down to the seabed. Plankton gobble up carbon dioxide and, as they grow, convert it into organic tissue via photosynthesis.

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A new report equips policymakers with the latest and most pivotal climate science research from the previous 18 months, synthesized to help inform negotiations at COP28 and policy implementation through 2024 and beyond.

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A new study concludes that wildfires originating in the western United States and Canada have erased air quality gains over the past two decades and caused an increase of premature deaths in fire-prone areas and downwind regions, primarily in the western U.S.

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Global carbon emissions from fossil fuels have risen again in 2023 -- reaching record levels, according to new research.

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What wiped out the dinosaurs? A meteorite plummeting to Earth is only part of the story, a new study suggests. Climate change triggered by massive volcanic eruptions may have ultimately set the stage for the dinosaur extinction, challenging the traditional narrative that a meteorite alone delivered the final blow to the ancient giants.

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Research suggests that Paleolithic humans in the Middle East selected flint for their cutting tools based on differences in the mechanical properties of the rock. They seem to have purposefully selected the most suitable rocks for fashioning into tools, even being able to distinguish rocks that were unsuitable.

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Identifying how and why Antarctica's major ice sheets behaved the way they did in the early Miocene could help inform understanding of the sheets' behavior under a warming climate. Together, the ice sheets lock a volume of water equivalent to more than 50 meters of sea level rise and influence ocean currents that affect marine food webs and regional climates. Their fate has profound consequences for life nearly everywhere on Earth.  

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A recent study demonstrates how dripstones can be crucial for reconstructing past climates. The new approach can provide a detailed picture of the climate around early human occupations in South Africa.

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Playing an essential foundational role in an ecosystem, plants contribute to the well-being of human health by helping create resources like food and medicine. Therefore, to better understand how plants can maintain resiliency in the face of challenges like climate change, researchers recently developed an innovative mathematical model that can provide fast and reliable predictions of how far wind can carry a plant's seeds.

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The San Joaquin Valley in California has experienced vast variability in climate extremes, with droughts and floods that were more severe and lasted longer than what has been seen in the modern record, according to a new study of 600 years of tree rings from the valley.

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The Second Plague Pandemic of the mid-14th century, also known as the Black Death, killed 30-60 percent of the European population and profoundly changed the course of European history. New research suggests that this plague, potentially through resulting changes in diet and hygiene, may also be associated with a shift in the composition of the human oral microbiome toward one that contributes to chronic diseases in modern-day humans.  

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A landmark study into the geological timescale distribution of sediment and nutrients over 500 million years shows that species biodiversity on Earth is driven by landscape dynamics.

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Paleontologists have identified a new fossil lizard, found in the western United States, which they say was an ancestor of modern geckos. And they gave it a name that honors the lead researcher's grandmother and great aunt. The discovery of the new species, which they named Helioscopus dickersonae, suggests that gecko ancestors appeared in North America much earlier than previously known.

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Researchers could find no simple solution to limiting non-CO2 emissions from aircraft.

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Researchers have discovered a new relationship between the Sun's magnetic field and its sunspot cycle, that can help predict when the peak in solar activity will occur. Their work indicates that the maximum intensity of solar cycle 25, the ongoing sunspot cycle, is imminent and likely to occur within a year.

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Researchers characterize nearly 600 microbial genomes collected from goldmine. The study illuminates 'microbial dark matter' residing below the surface. Microbes divide into two groups: minimalists that have one, specialized job or maximalists that are prepared to use any available resource. Study has implications for how underground activities, like mining and carbon storage, could affect or be affected by microbial life. The lifestyle of these 'intraterrestrial' microbes also provides hints to what organisms could be living on other planets.

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Scientists are warning that apparently stable glaciers in the Antarctic can 'switch very rapidly' and lose large quantities of ice as a result of warmer oceans.    Their finding comes after glaciologists used satellites to track the Cadman Glacier, which drains into Beascochea Bay, on the west Antarctic peninsula.  

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The slash-and-burn agriculture practiced by many Indigenous societies across the world can actually have a positive impact on forests, according to a new study done in Belize. Researchers found that in areas of the rainforest in which Indigenous farmers using slash-and-burn techniques created intermediate-sized farm patches -- neither too small nor too large -- there were increases in forest plant diversity.

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A new study from atmospheric scientists revealed that the coastline can produce up to five times the concentration of giant sea salt aerosols compared to the open ocean and that coastal clouds may contain more of these particles than clouds over the open ocean -- affecting cloud formation and rain around the Hawaiian Islands.