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- Drought and extreme heat do not always occur separately. When they coincide, their combined effects can place greater pressure on water resources, agriculture, ecosystems, energy systems and public health.
- Where a storm surge strikes along a stretch of U.K. coastline is decided by global climate patterns in the Atlantic, Arctic and even further afield—according to new research led by Cambridge University.
- Mountain snow in the Northeast is different. The region's milder, more humid mountain climate shapes winter conditions that are different from those of the western United States. Yet, snow models don't always capture those differences.
- A new review involving researchers at Umeå University has revealed the critical role that plant roots play in shaping how Arctic tundra ecosystems respond to climate change. The paper, recently published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, highlights how processes occurring beneath the soil surface could help scientists better understand how one of the fastest-changing ecosystems on Earth will influence the future climate.
- What does a healthy river look like? For most of us, an obvious answer would involve two aspects: water flowing through a channel and green vegetation along its banks. However, in reality, a river's health depends on several factors, such as how much water flows through it, how water moves through the landscape, how that flow changes with the seasons, how sediment moves downstream, how often it spills into its floodplain and how these processes change with the seasons.
- For roughly five centuries from about 1300, Europe experienced periods of unusually cold weather and extreme conditions collectively known as the Little Ice Age. Transylvania, a historical region in modern-day Romania, was also affected, but information about just how severe things were had been scattered in old town records, church logs, travelogs and administrative and monastic diaries.
- Research led by atmospheric scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory sheds new light on one of the fundamental challenges of weather forecasting: determining the conditions under which a cloud will produce rain—and how much rain it will produce.
- Volcanic eruptions are known for their spectacular visual displays of vivid lava, as well as the devastating impacts they can have on the environment and the communities who live nearby. But they can also have far-reaching impacts across the globe.
- Climate-related events affected at least 13 million people across Africa in 2025. Over the last decade alone, extreme weather has affected populations in Africa disproportionately. Tropical Cyclone Freddy (February 2023) caused widespread flooding and led to over 1,500 deaths, and in 2015–16 a drought in southern Africa led to widespread crop failure and food insecurity for 40 million people.
- Urban flooding causes significant social, environmental and economic losses every year. In Baltimore, those losses have increased in frequency and intensity since flooding records began in 1748 and are expected to continue doing so as the climate changes. Traditional flood prevention approaches, which use concrete and other impervious surfaces to direct flow, often fail in urban settings because they impede rainwater infiltration.
- When we hear that climate change is damaging natural environments, it conjures images of rising seas eroding coastlines, or heat waves bleaching the Great Barrier Reef. But what about deserts?
- A University of Massachusetts Amherst-led research team has discovered that weaker rock in mountain landscapes erodes three times faster than harder rock—even on gentler slopes—and is one of the main attributes governing mountain erosion. The finding also challenges our current understanding of the relationship between erosion and the release of carbon dioxide, and suggests that geologists and atmospheric scientists may be underestimating the CO₂ contributions coming from the Earth's rocky places.
- Every day, two NASA space instruments known as the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 and -3 (OCO-2 and OCO-3) capture more than a million observations of sunlight reflecting off Earth's surface. Using the physics of how light travels through the air, an algorithm converts these raw data into atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations.
- A new modeling study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, suggests that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may be more resilient to extreme long-term warming than previously estimated. Increased snowfall, greater cloud cover and changes in atmospheric circulation could partially offset ice loss—even under very high carbon dioxide concentrations.
- When the Baja California peninsula broke from mainland Mexico nearly 12 million years ago, it gave rise to the Gulf of California. New research suggests that this process of continental rifting was greatly accelerated due to tectonic forces on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean.
- Polynyas are one of Antarctica's great counterintuitive features: recurring areas of open water surrounded by vast expanses of sea ice. These unusual environments are hot spots for sea-ice production, ocean–atmosphere exchange and biological productivity. They are commonly maintained by powerful winds that push newly formed ice away from the coast, repeatedly exposing the ocean to the freezing Antarctic atmosphere.
- After the United Nations adopted a resolution in September 2026 endorsing a map that more fairly represents the size of Earth's landmasses, author and journalist Moky Makura of Africa No Filter—a main sponsor of the Correct the Map initiative—asked: "What else about Africa is the world underestimating that's also hidden in plain sight?"
- For the first time, UC Riverside scientists have measured how much microplastic pollution falls on the Sierra Nevada during snowstorms and were surprised to find significant amounts even in the most remote locations.
- Icelandic government officials recently met to discuss a dramatic scenario: what if the current that circulates Atlantic waters weakened significantly, or collapsed altogether?
- The orange tree emerges as one of the most heat-vulnerable trees, according to a University of Córdoba (UCO) study that analyzed 17 tree species found in Córdoba's urban environment.
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