The ocean floor holds unique information about Earth’s history. Scientific ocean drilling, which started 50 years ago, has yielded insights into climate change, geohazards and the key conditions for life.
With California suffering another devastating wildfire year, more people are wondering about whether and how global warming is contributing. A climate scientist explains.
Whistling tree frogs, Litoria verreauxii, are one of the species monitored around Canberra for their response to climate change.
Catching the eye/flickr
Climate change can seem far removed from our everyday lives, which is why a citizen science program measuring how frogs are dealing with a warming world is so important.
Scientists have long thought most nitrogen in Earth’s ecosystems comes from the air, but new research shows it also is released as rocks weather. This could boost plant growth and help sequester carbon – but not fast enough to avert climate change, as some pundits have claimed.
Scientists on Arctic sea ice in the Chukchi Sea, surrounded by melt ponds, July 4, 2010.
NASA/Kathryn Hansen
Climate change is transforming the Arctic, with impacts on the rest of the planet. A geographer explains why he once doubted that human actions were causing such shifts, and what changed his mind.
Dust storms in the Gulf of Alaska, captured by NASA’s Aqua satellite.
NASA
There are more satellites than ever before, orbiting Earth and collecting data that’s crucial for scientists. Why do some nations choose not to share that data openly?
Some information on the climate has been obscured.
REUTERS/Adrees Latif
Despite scientists’ initial concerns, federal climate change data sets are still available. But other documents and web pages have changed over the last year.
MiMA: an open source way to model the climate.
Martin Jucker
The creation of climate models with open source code, available for anyone to use, has improved scientific collaboration and helped research get more efficient.
Long-term climate modelling may appear to focus on the impossibly far future. But the full impact of some climate processes won’t be apparent for centuries.
Politicians are always being told to trust what climate scientists are telling them. But can you have too much of a good thing? What happens when the exchange of ideas becomes too cosy?
The continent is home to 12 million penguins…and not much else.
Andrew Peacock, footloosefotography.com
Players in the climate science game ‘CO2peration’ become a particle of sunlight, and travel on a journey to find out why we have liquid water at Earth’s surface.
Some claim that scientists avoid publishing results that go against the consensus on man-made climate change. But this is simply untrue.
The Day After Tomorrow’s apocalyptic depiction of climate change is a little embellished. But such storylines can ignite conversations with people that mainstream science fails to reach.
20th Century Fox
Climate scientists often bombard their audiences with facts and figures - a method of communication that often doesn’t work. Perhaps this is where cli-fi can step in, with its compelling characters and just slightly embellished science.
Who set the guardrails on global temperature rise?
Hydrosami
More and more research shows that we are likely to pass the 2 degree Celsius temperature limit much of the world has agreed on. Where did that limit come from, and what if we miss it?