Articles tagged as Climate Change | Smithsonian Magazine

A male Gentoo penguin brings stones to a female with chicks

Penguins May Use Poop to Melt Snow From Breeding Sites Before They Get it On

The observation comes from analyzing thousands of images captured by remote cameras trained on penguin colonies on the Antarctic Peninsula

April 29, 2015

Pope Francis will issue proclamation in wake of recent summit

April 28, 2015

Ice cores in Colorado are stored in a freezer at -33F. The core pictured here is from Greenland.

Cool Finds

Ice Scientists of the Future Will Study Glaciers That No Longer Exist

Glaciologists are stocking up on ice cores to ensure a future for their field

April 21, 2015

Cool Finds

This Man Plans to Spend a Year Living in a Giant Ball on an Iceberg

Adventurer Alex Bellini wants to watch a Greenland iceberg melt while he dwells in a “survival pod”

April 16, 2015

Cool Finds

Fish Can Adjust Gender Balance in Face of Rising Temperatures

Warmer waters mean fewer female reef fish. But, over generations, populations can restore the balance.

April 14, 2015

New Research

Ocean Acidification Could Have Driven Earth’s Biggest Mass Extinction

Study shows the world’s oceans were dangerously acidic during the Permian Extinction Event

April 10, 2015

New Research

70 Percent of Western Canada’s Glaciers Will Disappear by 2100

And that’s the conservative side of scientists’ ice melt projections

April 7, 2015

Rehabilitated sea lion pups head back to the ocean after being released from The Marine Mammal Center in March.

California Sea Lions Are Starving, But Do They Need Our Help?

Instead of just rehabilitating the fuzzy pups, some ecologists say we should be focusing on the underlying troubles of climate change and fish declines

April 2, 2015

New Research

Population Growth Can Warm a City As Much As Climate Change

Urbanization in California’s Central Valley could raise local temperatures an extra one to two degrees Celcius

March 31, 2015

A type of coral trout called the leopard trout (Plectropomus leopardus) swims on the Great Barrier Reef.

Anthropocene

Fishing Bans Create a Glimmer of Hope on the Great Barrier Reef

No-take reserves have helped commercially important species bounce back, but the reef still faces some serious threats

March 26, 2015

New Research

Got Allergies? Air Pollution Could Be to Blame

New research suggests that ozone and nitrogen dioxide can alter allergens, creating more potent immune responses

March 23, 2015

Center pivot irrigation in Blythe, California

New Research

We’re Taking All the Water Out of the Ground And Causing Sea Levels to Rise

Pumping water out of aquifers at the rate we do doesn’t just threaten the water supply, it also exacerbates the effects of climate change

March 19, 2015

Art Meets Science

The Terrible Beauty of Glaciers Melting and Oceans Rising

Daniel Beltra’s aerial photographs reveal the human impact on nature

April 2015

Electric vehicles, such as the ones sold by Tesla, could help to reduce city temperatures.

Anthropocene

Electric Cars Can Make Cities Cooler

It’s not just the flash and style, either—electric engines emit less heat than gas ones and could combat the urban heat island effect

March 19, 2015

In the future, what role will cars play in our lives?

Round Table

Are Cars Driving Into the Sunset?

Our love affair with automobiles is changing in the face of climate change and denser urban living

March 16, 2015

A mummified corpse of a Chinchoro girl between 4,000 and 8,000 years old gets a cleaning.

New Research

Saving the World’s Oldest Mummies From Rot in a Warmer, Wetter World

Why are the ancient bodies of the Chinchorro people stored in a Chilean museum rapidly degrading into black ooze?

March 10, 2015

A NASA visualization shows how particles from East Asia can swirl into Pacific storms—a source of precipitation for the U.S.

March 9, 2015

Icebergs break off, or calve, from the Dawes Glacier at the end of Endicott Arm in southeast Alaska.

New Research

The Loud Noise of Melting Glaciers May Actually Be Good for Animals

Melting glacier ice has been found to the loudest noise in the ocean—what does that mean for marine animals?

March 9, 2015

A large band of warmer than average sea surface temperatures, an indicator of El Niño, stretches across the Pacific

It’s later than usual and weak, but definitely here

March 6, 2015

A dog sitting in a field of wildflowers in California's Anza Borrego Desert State Park.

American South

Best Places to See Wildflowers Around the United States

Snow and cold got you down? Remember, spring is around the corner, and that means wildflowers

March 6, 2015