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Climatology

A worker puts finishing paint touches on the Amazon Tall Tower Observatory in January

Cool Finds

This New Tower Gives Scientists a Bird’s Eye View of the Amazon

It pairs with a similar tower in Siberia to observe changes in the Earth’s atmosphere

Data from satellites and sensors show the Pacific Ocean conditions in March 2015, including an increase in warm waters (shown in red). The warming has strengthened since then, prompting agencies to declare 2015 an El Niño year.

Anthropocene

El Niño Is Here, But It Can’t Help Parched California (For Now)

Three national agencies have confirmed that the natural phenomenon has arrived, but not in time to bring much-needed rains in the West

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

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia left a huge crater, along with a sometimes unexpected legacy.

200 Years After Tambora, Some Unusual Effects Linger

Frankenstein, famine poetry, polar exploration—the “year without a summer” was just the beginning

Windswept trees seem to loom over a beach on the remote island of Tarawa in Kiribati. Scientists have found that coral reefs near Tarawa record changes in Pacific trade winds.

Corals Show How Pacific Trade Winds Guide Global Temperatures

The world has been in a global warming hiatus, but that will change when the winds once again weaken

A fossilized leaf from the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum sits in the Wyoming snow.

Anthropocene

Ancient Earth Warmed Dramatically After a One-Two Carbon Punch

A period of intense warming 55 million years ago is an even better case study for modern climate change than previously suspected

New Research

Lose Ice in Alaska, See Temperatures Spike By 7°C

This puts the goal of keeping temperature rises below 2°C to shame

Deforestation in Brazil

New Research

The Amazon Rainforest Disappeared Way More Quickly This Year

Widespread deforestation is even worse than you think

This F3 twister in Kansas was part of a mini-outbreak of tornadoes in 2004.

Tornadoes Are Now Ganging Up in the United States

Twisters are not increasing in numbers but they are clustering more often, a bizarre pattern that has meteorologists stumped

From left to right, panelists Eric Hollinger, Rachel Kyte, Cori Wegener and Melissa Songer discuss ideas for living in the Anthropocene.

Anthropocene

To Live in the Anthropocene, People Need Grounded Hope

A Smithsonian symposium about human impacts on Earth looked past warnings of global doom to discuss the necessary balance of achievable solutions

Thousands of walruses gathered at a beach in Point Lay, Alaska.

Trending Today

35,000 Walruses Are Crowding Onto One Alaskan Beach

Some animals have already been killed on the beach, most likely by stampedes

Pack ice and fjord walls with sedimentary strata.

Age of Humans

Have Humans Really Created a New Geologic Age?

We are living in the Anthropocene. But no one can agree when it started or how human activity will be preserved

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Age of Humans

Travel Through Deep Time With This Interactive Earth

Explore key moments in Earth’s transformative history as continents drift and climate fluctuates over 4.6 billion years

In cities, where the urban heat island effect can raise the local temperature several degrees higher than nearby rural areas, summer is a time to cool off wherever you can.

New Research

Why the City Is (Usually) Hotter than the Countryside

The smoothness of the landscape and the local climate—not the materials of the concrete jungle—govern the urban heat island effect, a new study finds

The interior of Greenland (seen here with researchers’ tents pitched) is usually covered in frozen ice and snow. In July 2012, though, 97 percent of the surface melted for the first time in more than 100 years. Scientists now know why that happened.

New Research

Nearly All of Greenland’s Surface Melted Overnight in 2012—Here’s Why

High temperatures and black carbon from forest fires and fossil fuels combined to push the huge ice sheet over the edge

In her seminal rose diagram, Florence Nightingale demonstrated that far more soldiers died from preventable epidemic diseases (blue) than from wounds inflicted on the battlefield (red) or other causes (black) during the Crimean War (1853-56). “She did this with a very specific purpose of driving through all sorts of military reforms in military hospitals subsequent to the Crimean War," says Kieniewicz.

Art Meets Science

Infographics Through the Ages Highlight the Visual Beauty of Science

An exhibit at the British Library focuses on the aesthetic appeal of 400 years of scientific data

Phoenix glows even after 10 p.m. one April night in this image made with a camera sensitive to infrared light, which is generated by heat and invisible to the naked eye. Researchers call the city an “urban heat island.”

The Reality of a Hotter World is Already Here

As global warming makes sizzling temperatures more common, will human beings be able to keep their cool? New research suggests not

Small island nations such as Tuvalu in the South Pacific face a wide range of threats from climate change, including rising seas that will inundate the land.

Five Frightening Observations From the Latest International Climate Change Report

Adaptation cannot save us from all the negative impacts of pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere

Genghis Khan attacked and captured the Jin capital of Zhongdu (now Beijing, China) in 1215, in one of many campaigns that expanded the Mongol Empire.

Anthropocene

Warm, Wet Times Spurred Medieval Mongol Rise

Genghis Khan—and his army of men on horseback—benefitted from boom in grasslands

The Weddell Sea is covered in ice during the Antarctic winter. But in the winters of the mid-1970s, satellite imagery detected a large-ice free area the size of New Zealand.

Climate Change Felt in Deep Waters of Antarctica

A surge in freshwater at the surface may have shut down mixing of water layers in the Weddell Sea

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