Earth

Earth

Smog’s heavy impacts

Being overweight increases the risk that people will develop breathing difficulties after encountering smoggy air.

Earth

Portrait of a Meltdown: Many factors led to 2007’s record low in Arctic sea ice

A variety of climatological factors converged in a perfect storm that melted the Arctic Ocean's ice cover to a record low in 2007. It could be a harbinger of ice-poor summers for decades to come.

Earth

Dead Serious

Little progress has been made this decade in reducing the size of the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, a massive area of oxygen-depleted water caused by agricultural and urban runoff.

Earth

North by Northwest

The Earth's magnetic poles wander around quite a bit, a phenomenon that occasionally confounded ancient explorers but is proving useful for today's archaeologists.

Earth

Water Vapor by Any Other Name

One can learn a lot by studying clouds—or just relax and soak in their beauty. Subscribers to both schools can find plenty of fodder in the British Cloud Appreciation Society’s gallery of nearly 3,200 photos. They’re organized by meteorological type, optical effects, and even by what a cloud might resemble—like “Casper the Ghost, spotted over […]

Earth

The Salt Flat That Isn’t Flat: World’s largest playa sports ridges, valleys

An innovative field survey of the world's largest salt flat, a New Jersey–size playa high in the Andes, reveals that the barren expanse actually has minuscule, centimeter-scale variations in topography.

Agriculture

Lettuce Liability

A new industry program to self-regulate most salad producers is forcing affected farmers to choose between adopting measures unfriendly to wildlife and a loss of major markets for their greens.

Earth

Folding with a little help from friends

By slowly unraveling a protein, scientists have shown how other proteins called chaperones influence protein folding.

Earth

Falling Behind: North American terrain absorbs carbon dioxide too slowly

North America's vegetation soaks up millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year, an impressive rate of sequestration that still can't keep up with the prodigious emissions of the planet-warming gas generated by human activity on the continent.

Earth

Hey, What about Us?

The plight of polar bears may get most of the attention as climate change disrupts the Arctic ice, but plenty of other species, from walrus and seals to one-celled specks, are also going to see their world change radically.

Earth

New climate sensor: Swiss grapes

Records of grape harvests reveal the summer climate in parts of Switzerland as far back as the 1400s.

Agriculture

Insects laughing at Bt toxin? Try this

A new countermeasure restores the toxicity of Bt pesticides to insects that have evolved resistance.