Earth

  1. Earth

    Clouds affected by wildfire smoke may produce less rain

    As wildfires become more frequent in the western United States, these low-rain clouds could exacerbate drought, fueling more fires.

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  2. Agriculture

    Cold plasma could transform the sustainable farms of the future

    Physicists have been working on ways to use the power of plasma to boost plant growth and kill pathogens.

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  3. Earth

    This pictogram is one of the oldest known accounts of earthquakes in the Americas

    The Telleriano-Remensis, a famous codex written by a pre-Hispanic civilization, describes 12 quakes that rocked the Americas from 1460 to 1542.

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  4. Climate

    Climate change made Europe’s flash floods in July more likely

    The deadly July floods in Belgium and Germany bear the fingerprints of human-caused climate change, scientists say.

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  5. Earth

    Haiti’s citizen seismologists helped track its devastating quake in real time

    Two scientists explain how citizen scientists and their work could help provide a better understanding of Haiti’s seismic hazards.

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  6. Science & Society

    How extreme heat from climate change distorts human behavior

    As temperatures rise, violence and aggression go up while focus and productivity decline. The well off can escape to cool spaces; the poor cannot.

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  7. Physics

    Windbreaks, surprisingly, could help wind farms boost power output

    Wind farm performance could be improved by 10 percent by using low barriers to increase the wind speed directed at the turbines, simulations suggest.

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  8. Climate

    The new UN climate change report shows there’s no time for denial or delay

    Human-caused climate change is unequivocally behind extreme weather events from heat waves to floods to droughts, a massive new assessment concludes.

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  9. Chemistry

    50 years ago, scientists developed self-destructing plastic

    In the 1970s, scientists developed plastic that could quickly break down when exposed to light. But that didn’t solve the world’s pollution problems.

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  10. Earth

    A new book reveals stories of ancient life written in North America’s rocks

    In ‘How the Mountains Grew,’ John Dvorak probes the interlinked geology and biology buried within the rocks of North America.

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  11. Earth

    Greece’s Santorini volcano erupts more often when sea level drops

    During past periods of lower sea levels, when more of Earth’s water was locked up in glaciers during ice ages, the Santorini volcano erupted more.

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  12. Earth

    Dinosaur-killing asteroid may have made Earth’s largest ripple marks

    A tsunami created by the Chicxulub impact could have formed giant ripples found in rock under Louisiana, a new study finds.

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