Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
- Climate
What lifestyle changes will shrink your carbon footprint the most?
You can reduce your carbon emissions, but the most influential changes will depend on your circumstances.
- Climate
How to protect your home from disasters amplified by climate change
How people can make their homes and communities more resilient to the effects of climate change, including floods, fires, heat and drought.
- Climate
What data do cities like Orlando need to prepare for climate migrants?
As researchers wrestle with how to anticipate future population shifts due to climate change, possible “destination cities,” like Orlando, Fla., prepare for an influx.
- Climate
What Michael Moore’s new film gets wrong about renewable energy
Michael Moore’s Planet of the Humans challenges renewable energy’s ability to fight climate change, but it’s riddled with errors and old information.
- Earth
Deadly temperatures expected to arrive later this century are already here
Temperatures near humans’ physiological limit have doubled in frequency since 1979, exposing millions of people to dangerously hot and humid conditions.
- Oceans
Deep-sea mining may damage underwater ecosystems for decades
Microbe communities in the seabed off Peru still haven’t fully recovered from being disturbed by a deep-sea mining experiment 26 years ago.
- Earth
Greenland and Antarctica are gaining ice inland, but still losing it overall
Inland ice accumulation is not enough to counteract the amount of ice melting off Antarctica and Greenland into the oceans, satellite data show.
- Earth
Did heavy rain trigger Kilauea’s eruption? It’s complicated
A study suggests the Hawaiian volcano’s outpouring of lava was triggered by heavy rainfall in the months preceding. But some scientists are skeptical.
- Paleontology
The first frog fossil from Antarctica has been found
An ancient amphibian from Antarctica gives new insight into when the continent got so cold.
- Animals
Insects’ extreme farming methods offer us lessons to learn and oddities to avoid
Insects invented agriculture long before humans did. Can we learn anything from them?
- Climate
A U.S. oil-producing region is leaking twice as much methane as once thought
Satellite measurements identify the Permian Basin, a massive U.S. oil- and gas-producing area, as a large source of leaked methane to the atmosphere.
- Earth
Plate tectonics may have started 400 million years earlier than we thought
Magnetic minerals in ancient rocks suggest that plate tectonics may have been under way as early as 3.2 billion years ago.
