A new analysis of decades of data on oceans across the globe has revealed that the amount of dissolved oxygen contained in the water – an important measure of ocean health – has been declining for more than 20 years.

When George McFadden sits at his computer to analyze crop photos, he looks like a doctor pointing out trouble spots on an X-ray. He identifies unnatural lines, “blob-like” patterns, and streaks clouding a field. All can indicate a troubling diagnosis.

As temperatures rise with climate change, mosquito season extends past the summer months in many parts of the world. The question has been how this lengthened season influences the risk of being infected with mosquito-born diseases such as dengue, chikungunya and Zika.

Now, in a paper published on April 27 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Stanford researchers modeled how rising temperatures might influence mosquito behavior and disease risk around the world. The researchers also calibrated their model with field data on human infections of mosquito-borne diseases.

The tropical low pressure area previously known as System 99P organized and developed into tropical cyclone Donna in the South Pacific and now threatens Vanuatu. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite provided visible and infrared data on the newly developed storm.

Donna developed into a tropical storm on May 2 at 2100 UTC (5 p.m. EDT) about 484 nautical miles northwest of Suva, Fiji.    

On May 3 at 0224 UTC (May 2 at 10:24 p.m. EDT) the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) instrument aboard the NASA-NOAA Suomi NPP satellite captured a visible image of the newly developed tropical storm. The VIIRS image showed strong thunderstorms around the center of circulation and extending to the north in a large thick band.

By 2050, we will need to feed 2 billion more people on less land. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide levels are predicted to hit 600 parts per million—a 50% increase over today’s levels—and 2050 temperatures are expected to frequently match the top 5% hottest days from 1950-1979. In a three-year field study, researchers proved engineered soybeans yield more than conventional soybeans in 2050’s predicted climatic conditions.

Smog from cars and trucks is an expected health hazard in big cities, but researchers from the University of Cincinnati found pollution from truck exhaust on one of the most remote mountain roads in the world.
 

A new WCS study reveals evidence that some corals are adapting to warming ocean waters – potentially good news in the face of recent reports of global coral die offs due to extreme warm temperatures in 2016. The study appears in the latest issue of Marine Ecology Progress Series.

The study looked at responses to extreme temperature exposures in the same reefs over time, and found less coral bleaching in 11 of the 21 coral species studied. WCS Senior Conservation Zoologist Tim McClanahan, who has been studying coral responses to climate change since the extreme temperatures of the1998 El Nino, authored the study.

While climate scientists agree that human-caused climate change is influencing weather, they have often been hesitant to draw direct linkages between this phenomenon and specific extreme weather events. The reason? When studying a particular event such as a superstorm or severe heatwave, it can be challenging to tease apart human influence from the natural variability of the weather. But that’s changing.

In a new study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Stanford professor of Earth system science Noah Diffenbaugh and a team of colleagues outline a four-step framework for testing whether global warming has contributed to particular weather events. The collaborative effort involves researchers from several universities including Northwestern and is the latest in the growing field of “event attribution analysis,” which combines statistical analyses of climate observations with increasingly powerful computer models to study the influence of climate change on individual extreme weather events.

Glacier flow at the southern Antarctic Peninsula has increased since the 1990s, but a new study has found the change to be only a third of what was recently reported.

Kick-starting action on the recently-adopted Global Forest Goals to protect, sustainably manage and increase world’s forest area will be a key focus for delegations gathered in New York for the twelfth session of the UN Forum on Forests, which opened today at United Nations Headquarters.