• Three-dimensional measurements of the central Brazilian Amazon rainforest have given NASA researchers a detailed window into the high number of branch falls and tree mortality that occur in response to drought conditions. They found that 65 percent more trees and large branches died due to an El Niño-driven drought in 2015-2016 than compared to an average year. Understanding the effects of prolonged drought gives scientists a better sense of what may happen to carbon stored in tropical forests if these events become more common in the future.

  • Biologists get a new look at plant biodiversity and function with new imaging technology developed at the University of Alberta.

  • One of the major concerns in climate change studies is how the thermal conditions for the living environment of human beings will change in the future. In a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Prof. GAO Xuejie from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his coauthors, try to answer this question based on their recently completed and unprecedented set of high-resolution (25 km) 21st century climate change simulations. These simulations were produced using the regional climate model RegCM4, driven by four global model simulations over China—the country with the world’s largest population.

  • No one has a crystal ball to foresee what will happen during the 2018 hurricane season that begins June 1, but NOAA forecasters say there’s a 75 percent chance this hurricane season will be at least as busy as a normal year, or busier.

  • New research has revealed significant changes to Alaska’s landscape in recent decades.

  • The second major hurricane of the Eastern Pacific Ocean season formed after the first hurricane, Aletta, weakened. NOAA's GOES-West satellite captured an image of Hurricane Bud on June 11.

  • Measurements as well as model calculations equally show that the oxygen inventory of the oceans is decreasing. However, the models underestimate this decrease significantly making projections into the future problematic. In a study published today in the international journal Nature Geoscience, four GEOMAR researchers reveal the gaps in the models and identify further, previously underestimated drivers for the deoxygenation.

  • Led by the University of Manchester, an international team of scientists has developed a metal-organic framework material (MOF) that exhibits a selective, fully reversible and repeatable capability to remove nitrogen dioxide gas from the atmosphere in ambient conditions. This discovery, confirmed by researchers using neutron scattering at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, could lead to air filtration technologies that cost-effectively capture and convert large quantities of targeted gases, including carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, to facilitate their long-term sequestration to help mitigate air pollution and global warming.

  • When NASA's Aqua satellite passed over the South China Sea on June 7 infrared imagery showed Tropical Storm Ewiniar's center made landfall in southeastern China.

  • A process that changes the regulation of genes could help corals acclimatize to the impacts of global warming.

    Cells commonly control gene expression by adding a methyl group to part of the DNA, changing how the information on the DNA is read without changing its genetic code. Researchers at KAUST wanted to investigate whether DNA methylation could play a role in helping corals adapt to climate change.