The Great Lakes could be in hot water if the quality of the research and partnerships are not improved, warns a University of Windsor professor.

“Fresh water is arguably the most important issue for the world going forward to support the planet,” said University of Windsor professor Aaron Fisk, the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Changing Great Lakes Ecosystems. “But the amount of resources that are dedicated to the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada is only a fraction of what is funded for the oceans.”

A new study by scientists at Portland State University and the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at the University of Colorado Boulder has found that the effects of climate change, which are apparent in other parts of the Antarctic continent, are not yet observed for glaciers in the western Ross Sea coast.

Published online ahead of print for the journal Geology, the study found that the pattern of glacier advance and retreat has not changed along the western Ross Sea coast, in contrast to the rapidly shrinking glaciers on the Antarctic Peninsula.

Typhoon Noru was moving over Honshu, Japan when NASA's Aqua satellite passed overhead on August 7. Noru made landfall in the central prefecture of Wakayama early in the day.

It is a painful lesson of our time that the things we depend on to make our lives more comfortable can also kill us. Our addiction to fossils fuels is the obvious example, as we come to terms with the slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. But we are addicted to nitrogen, too, in the fertilizers that feed us, and it now appears that the combination of climate change and nitrogen pollution is multiplying the possibilities for wrecking the world around us.

An abnormal season of intense glacial melt in 2002 triggered multiple distinct changes in the physical and biological characteristics of Antarctica's McMurdo Dry Valleys over the ensuing decade, new research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) shows.

The findings suggest that abrupt, short-lived climate events can cause long-term alterations in polar regions that unfold over the span of several years and subsequently change the overall trajectory of an ecosystem.

The new research appears today in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

Pregnant women are an important but thus far largely overlooked group vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat linked to climate change, according to new research by Sabrina McCormick, PhD, an Associate Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health at Milken Institute School of Public Health at the George Washington University.  

In a groundbreaking study released today, scientists at the South Coast Air Quality Management District and the University of Southern California have found that widespread installation of certain “cool roof” materials in the region could slightly increase ozone and fine particulate pollution levels.

If ocean temperatures continue to climb, you’re going to need a bigger boat.

Great white sharks could one day be swimming in British Columbia waters, according to William Cheung, associate professor at the Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries at UBC who studies the impact of climate change on marine ecosystems.

Faced with a lawsuit by 15 states, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced this week it would no longer delay the implementation of a rule requiring states to reduce emissions of smog-creating air pollution. 

Crafted by the Obama administration in 2015, the regulation calls for states to begin meeting stricter ozone standards as of October 1, 2017, lowering the air pollution limit from 0.075 parts per million to 0.070 ppm.  Ground-level ozone, or smog, is created when pollutants from cars, power plants, and other common industrial activities react with sunlight.  It can cause respiratory and other health problems.  In June, U.S. EPA head Scott Pruitt announced the agency would delay implementation of the new standards by one year.

On the North Slope of Alaska, snow is melting earlier in the spring and the snow-in date is happening later in the fall, according to a new study by CIRES and NOAA researchers. Atmospheric dynamics and sea ice conditions are behind this lengthening of the snow-free season, the scientists found, and the consequences are far reaching—including birds laying eggs sooner and iced-over rivers flowing earlier.

“The timing of snowmelt and length of the snow-free season significantly impacts weather, the permafrost, and wildlife—in short, the Arctic terrestrial system as a whole,” said Christopher Cox, a scientist with CIRES at the University of Colorado Boulder and NOAA’s Physical Sciences Division in Boulder, Colorado. The study has been accepted for publication in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.