Earth

Radiocarbon analysis of the decline and extinction of large mammals in the Americas lends support to the idea that hunting by humans led to the animals' demise -- and backs the generally accepted understanding of when humans arrived in, and how they colonized, the Western Hemisphere.

Giants once roamed the earth. Oceans teemed with ninety-foot-long whales. Huge land animals--like truck-sized sloths and ten-ton mammoths--ate vast quantities of food, and, yes, deposited vast quantities of poop.

A new study shows that these whales and outsized land mammals--as well as seabirds and migrating fish--played a vital role in keeping the planet fertile by transporting nutrients from ocean depths and spreading them across seas, up rivers, and deep inland, even to mountaintops.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Within this century, parts of the Persian Gulf region could be hit with unprecedented events of deadly heat as a result of climate change, according to a study of high-resolution climate models.

The research reveals details of a business-as-usual scenario for greenhouse gas emissions, but also shows that curbing emissions could forestall these deadly temperature extremes.

A team of physicists led by Caltech's David Hsieh has discovered an unusual form of matter--not a conventional metal, insulator, or magnet, for example, but something entirely different. This phase, characterized by an unusual ordering of electrons, offers possibilities for new electronic device functionalities and could hold the solution to a long-standing mystery in condensed matter physics having to do with high-temperature superconductivity--the ability for some materials to conduct electricity without resistance, even at "high" temperatures approaching -100 degrees Celsius.

Boulder, Colo., USA - Maine's Katahdin and New Hampshire's Mount Washington stand as the highest peaks over New England, but over the past several million years, both were repeatedly buried by continental ice sheets advancing southward from Canada. Using atom-counting measurements of the very rare isotopes carbon-14, beryllium-10, and aluminum-26, Paul Bierman and colleagues determined that the glacial ice that once covered the peaks was frozen to the rock below, unable to accomplish much if any erosion.

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. -- An ultrapure material taken to pressures greater than that in the depths of the ocean and chilled to temperatures colder than outer space has revealed an unexpected phase transition that crosses two different phase categories.

A Purdue University-led team of researchers observed electrons transition from a topologically ordered phase to a broken symmetry phase.

Marine scientists attending an international workshop warned that the future may bring more harmful algal blooms (HABs) that threaten wildlife and the economy, and called for changes in research priorities to better forecast these long-term trends.

Because of decreasing deforestation and emissions from forest fires in the Amazon over the past ten years, the amount of particulate matter (aerosols), ozone, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and other atmospheric pollutants released by burning biomass has fallen by 30% on average during the dry season in southern Brazil, Paraguay, northern Bolivia and Argentina.

This improvement in the region's air quality may be helping to prevent the premature deaths of some 1,700 adults per year throughout South America.

Thanks to their unique properties, ionic liquids are all in the rage as solvents as "green" sustainable chemical processes. Recently, two research teams at Umeå University in Sweden discovered how enzymes can perform their catalytical processes in a switchable ionic liquid. The discovery paves way for enzymatic refinement of cellulose to precious molecules and industrial products. The results have been published in the journal ChemSusChem.

The baby whales suddenly began dying in 2005. And continued for several years running.

Scientists had never seen anything like it around Peninsula Valdes, an important calving ground for southern right whales on the coast of Argentina, or anywhere else for that matter. The average number of right whale deaths per year at Peninsula Valdes jumped more than 10-fold, from fewer than six per year before 2005 to 65 per year from 2005 to 2014.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released a policy statement that links climate change with the health of children, urging pediatricians and politicians to work together to solve this crisis and protect children from climate-related threats including natural disasters, heat stress, lower air quality, increased infections, and threats to food and water supplies.

NASA satellites and instruments have been monitoring the record-breaking Hurricane Patricia as it rapidly intensified off the southwestern coast of Mexico on October 23. NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP saw frigid cloud top temperatures, NOAA's GOES-West satellite provided imagery and animations that showed the extent of the storm, NASA's Terra satellite provided visible data, and the RapidScat instrument aboard the International Space Station measured its surface winds.

Suomi NPP Satellite Sees Frigid High Clouds

Researchers at the University of Waterloo are warning that plans to reclaim mined land risk failure and could cost industry and government billions in future cleanup costs if they do not take into account the affects of climate change.

In a paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change today, Professors Rebecca Rooney, Derek Robinson and Rich Petrone outline a six-step process to improve success rates for ecological reclamation projects and control mine closure costs; reconciling government-mandated mine closing procedures with long-term climate projections.

In a new thesis 60 garments from Swedish and international clothing chains have been tested. An initial analysis found thousands of chemicals in the clothes and around a hundred chemicals were preliminary identified. Several of the substances were not on the producers' lists and are suspected to be by-products, residues or chemicals added during transport.

New research has prompted scientists to call on policymakers to plant more trees alongside upland rivers and streams, in an effort to save their habitats from the future harm of climate change.

Published today in the leading international journal Global Change Biology, experts from Cardiff University describe having discovered a previously unknown benefit of trees to the resilience of river ecosystems.

Britain's 242,334 miles of running waters are among the most sensitive of all habitats to climate change, with cool water species at greatest risk.