Early Climate News

May 9, 2024

Top Headlines

Human Activity Is Making It Harder for Scientists to Interpret Oceans' Past

May 8, 2024 — New research shows human activity is significantly altering the ways in which marine organisms are preserved, with lasting effects that can both improve and impair the fossil ...

It Flickers, Then It Tips -- Study Identifies Early Warning Signals for the End of the African Humid Period

May 7, 2024 — Tipping points in the climate system can be the result of a slow but linear development. However, they can also be accompanied by a 'flickering', with two stable climatic states that alternate before ...

Scientists Show Ancient Village Adapted to Drought, Rising Seas

Apr. 30, 2024 — Researchers have unveiled evidence for ancient human resilience to climate change in the Eastern ...

Climate Change and Mercury Pollution Stressed Plants for Millions of Years

Apr. 30, 2024 — The link between massive flood basalt volcanism and the end-Triassic (201 million years ago) mass-extinction is commonly accepted. However, exactly how volcanism led to the collapse of ecosystems and the extinction of entire families of organisms is ...

Latest Headlines

updated 10:59pm EDT

New Computer Algorithm Supercharges Climate Models and Could Lead to Better Predictions of Future Climate Change

May 1, 2024 — A study describes a new computer algorithm which can be applied to Earth System Models to drastically reduce the time needed to prepare these in ...

Researchers Find Oldest Undisputed Evidence of Earth's Magnetic Field

Apr. 24, 2024 — A new study has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth's magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth ...

Ice Age Climate Analysis Reduces Worst-Case Warming Expected from Rising CO2

Apr. 17, 2024 — A detailed reconstruction of climate during the most recent ice age, when a large swath of North America was covered in ice, provides information on ...

Marine Plankton Behavior Could Predict Future Marine Extinctions

Apr. 17, 2024 — Marine communities migrated to Antarctica during the Earth's warmest period in 66 million years long before a mass-extinction ...

Climate Change Threatens Antarctic Meteorites

Apr. 8, 2024 — Antarctica harbors a large concentration of meteorites imbuing the icy continent with an unparalleled wealth of information on our solar system. However, these precious meteorites are rapidly ...

Australia on Track for Unprecedented, Decades-Long Megadroughts

Apr. 2, 2024 — Australia could soon see megadroughts that last for more than 20 years, according to new modelling. The researchers' bleak findings are before factoring in human impact on the climate since the ...

Canada Lynx Historic Range in US Likely Wider Than Previously Thought

Apr. 1, 2024 — A broader past could mean a brighter future for Canada lynx in the U.S., according to recent research. The study indicates that lynx might do well in the future in parts of Utah, central Idaho and ...

Evolution of the Most Powerful Ocean Current on Earth

Mar. 27, 2024 — The Antarctic Circumpolar Current plays an important part in global overturning circulation, the exchange of heat and CO2 between the ocean and atmosphere, and the stability of Antarctica's ice ...

New Archive of Ancient Human Brains Challenges Misconceptions of Soft Tissue Preservation

Mar. 20, 2024 — A new study has challenged previously held views that brain preservation in the archaeological record is extremely rare. The team compiled a new ...

Sea Surface Temperature Research Provides Clear Evidence of Human-Caused Climate Change

Mar. 20, 2024 — Claims that climate change is natural are inconsistent with new oceanic temperature ...

A Wetter World Recorded in Australian Coral Colony

Mar. 18, 2024 — When climate scientists look to the future to determine what the effects of climate change may be, they use computer models to simulate potential outcomes such as how precipitation will change in a ...

New Study Reveals Insight Into Which Animals Are Most Vulnerable to Extinction Due to Climate Change

Mar. 7, 2024 — In a new study, researchers have used the fossil record to better understand what factors make animals more vulnerable to extinction from climate change. The results could help to identify species ...

Mercury Rising: Study Sheds New Light on Ancient Volcanoes' Environmental Impact

Feb. 29, 2024 — Massive volcanic events in Earth's history that released large amounts of carbon into the atmosphere frequently correlate with periods of severe environmental change and mass extinctions. A new ...

Microbial Viruses Act as Secret Drivers of Climate Change

Feb. 29, 2024 — Scientists have discovered that viruses that infect microbes contribute to climate change by playing a key role in cycling methane, a potent greenhouse gas, through the ...

Climate Change Threatens Thousands of Archaeological Sites in Coastal Georgia

Feb. 28, 2024 — Thousands of historic and archaeological sites in Georgia are at risk from tropical storm surges, and that number will increase with climate change, according to a new ...

Significant Glacial Retreat in West Antarctica Began in 1940s

Feb. 26, 2024 — Among the vast expanse of Antarctica lies the Thwaites Glacier, the world's widest glacier measuring about 80 miles on the western edge of the continent. Despite its size, the massive landform ...

Biggest Holocene Volcano Eruption Found by Seabed Survey

Feb. 22, 2024 — A detailed survey of the volcanic underwater deposits around the Kikai caldera in Japan clarified the deposition mechanisms as well as the event's magnitude. As a result, the research team found ...

Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats Has Long Been in Flux

Feb. 21, 2024 — It has been long assumed that Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats was formed as its ancient namesake lake dried up 13,000 years ago. But new research has gutted that narrative, determining these crusts ...

Researchers Studying Ocean Transform Faults, Describe a Previously Unknown Part of the Geological Carbon Cycle

Feb. 12, 2024 — This study reports widespread mineral carbonation of mantle rocks in an oceanic transform fueled by magmatic degassing of CO2. The findings describe a previously unknown part of the geological carbon ...

Ancient Pollen Trapped in Greenland Ice Uncovers Changes in Canadian Forests Over 800 Years

Feb. 8, 2024 — The Greenland ice sheet lies thousands of miles from North America yet holds clues to the distant continent's environmental history. Nearly two miles thick in places, the ice sheet grows as snow ...

Ice Cores Provide First Documentation of Rapid Antarctic Ice Loss in the Past

Feb. 8, 2024 — Researchers have uncovered the first direct evidence that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet shrunk suddenly and dramatically at the end of the Last Ice Age, around eight thousand years ago. The evidence, ...

What Turned Earth Into a Giant Snowball 700 Million Years Ago? Scientists Now Have an Answer

Feb. 7, 2024 — Inspired during field work in South Australia's Flinders Ranges, geoscientists have proposed that all-time low volcanic carbon dioxide emissions triggered a 57-million-year-long global ...

Permafrost Alone Holds Back Arctic Rivers -- And a Lot of Carbon

Feb. 1, 2024 — A new study provides the first evidence that the Arctic's frozen soil is the dominant force shaping Earth's northernmost rivers, confining them to smaller areas and shallower valleys than ...

Ancient Brown Bear Genomes Sheds Light on Ice Age Losses and Survival

Jan. 24, 2024 — The brown bear is one of the largest living terrestrial carnivores, and is widely distributed across the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike many other large carnivores that went extinct at the end of the ...

New Tool Predicts Flood Risk from Hurricanes in a Warming Climate

Jan. 24, 2024 — A new method predicts how much flooding a coastal community is likely to experience as hurricanes evolve due to climate change. Using New York as a test case, the model predicts Hurricane Sandy-level ...

Ice Age Could Help Predict Oceans' Response to Global Warming

Jan. 21, 2024 — A new way to measure the ocean oxygen level and its connections with carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere during the last ice age could help explain the role oceans played in past glacial ...

Why Animals Shrink Over Time Explained With New Evolution Theory

Jan. 18, 2024 — The new theoretical research proposes that animal size over time depends on two key ecological ...

The Heat Is On: Scientists Discover Southern Africa's Temps Will Rise Past the Rhinos' Tolerance

Jan. 17, 2024 — Southern Africa contains the vast majority of the world's remaining populations of both black and white rhinoceroses (80% and 92%, respectively). The region's climate is changing rapidly as ...

Stalagmites as Climate Archive

Jan. 17, 2024 — When combined with data from tree-ring records, stalagmites can open up a unique archive to study natural climate fluctuations, a research team has demonstrated. The researchers analyzed the isotopic ...

Key Moment in the Evolution of Life on Earth Captured in Fossils

Jan. 15, 2024 — New research has precisely dated some of the oldest fossils of complex multicellular life in the world, helping to track a pivotal moment in the history of Earth when the seas began teeming with new ...