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Earth & Climate News

October 9, 2025

Top Headlines

 

Tree swallows in polluted U.S. regions are accumulating high levels of “forever chemicals.” These durable pollutants, used in firefighting foams and consumer products, are found everywhere from soil to human blood. Surprisingly, researchers ...
The Amazon has suffered its most destructive fire season in more than two decades, releasing a staggering 791 million tons of carbon dioxide—on par with Germany’s annual emissions. Scientists found that for the first time, fire-driven ...
Researchers at KAUST have confirmed that the Red Sea once vanished entirely, turning into a barren salt desert before being suddenly flooded by waters from the Indian Ocean. The flood carved deep channels and restored marine life in less than ...
Marine heatwaves can jam the ocean’s natural carbon conveyor belt, preventing carbon from reaching the deep sea. Researchers studying two major heatwaves in the Gulf of Alaska found that plankton shifts caused carbon to build up near the surface ...
Solar energy is now the cheapest source of power worldwide, driving a massive shift toward renewables. Falling battery prices and innovations in solar materials are making clean energy more reliable than ever. Yet, grid congestion and integration ...
New research reveals that deep-sea mining could dramatically threaten 30 species of sharks, rays, and ghost sharks whose habitats overlap with proposed mining zones. Many of these species, already at risk of extinction, could face increased dangers ...
Billions of years ago, Earth’s atmosphere was hostile, with barely any oxygen and toxic conditions for life. Researchers from the Earth-Life Science Institute studied Japan’s iron-rich hot springs, which mimic the ancient oceans, to uncover how ...
In 2020, California’s Creek Fire became so intense that it generated its own thunderstorm, a phenomenon called a pyrocumulonimbus cloud. For years, scientists struggled to replicate these explosive fire-born storms in climate models, leaving major ...
Swiss glaciers lost nearly 3% of their volume in 2025, following a snow-poor winter and scorching summer heatwaves. The melt has been so extreme that some glaciers lost more than two meters of ice thickness in a single season. Scientists caution ...
Fungi may have shaped Earth’s landscapes long before plants appeared. By combining rare gene transfers with fossil evidence, researchers have traced fungal origins back nearly a billion years earlier than expected. These ancient fungi may have ...
Scientists have uncovered an unexpected witness to Earth’s distant past: tiny iron oxide stones called ooids. These mineral snowballs lock away traces of ancient carbon, revealing that oceans between 1,000 and 541 million years ago held far less ...
Scientists found that biochar doesn’t just capture pollutants, it actively destroys them using direct electron transfer. This newly recognized ability accounts for up to 40% of its cleaning power and remains effective through repeated use. The ...

Latest Headlines

updated 1:54pm EDT

Earlier Headlines

 

In Texas, biologists have documented an extraordinary bird — the natural hybrid offspring of a green jay and a blue jay. Once separated by millions of years of evolution and distinct ranges, the ...

Wildfires are no longer a seasonal nuisance but a deadly, nationwide health crisis. Fueled by climate change, smoke is spreading farther and lingering longer, with new research warning of tens of ...

University of Maine researchers developed a new process to make HBL, a key ingredient in many medicines, from renewable glucose instead of petroleum. The approach not only lowers drug production ...

MIT scientists have unraveled the hidden energy balance of earthquakes by recreating them in the lab. Their findings show that while only a sliver of energy goes into the shaking we feel on the ...

Heating alone won’t drive soil microbes to release more carbon dioxide — they need added carbon and nutrients to thrive. This finding challenges assumptions about how climate warming influences ...

Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have cracked open the secrets of plant stem cells, mapping key genetic regulators in maize and Arabidopsis. By using single-cell RNA sequencing, they ...

Volcanic eruptions on the remote island of Nishinoshima repeatedly wipe the land clean, giving scientists a rare chance to study life’s earliest stages. Researchers traced the genetic origins of an ...

Insects are essential for ecosystems, but mounting evidence suggests many populations are collapsing under modern pressures. A new study used cutting-edge genomic techniques on museum specimens to ...

Hidden within Arctic ice, diatoms are proving to be anything but dormant. New Stanford research shows these glass-walled algae glide through frozen channels at record-breaking subzero temperatures, ...

Barrels dumped off Southern California decades ago have been found leaking alkaline waste, not just DDT, leaving behind eerie white halos and transforming parts of the seafloor into toxic vents. The ...

Warming Arctic permafrost is unlocking toxic metals, turning Alaska’s once-clear rivers into orange, acid-laced streams. The shift, eerily similar to mine pollution but entirely natural, threatens ...

Researchers in Germany and Australia have created a simple but powerful tool to detect nanoplastics—tiny, invisible particles that can slip through skin and even the blood-brain barrier. Using an ...

Flathead catfish are rapidly reshaping the Susquehanna River’s ecosystem. Once introduced, these voracious predators climbed to the top of the food chain, forcing native fish like channel catfish ...

Plants are spreading across the globe faster than ever, largely due to human activity, and new research shows that the very same traits that make plants thrive in their native lands also drive their ...

Tiny ocean microbes called Prochlorococcus, once thought to be climate survivors, may struggle as seas warm. These cyanobacteria drive 5% of Earth’s photosynthesis and underpin much of the marine ...

New research has revealed that East Antarctica’s vast and icy interior is heating up faster than its coasts, fueled by warm air carried from the Southern Indian Ocean. Using 30 years of weather ...

A team of chemists has discovered how to transform PET plastic waste into BAETA, a material that captures CO2 with remarkable efficiency. Instead of ending up as microplastics in the environment, ...

UC Santa Barbara researchers project that human impacts on oceans will double by 2050, with warming seas and fisheries collapse leading the charge. The tropics and poles face the fastest changes, and ...

Scientists found that Red Sea corals can endure warming seas but grow much smaller and weaken under long-term heat stress. Though recovery is possible in cooler months, rising global temperatures may ...

Seagrass, a vital coastal ecosystem, may be one of the planet’s best natural carbon sponges—but its fate depends on how we manage nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. While moderate nutrient ...

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