Early Climate News

September 28, 2023

Top Headlines

New Research Reveals Extreme Heat Likely to Wipe out Humans and Mammals in the Distant Future

Sep. 25, 2023 — A new study shows unprecedented heat is likely to lead to the next mass extinction, akin to when the dinosaurs died out, eliminating nearly all mammals in some 250 million years ...

New Research Reveals Why and When the Sahara Desert Was Green

Sep. 13, 2023 — A pioneering study has shed new light on North African humid periods that have occurred over the past 800,000 years and explains why the Sahara Desert was periodically ...

Bursting Air Bubbles May Play a Key Role in How Glacier Ice Melts

Sep. 7, 2023 — New research has uncovered a possible clue as to why glaciers that terminate at the sea are retreating at unprecedented rates: the bursting of tiny, pressurized bubbles in underwater ...

Stability Inspection for West Antarctica Shows: Marine Ice Sheet Is Not Destabilized Yet, but Possibly on a Path to Tipping

Sep. 7, 2023 — Antarctica's vast ice masses seem far away, yet they store enough water to raise global sea levels by several meters. A team of experts has now provided the first systematic stability inspection of ...

Latest Headlines

updated 11:13am EDT

Scientists Zero in on Timing, Causes of Ice Age Mammal Extinctions in Southern California

Aug. 18, 2023 — Radiocarbon dating on bones in the La Brea Tar Pits lead archaeologists to warn that history may be repeating ...

Elephant Ancestors´ Teeth Evolved in Response to Long Term Changes in Diet and Climate in Africa

Aug. 14, 2023 — A new study shows that the cheek teeth of proboscideans (elephants and their ancient relatives) evolved in response to dietary changes due to ...

Key Role of Ice Age Cycles in Early Human Interbreeding

Aug. 14, 2023 — Recent paleogenomic research revealed that interbreeding was common among early human species. However, little was known about when, where, and how often this hominin interbreeding took place. Using ...

A Climate-Orchestrated Early Human Love Story

Aug. 10, 2023 — A new study finds that past changes in atmospheric CO2 and corresponding shifts in climate and vegetation played a key role in determining when and where early human species ...

How a Massive North Atlantic Cooling Event Disrupted Early Human Occupation in Europe

Aug. 10, 2023 — A new study finds that around 1.12 million years ago a massive cooling event in the North Atlantic and corresponding shifts in climate, vegetation ...

Drops of Seawater Contain Traces of an Ancient World

Aug. 9, 2023 — New research links chemical changes in seawater to volcanic activity and ...

Then Vs. Now: Did the Horn of Africa Reach a Drought Tipping Point 11,700 Years Ago?

Aug. 9, 2023 — If climate models predict that much of tropical Africa will become wetter with a warming climate, then why does it keep getting drier in the Horn of ...

Invasion of the Arctic Ocean by Atlantic Plankton Species Reveals a Seasonally Ice-Free Ocean During the Last Interglacial

Aug. 4, 2023 — A subpolar species associated with Atlantic water expanded far into the Arctic Ocean during the Last Interglacial, analysis of microfossil content of ...

Past Climate Warming Driven by Hydrothermal Vents

Aug. 3, 2023 — An international drilling expedition off the Norwegian coast confirms the theory that methane emissions from hydrothermal vents were responsible for global warming about 55 million years ago. The ...

Nature's Kitchen: How a Chemical Reaction Used by Cooks Helped Create Life on Earth

Aug. 2, 2023 — A chemical process used in the browning of food to give it its distinct smell and taste is probably happening deep in the oceans, where it helped ...

Earlier Headlines

Summaries
Headlines

North Atlantic Oscillation Contributes to 'Cold Blob' in Atlantic Ocean

Aug. 1, 2023 — A patch of ocean in the North Atlantic is stubbornly cooling while much of the planet warms. This anomaly -- dubbed the 'cold blob' -- has been linked to changes in ocean circulation, but a ...

Insolation Affected Ice Age Climate Dynamics

July 31, 2023 — In past ice ages, the intensity of summer insolation affected the emergence of warm and cold periods and played an important role in triggering abrupt climate changes, a study by climate researchers, ...

Greenland Melted Recently: High Risk of Sea Level Rise Today

July 21, 2023 — A large portion of Greenland was an ice-free tundra landscape -- perhaps covered by trees and roaming woolly mammoths -- in the recent geologic past (about 416,000 years ago), a new study shows. The ...

Crawford Lake, Canada, Chosen as the Primary Marker to Identify the Start of the Anthropocene Epoch

July 11, 2023 — An international team of researchers has chosen the location which best represents the beginnings of what could be a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene. The Anthropocene Working Group have put ...

Global Cooling Caused Diversity of Species in Orchids, Confirms Study

July 10, 2023 — Research shows global cooling of the climate 10 million years ago led to an explosion of diversity in terrestrial ...

Why There Are No Kangaroos in Bali (and No Tigers in Australia)

July 6, 2023 — Researchers are using a new model to clarify why millions of years ago more animal species from Asia made the leap to the Australian continent than vice versa. The climate in which the species ...

Shrinking Arctic Glaciers Are Unearthing a New Source of Methane

July 6, 2023 — As the Arctic warms, shrinking glaciers are exposing bubbling groundwater springs which could provide an underestimated source of the potent greenhouse gas methane, finds new ...

New Study Reveals Abrupt Shift in Tropical Pacific Climate During Little Ice Age

July 3, 2023 — An El Niño event has officially begun. The climate phenomenon, which originates in the tropical Pacific and occurs in intervals of a few years will shape weather across the planet for the next year ...

Research Reveals Sources of CO2 from Aleutian-Alaska Arc Volcanoes

June 28, 2023 — Scientists have wondered what happens to the organic and inorganic carbon that Earth's Pacific Plate carries with it as it slides into the planet's interior along the volcano-studded Ring ...

Climate Change Will Increase Impacts of Volcanic Eruptions

June 28, 2023 — Volcanic disasters have been studied since Pompeii was buried in 79 A.D., leading the public to believe that scientists already know why, where, when and how long volcanoes will erupt. But a ...

There May Be Good News About the Oceans in a Globally Warmed World

June 28, 2023 — An analysis of oxygen levels in Earth's oceans may provide some rare, good news about the health of the seas in a future, globally warmed world. A study analyzing ocean sediment shows that ocean ...

AI Reveals Hidden Traits About Our Planet's Flora to Help Save Species

June 20, 2023 — Machine learning can help extract important information from the huge numbers of plant specimens stored in herbaria, say ...

Massive Underwater Plateau Near Solomon Islands Is Younger and Its Eruption Was More Protracted Than Previously Thought

June 15, 2023 — The Ontong Java Plateau, a volcanically-formed underwater plateau located in the Pacific Ocean north of the Solomon Islands, is younger and its eruption was more protracted than previously thought, ...

Climate Change Likely Led to Violence in Early Andean Populations

June 15, 2023 — Climate change in current times has created problems for humans such as wildfires and reduced growing seasons for staple crops, spilling over into economic effects. Many researchers predict, and have ...

Greenhouse Gas Emissions at 'an All-Time High' -- And It Is Causing an Unprecedented Rate of Global Warming, Say Scientists

June 8, 2023 — Human-induced warming, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels, reached an average of 1.14°C for the most recent decade (2013 to 2022) above pre-industrial levels. This is up from 1.07°C ...

The Clams That Fell Behind, and What They Can Tell Us About Evolution and Extinction

May 30, 2023 — A new study examined how bivalves -- the group that includes clams, mussels, scallops, and oysters -- evolved among many others in the period of rapid evolution known as the Cambrian Explosion. The ...

Extinct Offshore Volcano Could Store Gigatons of Carbon Dioxide

May 23, 2023 — A new study concludes that an extinct volcano off the shore of Portugal could store as much as 1.2-8.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide, the equivalent of ~24-125 years of the country's industrial ...

Ancient Climate Change Solves Mystery of Vanished South African Lakes

May 19, 2023 — New evidence for the presence of ancient lakes in some of the most arid regions of South Africa suggests that Stone Age humans may have been more widespread across the continent than previously ...

Half of World's Largest Lakes Losing Water

May 18, 2023 — Fifty-three percent of the world's largest freshwater lakes are in decline, storing less water than they did three decades ago, according to a new study. The study analyzed satellite ...

Past Climate Change to Blame for Antarctica's Giant Underwater Landslides

May 18, 2023 — Scientists found weak, biologically-rich layers of sediments hundreds of meters beneath the seafloor which crumbled as oceans warmed and ice sheets declined. The landslides were discovered in the ...

Tuesday, August 1, 2023