Science News

Fifty-five million years ago, a sudden, enormous influx of carbon
flooded the ocean and atmosphere for reasons that are still unclear to
scientists. What is clear is that as atmospheric CO2 content increased,
the average global surface temperature rose 5°C to 9°C (9°F to 16°F).
The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM), as this global warming event is known, lasted upwards of 170,000 years and had dramatic impact on living things both on land and in oceans. In this feature, a team of paleontologists, paleobotanists, soil scientists, and other researchers take to the field in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin to document how the climate, plants, and animals there changed during the PETM. Their work will help predict how our current global warming event could affect life on Earth.

Analysis of Earth's geologic record can reveal how the climate has changed over time. Scientists in New Zealand are examining samples from the rocky landscape once dominated by glaciers.

A new study combining the latest archaeological evidence with state-of-the-art geoscience technologies provides evidence that climate change was a key ingredient in the collapse of the great Indus or Harappan Civilization almost 4000 years ago.

Experiments may dramatically underestimate how plants will respond to climate change in the future.

ESA’s Mars Express has provided images of a remarkable crater on Mars that may show evidence that the planet underwent significant periodic fluctuations in its climate due to changes in its rotation axis.

Study concludes that as members of the public become more science literate and numerate, individuals belonging to opposing cultural groups become even more divided on the risks that climate change poses.

Pollution is warming the atmosphere through summer thunderstorm clouds, according to a computational study published May 10 in Geophysical Research Letters.

A South African archaeologist digs into his own past to seek connections between climate change and human development.