Environment

A United Nations-backed framework for protecting tropical forests could allow governments to collect income from carbon credits without advancing forest conservation. The weakness lies in how the program calculates baselines, which is the expected rate of deforestation without intervention. There is no evidence that enrolled jurisdictions—countries, states, and provinces—have acted... Read more

Researchers have created the first map of a network of subglacial lakes in the Canadian Arctic showing 33 bodies of water under glaciers. Using a decade of ArcticDEM satellite data of Earth's surface height, a team of researchers including the University of Waterloo has developed a method that allowed them... Read more

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed Thursday to include microplastics and pharmaceuticals on a list of contaminants in drinking water for the first time, a step that could lead to new limits on those substances for water utilities.... Read more

Some newly published findings from an Idaho State University professor and his colleagues point out how changes to currents an ocean away can impact climates on the other side of the globe. The new paper published in Nature Communications explains how Bruce Finney, professor in the departments of biological sciences... Read more

Researchers at the Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering (IIAMA) at the Universitat Politècnica de València have developed an advanced system for seasonal forecasting of meteorological droughts that enables these events to be predicted up to six months in advance, providing a key tool for water management and early warning... Read more

The Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) agreement—often known as the High Seas Treaty—came into force in January 2026 following almost two decades of negotiations. Its key objectives are the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas that lie outside any single country's jurisdiction, remote areas that make... Read more

Ocean Discovery League (ODL) has launched the Global Deep Sea Exploration Goals, an ambitious international effort to visually explore 10,000 strategically selected locations across the deep seafloor. When completed, this initiative will nearly double the number of unique seafloor locations ever visually observed and produce the first globally representative visual... Read more

The Pacific Northwest has seen below-normal snow this season—and new research from Portland State University suggests that the region's snowmelt-dependent water resources could face growing challenges in the years ahead as forest fires and winter rainstorms become more frequent.... Read more

In the aftermath of the latest bout of extreme rainfall across New Zealand's upper North Island, there were some familiar scenes.... Read more

An undersea magnitude 7.4 earthquake toppled buildings in parts of northern Indonesia, sent people fleeing from their homes, killed at least one person and generated a small tsunami Thursday.... Read more

Australia marks 50 years of monitoring the world's cleanest air in remote northwest Tasmania at Kennaook / Cape Grim Baseline Air Pollution Station, supporting global efforts to track human-driven changes to the atmosphere.... Read more

Reducing aircraft soot emissions may not reduce contrail clouds, according to in-flight observations of emissions from a passenger jet with modern "lean-burn" engines, reported in Nature. Contrails from aircraft contribute to the climate-warming impacts of aviation. The findings demonstrate that more work is needed to understand and reduce the climate... Read more

A growing network of meltwater lakes at the edge of the Greenland ice sheet is accelerating the flow of major glaciers, potentially increasing the pace of global sea-level rise. Warmer air and sea temperatures have led to the loss of around 264 gigatons of ice every year in Greenland since... Read more

Rivers are rarely the calm, orderly streams we imagine on maps. Over time, their winding paths—called meanders—shift, bend, and occasionally snap off in sudden "cutoff" events that shorten loops and reshape the landscape. While scientists have long suspected that such cutoffs inject a dose of unpredictability into river evolution, a... Read more

Emissions of two major pollutants have steadily decreased on Salt Lake City roads over the past two decades, while levels of carbon dioxide emissions, a related gas blamed for climate change, remained steady, according to a new study by University of Utah atmospheric scientists conducted in partnership with the federal... Read more