Environment

Sand and dust storms affect about 330 million people in over 150 countries and are taking an increasing toll on health, economies and the environment, the U.N. World Meteorological Organization says.... Read more

Despite a warming climate, bone-chilling winter cold can grip parts of the U.S. In a study appearing in Science Advances, researchers found that two specific patterns in the polar vortex, a swirling mass of cold air high in the stratosphere, steer extreme cold to different regions of the country. One... Read more

Spreading wildfires forced the evacuation on Friday of part of the famed Grand Canyon, with the US National Park Service appealing for visitors to stay calm.... Read more

A new Europe-focused study reveals that polyethylene (PE), the most widely used packaging material in Europe, has lower life cycle global warming potential (GWP)—often used to assess greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions—than conventional packaging alternatives, such as paper, metals, and glass, in most applications. The finding arrives as the European Packaging... Read more

Wildfires have spread across the planet for millennia, but they are increasing as the climate warms. Decimated forests, depleted crops, and destroyed buildings are the hallmark of wildfire devastation. Another is the effect on air quality and even the entire climate system. Researchers at Georgia Tech offer solutions for not... Read more

New research has found increasing levels of artificial sweeteners in wastewater treatment plants, with downstream impacts on the environment.... Read more

For nearly a month, hundreds of thousands of Iowans have not been allowed to water their lawns—even though there's no drought.... Read more

As Great Salt Lake's levels continue to sag, yet another strange phenomenon has surfaced, offering Utah scientists more opportunities to plumb the vast saline lake's secrets.... Read more

The remains of landscapes thought to have formed when ancient rivers flowed across East Antarctica have been discovered—and could help predictions of future loss from the ice sheet.... Read more

Over just two hours, the Guadalupe River at Comfort, Texas, rose from hip-height to three stories tall, sending water weighing as much as the Empire State building downstream roughly every minute it remained at its crest.... Read more

For John B. Anderson, the Gulf Coast is personal. The W. Maurice Ewing Professor Emeritus of Oceanography at Rice University spent his early years on Alabama's Fort Morgan Peninsula, where his father was a party boat fisherman. That lifelong connection to the region, combined with a decades-long scientific career, has... Read more

Bangladesh is known as the land of rivers and flooding, despite almost all of its water originating outside the territory. The fact that 80% of rivers that flow through Bangladesh have their sources in a neighboring country, can make access to freshwater in Bangladesh fraught. And the country's fast-growing cities... Read more

A charcoal-like material made from leaves and branches that collect on forest floors could be a cheap, sustainable way to keep pollution from washing off roadways and into Georgia's lakes and rivers.... Read more

A new study conducted by geologists from the University of Florida and the University of Maryland reveals that, as land is exposed by melting glaciers, chemical reactions in the newly uncovered glacial sediments initially suppress greenhouse gas emissions.... Read more

Catastrophic floods can be difficult to prepare for. Sometimes evacuation is the right call, but if it's too late the best bet is to find higher ground nearby. The stakes can be high, because a flash flood may give those in its path only minutes or seconds to react.... Read more