Environment

When Hurricane Irma hit southern Florida in September of 2017, the storm buffeted coastal mangrove forests with winds over 116 mph—strong enough to rip off leaves, break branches, and snap tree trunks in half. Of the mangrove forest damaged by Hurricane Irma, about 83% recovered after the first year. But... Read more

Carbon is everywhere. It's in the atmosphere, in the oceans, in the soil, in our food, in our bodies. As the backbone of all organic molecules that make up life, carbon is a very accurate predictor of crop yields. And soil is the largest carbon pool on earth, playing an... Read more

Which effects did the heat wave of summer 2020 have in Siberia? In a study led by the University of Bonn (Germany), geologists compared the spatial and temporal distribution of methane concentrations in the air of northern Siberia with geological maps. The result: the methane concentrations in the air after... Read more

More than two weeks after a flood of raw sewage inundated the Hyperion Water Reclamation Plant and triggered a massive discharge into Santa Monica Bay, the damaged facility has continued to release millions of gallons of partially treated wastewater into the Pacific Ocean, in violation of its environmental permit, the... Read more

Nearly a month into bloom season, a harmful algal bloom has been detected along Lake Erie's shores by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science.... Read more

A few months before the COP26 global climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, the United Nations climate chief has called on the international community to make more ambitious plans to reduce greenhouse gas emission.... Read more

A world that combats climate change while simultaneously improving on all 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is possible, a new study finds. Scientists from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and the German Development Institute have developed a new integrated strategy that combines ambitious climate action with dedicated... Read more

New research led by the University of Bristol demonstrates that a decline in the concentration of atmospheric CO2 played a major role in driving Earth's climate from a warm greenhouse into a cold icehouse world around 34 million years ago. This transition could be partly reversed in the next centuries... Read more

Egypt will import more water than is supplied by the Nile, if the population and the economy continue to grow as projected—according to a new study from the MIT Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.... Read more

Sediments are regarded as a river's long-term memory. They mainly comprise particles that are eroded from the ground, ending up at some point in river deltas or the sea. However, sediments can also remain stable for a relatively long time—and bind pollutants which, for example, have entered the rivers through... Read more

In the popular imagination, New York City is a mass of soaring steel-frame skyscrapers. But many of the city's 1 million buildings are not that modern. Behind their brick-and-mortar facades, its numerous 19th- and early 20th-century warehouses, commercial buildings and row homes are framed with massive wooden joists and beams.... Read more

The death toll from floods in central China last month is at least 302 with dozens of people still missing, officials said Monday, after record downpours dumped a year's worth of rain on a city in just three days.... Read more

Glaciers and ice caps in two archipelagos in the Russian Arctic are losing enough meltwater to fill nearly five million Olympic-size swimming pools each year, research shows.... Read more

Even as Asia's megacities continue to submerge, officials of one small Philippine city are planning a major US$460 million reclamation project that will damage or sink their beautiful seaside city into the dark blue southern sea.... Read more

What if Earth's atmosphere was infused with extra carbon dioxide, mused amateur scientist Eunice Foote in an 1856 research paper that concluded the gas was very good at absorbing heat.... Read more