Groundwater in many areas of the U.S. and across the globe is being depleted as pumping for drinking water and agriculture outpaces nature's ability to refill aquifers. In the most severe cases, this could lead to a point of no return, where an aquifer's physical structure collapses and it cannot be refilled.
Image: Demonstrating that the visible channels of Sentinel-3C’s sea and land surface temperature radiometer are working as expected, on 2 October the instrument captured this image of Hurricane Rachel over the eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula.
A new study led by researchers at ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium) reveals that glaciers worldwide could lose ice faster than previously projected. Published in Nature Communications, the research shows that accounting for daily weather variability leads to more realistic…
Britain's Met Office says this year's El Niño is "unprecedented." Japan's weather agency has called it the strongest ever observed. U.S. forecasters say it still trails the biggest events in its record books.
The world's oceans help slow climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere, but how much they take up can vary throughout the year. New research, published in Geophysical Research Letters, suggests these seasonal patterns are changing across the Indian Ocean, potentially affecting how it helps…
El Niño is fueling a dangerous cascade of wildfires across the tropics, with the Amazon rainforest now experiencing widespread burning and scientists warning that the worst may still be ahead. NASA researchers are uncovering dozens of previously undetected fires, suggesting the destruction could be even more extensive…
As human activity has increased temperatures globally, determining the costs directly incurred by climate change is challenging. The effects of climate change on extreme weather events—such as hurricanes and heat waves—can be locally specific and variable, and observations and climate modeling might not accurately…
Scientists have discovered that some forest soils are becoming surprisingly better at removing methane from the atmosphere as temperatures rise and rainfall declines. A study spanning up to 24 years found methane absorption increasing by an average of 3% annually, challenging previous predictions about climate…
The strong El Niño currently under way in the Pacific Ocean raises the specter of marine heat waves and coral bleaching once again threatening Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef. And now new research has revealed the complex interplay of atmospheric patterns and weather systems thousands of kilometers apart that…
A new University of Melbourne-led study has identified insights and evidence that could help mitigate the fast-rising climate impact of lithium-ion batteries (LIBs).
Most studies of how clouds are responding to climate change focus on clouds over the oceans, rather than over mountains. Those that do focus on mountain clouds tend to explore cloud microphysics rather than long-term trends in cloud phase. But understanding cloud behavior over regions such as the Tibetan Plateau…
The writer Malcolm Gladwell popularized the term "tipping points" to refer to the moment when a trend or social behavior crosses a threshold and rapidly spreads everywhere. In physics, tipping points occur when systems—say, Earth's climate—reach an unstable point and topple over into a sea of change that is sometimes…