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Jul 31, 2017

El Nino's Absence May Fuel a Stormy Hurricane Season

The hurricane season is likely to be extra active this year, thanks to a likely no-show from El Niño. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center released an updated hurricane season outlook today (Aug. 9). The new prediction ups the odds for a blustery, extremely active hurricane...

Jul 31, 2017

Climate Change Is Driving These Cute Mountain Critters Out of Their Homes

The chirps of the American pika have gone silent in a core portion of their habitat in California. New research finds that the pika (Ochotona princeps) disappeared from a 64 square-mile (165 square kilometers) section of the Sierra Nevada mountains north of Lake Tahoe between the 1950s and the early...

Jul 31, 2017

Harvey Response: NASA Lends Space-Based Eyes to Recovery

NASA is aiding the humanitarian response to Tropical Storm Harvey by surveying the storm's impact from above. This effort will provide expert data to relief agencies. Harvey first hit southeastern Texas on Aug. 25 as a Category 4 hurricane, and made landfall in southern Louisiana as a tropical storm on...

May 31, 2017

Watch the Waters Rise in 'Holoscenes' Climate Art Installation

NEW YORK — An artistic interpretation of climate change comes to Times Square for the 2017 World Science Festival, in the form of Holoscenes, an outdoor installation that places a series of human occupants in an enormous aquarium, to explore humanity's uneasy relationship with rising seas in a warming world....

May 31, 2017

Why Are the Vermilion Cliffs So Red?

If you've ever visited the Grand Canyon, Arizona's Vermillion Cliffs or the astonishingly rainbow-colored hills of China's Zhangye National Geopark, you likely noticed they have one thing in common: red-colored rocks. How did these rocks get so red? The answer involves iron, which bonds with other elements to form minerals...

May 31, 2017

Millions of 'Sea Pickles' Invade Northwest Waters

The waters off the Oregon coast are mysteriously awash with strange, jelly-like creatures that look like translucent slugs, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). These bizarre organisms, called pyrosomes (Pyrosoma atlanticum), began appearing off Oregon's coast in 2015, but in recent months, their numbers have multiplied into...

Apr 30, 2017

Early Collapse of Arctic Sea Ice Is Another Ominous Sign of Rapid Warming

Earth's already-beleaguered northern icecap suffered another blow this month with the early collapse of a barrier that kept some of Arctic's most durable ice in place. The ice arch across the Nares Strait, which separates Greenland from Ellesmere Island in Canada's far northeast, gave way two months earlier than usual,...

Feb 28, 2017

Congress Targets Endangered Species Act

Often photographed clinging to Arctic ice floes as its habitat melts away into warming waters, the polar bear is the poster child for U.S. efforts to save wildlife on the brink of extinction using the Endangered Species Act. But the act is quickly becoming a target of the Trump administration...

Feb 28, 2017

What Your Nose Knows About Human Evolution

They can be bulbous, pert or pointy, but why do noses look so different from one another? It could have something to do with how humans evolved to live in certain climates, a new study suggests. In the study, the researchers found that wider noses are more commonly found among...

Feb 28, 2017

Can Water Naturally Flow Uphill?

Earth's gravity is strong, but can water ever naturally go against it and flow uphill? The answer is yes, if the parameters are right. For instance, a wave on a beach can flow uphill, even if it's for just a moment. Water in a siphon can flow uphill too, as...

Jan 31, 2017

California Dam Emergency: 5 Dams That Did Fail

More than 100,000 people were evacuated from below the United States' tallest dam on Sunday, after an auxiliary floodway threatened to fail. The Oroville Dam in Northern California looked poised to release floodwaters from Lake Oroville into the Feather River, threatening thousands of homes and businesses. According to the Los...

Jan 31, 2017

Wind, Rain, Heat: Health Risks Grow with Extreme Weather

ATLANTA — As climate change proceeds, there will be more extreme weather events, and these events pose a threat to people's health, experts say. The annual number of natural disasters appears to be increasing around the world, said Dr. Mark Keim, an emergency-medicine physician and the founder of DisasterDoc LLC....

Nov 30, 2018

Leo DiCaprio's Rumored Plan to Buy a Dinosaur Duo Has Paleontologists Upset

Leonardo DiCaprio is rumored to be in the market for a $2.5 million dinosaur duo: a meat-eating Allosaurus mother and babe, according to Page Six in the New York Post. If the rumor is true, the prehistoric purchase would be very disappointing, said Thomas Carr, a vertebrate paleontologist and an...

Nov 30, 2018

Monster Waves Are Battering the West Coast. Here's Why.

Cyclonic winds, rushing down from Alaska had nothing else to batter against, so they smacked into the water across miles of open ocean. The winds pushed and ground and heaved against the waves, making them bigger, more sustained and more powerful. By the time these waves reached the U.S. shoreline,...

Nov 30, 2018

World’s Oldest Flower Unfurled Its Petals More Than 174 Million Years Ago

Dinosaurs that lived during the early Jurassic period could stop and smell the flowers if they so desired, according to a new study that describes the oldest fossil flower on record. The flower, named Nanjinganthus dendrostyla, lived more than 174 million years ago, the researchers said. Until now, the oldest...