Climate Change, features and articles | Educational Science

Nov 30, 2013

New Wizard Tool Maps the Climate Future (Op-Ed)

Evan Girvetz is a senior climate scientist for the Nature Conservancy. This Op-Ed was adapted from a post to the Nature Conservancy blog Planet Change. He contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. People often hear broad statements about how climate change will affect society and nature...

Nov 30, 2013

Greenland's Snow Hides 100 Billion Tons of Water

Big surprises still hide beneath the frozen surface of snowy Greenland. Despite decades of poking and prodding by scientists, only now has the massive ice island revealed a hidden aquifer. In southeast Greenland, more than 100 billion tons of liquid water soaks a slushy snow layer buried anywhere from 15...

Oct 31, 2013

To Cut Carbon, a Decade is Too Long to Wait (Op-Ed)

Jeffrey Rissman, policy analyst at Energy Innovation: Policy and Technology, contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. While there is a global consensus to cut greenhouse gasses, many approaches look to solve the crisis over decades — but, there are critical reasons that even ten years is...

Oct 31, 2013

Something Is Rotten at the New York Times (Op-Ed)

Michael Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Penn State University and was recognized in 2007, with other IPCC authors, for contributing to the award of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his work as a lead author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel...

Oct 31, 2013

Twice as Much Methane Escaping Arctic Seafloor

The Arctic methane time bomb is bigger than scientists once thought and primed to blow, according to a study published today (Nov. 24) in the journal Nature Geoscience. About 17 teragrams of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, escapes each year from a broad, shallow underwater platform called the East Siberian...

Aug 31, 2013

Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Prevent Premature Deaths

Reducing the flow of the greenhouse gases that spur global warming could prevent up to 3 million premature deaths annually by the year 2100, a new study suggests. Greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide trap heat, helping warm the globe. The surge in carbon dioxide levels due to human activity...

May 31, 2013

Another 1930s Dust Bowl Drought Possible This Century (Op-Ed)

Marlene Cimons of Climate Nexus contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. Drought has beset the Earth since before farming began. In developing nations, it brings suffering and death. In wealthier countries like the United States, it brings economic devastation when crops wither and die, and forests...

May 31, 2013

Voices: Experts & Analysts Weigh in on Obama's Climate Change Plan

President Barack Obama announced a sweeping plan to tackle climate change today (June 25), outlining measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote the development of clean energy technologies. The new strategy, which was revealed before an audience at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., identifies three key objectives: cut the...

Feb 28, 2013

Ocean Acidification Affects Northeastern US Coasts More

Coastal regions around the United States respond differently to ocean acidification, a large-scale study finds. In the new study, scientists from 11 U.S. institutions measured levels of carbon dioxide and other forms of carbon in waters off the East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico. If the same amount of...

Feb 28, 2013

Surprising Depth to Global Warming's Effects

Sarah Purkey is a Ph.D. student in the University of Washington's School of Oceanography. Gregory Johnson is an oceanographer with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory. They contributed this article to LiveScience's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights. The oceans are the flywheel of the climate...

Dec 31, 2012

Climate Change Threatens Spectacular Hawaiian Plant

One of Hawaii's iconic plants is again at risk. The striking and rare Haleakalā silversword, found only on the high volcanic slopes of Maui, is on the decline, scientists report today (Jan. 15) in the journal Global Change Biology. First, the plant was nearly killed off by cows and collectors...

Dec 31, 2012

Energy-Guzzling Cities Changing Weather 1,000 Miles Away

The heat released by everyday activities in energy-guzzling cities is changing the weather in far-away places, scientists report today (Jan. 27). The released heat is changing temperatures in areas more than 1,000 miles away (1609 kilometers). It is warming parts of North America by about 1 degree Fahrenheit (0.6 degrees...

Nov 30, 2014

California's Worst Drought Ever Is 1st Taste of Future

The drought now plaguing California is the worst to parch the central and southern parts of the state in the last 1,200 years, a new study finds. The 2012 to 2014 drought's lack of rain isn't remarkable on its own, according to tree-ring records reported in the study. There have...

Nov 30, 2014

Top 10 Cities That Will See More Storm Outages Revealed

Hurricane Sandy left Lower Manhattan completely dark, eerily bereft of the electricity that keeps New York City buzzing 24 hours a day. Across town, 34,000 people living in the Rockaways, an exposed spit of land that acts as a barrier island, were left without power for weeks when the storm...

Oct 31, 2014

'Dark Ice' Speeds Up Melting in Greenland (Photos)

Ribbons of dark ice are exposed on the otherwise white, frozen landscape of Greenland every summer, and researchers think these bands could reveal how climate change will affect the huge island. Climate scientists Johnny Ryan, from Aberystwyth University in the United Kingdom, and Jason Box, from the Geological Survey of...