Large blooms of tiny marine plants called phytoplankton are flourishing in areas of open water left exposed by the recent and rapid melting of ice shelves and glaciers around the Antarctic Peninsula. This remarkable colonisation is having a beneficial impact on climate change. As the blooms die back phytoplankton sinks to the sea-bed where it can store carbon for thousands or millions of years. Re...

Deep under the sea, a fossil the size of a sand grain is nestled among a billion of its closest dead relatives. Known as foraminifera, these complex little shells of calcium carbonate can tell you the sea level, temperature, and ocean conditions of Earth millions of years ago. That is, if you know what to look for. Assistant Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Rensselaer Polytechnic I...

CSIRO scientists have produced the first preliminary predictions of the potential impact of climate change on the Australian seabed. The results of the five-year study predict potential high-risk areas due to seabed movement, erosion and changes in reef growth. According to CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship project leader Dr Cedric Griffiths, the interaction between the ocean and the seabed is poo...

Once-in-a-lifetime floods in the Philippines, India’s delayed monsoon, and extensive drought in Australia are taking their toll on this year’s rice crops, demonstrating the vulnerability of rice to extreme weather. Rice Today’s October-December 2009 edition focuses on climate change and its potential impact on rice. It reveals that it is difficult to prove climate change is respo...

Hungry, sexual organisms replaced well-fed, clonal organisms in the Caribbean Sea as the Isthmus of Panama arose, separating the Caribbean from the Pacific, report researchers from the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The fossil record shows that if a species could shift from clonal to sexual reproduction it survived. Otherwise it was destined for e...

A positive effect of climate change that is helping to support a £30m industry has been uncovered by new research. Ocean warming in UK waters is increasing stocks of the great scallop Pecten maximus, according to the study published in the journal Marine Biology. However the researchers have warned that further rises in water temperatures could have the opposite effect on scallops and better...

A high-speed chase across the Panama Canal in a Boston Whaler may sound like the beginning of another James Bond film—but the protagonist of this story brandishes a butterfly net and studies the effects of climate change on insect migrations at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. "Our long-term study shows that El Niño, a global climate pattern, drives Sulfur butterfly m...

In one of the first studies of its kind, an international team of researchers has uncovered a single-letter change in the genetic code that is associated with autism. The finding, published in the journal Nature, implicates a neuronal gene not previously tied to the disorder and more broadly, underscores a role for common DNA variation. In addition, the new research highlights two other regions of...

Ancient soil-inhabiting creatures decreased in body size by nearly half in response to a period of boosted carbon dioxide levels and higher temperatures, scientists have discovered. The researchers` findings are published in the October 5, 2009, early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Jon Smith, a scientist at the Kansas Geological Survey, and St...

A knowledge gap exists in the area of climate research: for decades, scientists have been asking themselves whether, and to what extent man-made aerosols, that is, dust particles suspended in the atmosphere, enlarge the cloud cover and thus curb climate warming. Research has made little or no progress on this issue. Two scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg (MPI-M) an...