A study reported in Nature disputes a longstanding picture of how ice sheets influence ocean circulation during glacial periods. The distribution of sunlight, rather than the size of North American ice sheets, is the key variable in changes in the North Atlantic deep-water formation during the last four glacial cycles, according to the article. The new study goes back 425,000 years, according to L...

The fight against climate warming has an unexpected ally in mushrooms growing in dry spruce forests covering Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and other northern regions, a new UC Irvine study finds. When soil in these forests is warmed, fungi that feed on dead plant material dry out and produce significantly less climate-warming carbon dioxide than fungi in cooler, wetter soil. This came as a surprise ...

Drawing on records dating back to the journals of Henry David Thoreau, scientists at Harvard University have found that different plant families near Walden Pond have borne the effects of climate change in strikingly different ways. Some of the plant families hit hardest by global warming have included beloved species like lilies, orchids, violets, roses, and dogwoods. Over the past 150 years, som...

A "living fossil" tree species is helping a University of Michigan researcher understand how tropical forests responded to past climate change and how they may react to global warming in the future. The research appears in the November issue of the journal Evolution. Symphonia globulifera is a widespread tropical tree with a history that goes back some 45 million years in Africa, said Ch...

Good news has turned out to be bad. The ocean has helped slow global warming by absorbing much of the excess heat and heat-trapping carbon dioxide that has been going into the atmosphere since the start of the Industrial Revolution. All that extra carbon dioxide, however, has been a bitter pill for the ocean to swallow. It`s changing the chemistry of seawater, making it more acidic and otherwise i...

Even though the Cretaceous Period ended more than 65 million years ago, clues remain about how the ocean water circulated at that time. Measuring a chemical tracer in samples of ancient fish scales, bones and teeth, University of Missouri and University of Florida researchers have studied circulation in the Late Cretaceous North Atlantic Ocean. The Late Cretaceous was a time with high atmospheric ...

Climate change is having an impact on the water cycle, raising the issue of whether we should be investing in adapting to these impacts or focusing on more pressing water resource issues, such as providing water and sanitation for increasing populations? If investment in adapting to climate change is a priority, then is it best to invest in protecting natural ecosystems or developing engineered in...