Coral bleaching in March 2016. Rapid rises of greenhouse gases in the past have been linked to major extinctions in the oceans.
XL Catlin Seaview Survey
2015 will likely be a degree warmer than before people started pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The last time the world was this hot wasn’t great for civilisation.
It’s well known that carbon in the atmosphere is causing global warming. What is less well known, outside of scientific circles at least, is the role oceans have to play in this. Our seas contain 60 times…
Aboriginal stories say Fitzroy Island on the Great Barrier Reef was connected to the mainland. It was, at least 10,000 years ago.
Felix Dziekan/Flickr
In the beginning, as far back as we remember, our home islands were not islands at all as they are today. They were part of a peninsula that jutted out from the mainland and we roamed freely throughout…
The polar vortex played havoc with Niagara Falls (and much of the rest of North America too).
EPA/Rick Warne
A string of events earlier this year provided a sobering snapshot of a global climate system out of whack. Europe suffered devastating floods, Britain’s coastline was mauled, and the polar vortex cast…
Much of Tasmania’s World Heritage has been sculpted by ice. The extension to the area (currently under debate) adds to all these values.
Simon Lieschke/Flickr
The debate around Tasmania’s controversial World Heritage extension, under review this week at international talks in Doha, has centred on forests. But the area includes far more than “just” trees — including…
Volcanoes can help life survive in the cold.
Flickr/august allen
Antarctica was once covered in lush, subtropical forests, inhabited by diverse plants and animals including large dinosaurs. That’s going back many millions of years. These days, Antarctica is 99.7% covered…
A volcano in Indonesia may be the location of a massive “mystery eruption” that has perplexed volcanologists for decades, according to a new study. The eruption occurred in 1257, and it could also be one…
A previously unknown canyon has been discovered in Greenland, hidden beneath the ice. It is at least 750 kilometres long. To put that in perspective, imagine a ten kilometre wide gorge, up to 800 metres…
Antarctic warming began at least two, and perhaps four, millennia earlier than previously thought, the study found.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The Antarctic warming that signalled the beginning of the last ice age melt may have actually started between between two and four millennia earlier than previously thought, a new study has found. Previously…
Bryophytes regrowing in the lab after 400 years in a glacier.
Catherine La Farge
Retreating glaciers are proving to be good news for plant scientists. Underneath one such glacier on Ellesmere Island in Canada, researchers have found plants they believe have regrown after being entombed…