Howling winds take sea salt from the Southern Ocean and lay it down in Antarctica as snow, then ice. Hidden in these ice cores is a warning about Australian fire seasons.
Did the enormous West Antarctic Ice Sheet collapse the last time global temperatures were 1.5°C above preindustrial levels? The answer lay in the DNA of an octopus.
Rocky Mountain fires leave telltale ash layers in nearby lakes like this one.
Philip Higuera
As the climate warms, devastating fires are increasingly likely. The 2020 fires pushed the Southern Rockies beyond the historical average. Is there hope for the Northern Rockies?
Recent heat waves underscore Earth’s new climate state.
Sean Gladwell via Getty Images
Long before thermometers, nature left its own temperature records. A climate scientist explains how ongoing global warming compares with ancient temperatures.
Natural records suggest a cooling trend was underway thousands of years ago.
DeAgostini/Getty Images
As water dripped in a remote cave, it left behind evidence of every monsoon season for a millennium. Scientists say it holds a warning for a country about to become the most populous on Earth.
Australia’s alpine region warmed for about 600 years. What makes this climate change particularly interesting is that it bears striking similarity to today.
Sharks’ teeth carry clues about the oceans they swam in.
Christina Spence Morgan
These giant predators are helping solve the mystery of Earth’s cooling shift some 50 million years ago.
Colorado’s East Troublesome Fire jumped the Continental Divide on Oct. 22, 2020, and eventually became Colorado’s second-largest fire on record.
Lauren Dauphin/NASA Earth Observatory
Scientists studied charcoal layers in the sediment of lake beds across the Rockies to track fires over time. They found increasing fire activity as the climate warmed.
Ga-Mohana Hill in South Africa’s Northern Cape province.
Benjamin Schoville
These findings are in stark contrast with the original worldview that suggested the entire globe was at a maximum glaciated state around 20 000 years ago.
What caused the rise and then collapse 2,600 years ago of this vast empire centered on Mesopotamia? Clues from a cave in northern Iraq point to abrupt climate change.