Wildfire Smoke May Carry Deadly Fungi Long Distances
[ad_1] Glowing red skies and bitter ash-laden air are increasingly common across much of the US as the warming climate fuels vast wildfires. For years now, researchers have understood that…
The Mediterranean Sea Is So Hot, It’s Forming Carbonate Crystals
[ad_1] It’s also worth noting that the Mediterranean Sea is one of the most microplastic-polluted water bodies in the world: In 2020, scientists reported finding 2 million particles in a…
US Cities Are Recycling Trees and Poop to Make Compost
[ad_1] And tree waste isn’t the only unwanted product that can be used to make this compost. Cities could also nourish their trees with a little assistance from their human…
Climate Change Is Burying Archaeological Sites Under Tons of Sand
[ad_1] The Nizari garrison at Gird Castle resisted the Mongol horde of Hulagu Khan for 17 years before surrendering in December 1270. The fortress rose 300 meters above the surrounding…
The Drying Up of Europe’s Great Rivers Could Be the New Normal
[ad_1] Scientists say that the economic cost of the rivers’ decimation is only part of the problem. The less water in the water system as a whole, explains Gabriel Singer,…
Colette Pichon Battle’s Plea for Climate Justice From the US Gulf
[ad_1] As the Re:WIRED GREEN event on addressing climate change drew to a close yesterday, the weather underlined the urgency in the most horrific way possible. While climate activist and…
The Sustainable Future of Food Must Bring Everyone to the Table
[ad_1] How can we feed the world sustainably? Right now, 325 million people are acutely hungry. 35 million Americans don’t know where their next meal will come from. The world’s…
‘We Are the Asteroid’: The Case for Hope Amid Climate Fears
[ad_1] Earth’s atmosphere, as it exists, is both a profound statistical anomaly and the very thing that makes human life possible. Human activity is upsetting that natural balance, but there’s…
What Is a Wetland Worth?
[ad_1] Annie Proulx was not able to travel for her book on wetlands. She had imagined journeys into the disappearing Siberian mires and the English fens, which are already mostly…
Philadelphia’s Diatom Archive Is a Way, Way, Wayback Machine
[ad_1] However, in recent decades, the sea has dominated the once-dynamic coastal margin, propelling farther inland as sea levels rise. Over the last century, the sea level along New Jersey…
Europe’s Heat Waves Offer a Grim Vision of the Future
[ad_1] Portugal, whose bucolic landscape reveals rolling hills speckled with olive trees and centuries-old stone villages, became a landscape of fear this summer. When a heat wave began to steamroll…
Lawns Are Dumb. But Ripping Them Out May Come With a Catch
[ad_1] But overall, says University of California Berkeley innovation designer Ian McRae, who studies climate resilience in the built environment, lawns are an inefficient way to cool a green space,…
The US Is Measuring Extreme Heat Wrong
[ad_1] In the late 1970s, a physicist and textiles engineer in Texas named Robert Steadman published a paper called “The Assessment of Sultriness.” The title reflected an unpleasant sort of…
The Colorado River Is Dying. Can Its Aquatic Dinosaurs Be Saved?
[ad_1] To keep those Glen Canyon turbines spinning, Lake Powell needs more water. But without big cuts in consumption, the obvious solution for filling the reservoir is stealing the water…
The World Has Reached Peak Attenborough
[ad_1] If there is anyone who attracts near-ubiquitous admiration in the United Kingdom, it’s David Attenborough. The naturalist has had a hold on our eyes and ears with a remarkable…
Teaching ‘Selfish’ Wind Turbines to Share Can Boost Productivity
[ad_1] Exactly how much energy is gained depends on factors such as the farm layout and the site’s wind conditions. However, when tested at a commercial farm in India, the…
What Charles the ‘Activist King’ Means for the Climate
[ad_1] “I remember years ago, in the ’60s, when I was a teenager, minding so much about all the things that were going on, the destruction of everything. The uprooting…
With ‘What If? 2’, Randall Munroe Is Back to Answer Your Impossible Questions
[ad_1] I was first just reading about how MRIs have got really big magnets in them, and thinking: I know that the magnetic field extends out away from them. It…
New Reservoirs Could Help Battle Droughts, but at What Cost?
[ad_1] In an ancient wood in Hampshire, a county in southern England, construction workers are felling trees and clearing stumps. Over the workers’ shoulders, ecologists check to make sure that…
As the Planet Warms, Canada Faces an Influx of Climate Refugees
[ad_1] This story originally appeared on Canada’s National Observer and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. As droughts, deteriorating farmland, and rising sea levels push people around the world…
California’s Heat Wave Is a Big Moment for Batteries
[ad_1] During a late summer heat wave in California, golden hour becomes danger hour. In the offices of the California Independent System Operator, which manages the state’s grid, things get…
Rurbanization: It’s Time to Make Cities More Rural
[ad_1] Those calculations focus primarily on the emissions from heavy machinery and long-distance trucking and shipping. But Elizabeth Sawin, founder and director of the Multisolving Institute, which promotes interventions that…
How Drought and War Are Really Affecting the Global Food Supply
[ad_1] Even if those differences average out nationally—possibly even globally, when you balance Southern Hemisphere production against the US and Western Europe, or the Americas against Central Europe and Asia—there’s…
Humanity Is Doing Its Best Impression of a Black Hole
[ad_1] The one thing that all human civilizations have in common is that they end. For 10,000 years or so, that’s been the common factor. You can make an argument…
Pakistan’s ‘Monster Monsoon’ Shows the Wrath of Climate Change
[ad_1] This story originally appeared in The Guardian and is part of the Climate Desk collaboration. The climate crisis is the prime suspect for the devastating scale of flooding in…