A machine learning model of ammonia emissions from the world’s rice, wheat and corn crops shows that optimal fertilizer management could slash ammonia air pollution from these crops by 38%.
Nitrogen pollution from agriculture and human waste, along with other pollutants including plastics, could make clean water scarce in many watersheds worldwide, potentially contributing to declines in public health.
The 2024 Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement has gone to Johan Rockström who led the team of international researchers who originated the planetary boundary framework in 2009.
As the Biden administration pauses to ponder licenses for 12 new LNG export facilities, it is investing billions in natural gas infrastructure abroad. Critics warn U.S. gas expansion poses a direct threat to Earth’s ecosystems and people.
As the world grapples with escalating climate change, policymakers remain laser-focused on CO2, with humanity striving to decarbonize energy systems, capture carbon, issue carbon credits, and plant millions of trees…
A new report suggests that the rapid acceleration of climate change has pushed the Earth systems humanity relies upon to the brink of collapse, placing the world on a “devastating…
Verra, the world’s largest certifier of carbon credits, has released an update for calculating the climate benefits of the REDD forest conservation projects it certifies. The U.S.-based nonprofit said the…
Offsetting the carbon emissions released when we fly in a jet or when a company ships its products is one, albeit increasingly controversial, way to address the climate-warming consequences of…
As oil and gas production surge, shifting the global economy to a circular model is essential to charting a path away from fossil fuels, petroleum-based nitrogen fertilizers and petrochemicals such as plastics. Part 3 of a three-part miniseries.
This story is the second in a three-part mini-series surveying the range of impacts by the fossil fuel industry on the global environment. Part one and part two review harm…
Intact forests play a vital role in tackling the climate crisis by absorbing and storing carbon. Still, there’s uncertainty around their true carbon-capturing potential, and previous efforts to quantify it…
Fossil fuels have done great good for humanity, but they are now not only threatening our planet’s climate, but also taking a terrible toll on the global environment, putting at risk Earth systems vital to life as we know it. Part 1 of a three-part miniseries.
How do you bridge the gap between ecology and the economy? It’s this question that guided both Kevin Webb and Tom Quigley, albeit from different perspectives. Webb, a venture capitalist,…
Scientists were shocked by the high degree of warming in the North Atlantic Ocean this summer, and are concerned about effects on phytoplankton and fish. Intensifying and lengthening marine heatwaves around the globe are also worrying.
Conservation technology has witnessed an unprecedented boom in recent years. Drones are soaring higher than ever before. DNA sampled from soil, air and water are revolutionizing biodiversity surveys. Artificial intelligence…
“It's not going in the right direction yet,” Pierre Friedlingstein tells Mongabay of the effort to meet the Paris Agreement goals; a member of the IPCC and a climate professor, he says he’s mildly optimistic about the trend in global emissions.
The world needs to ramp up action to address climate change, according to a major report from the United Nations released Sept. 8. Meeting agreed-upon climate goals requires “phasing out…
Andres Peña Castro and his team didn’t set out to track sea ice. Their original plan was to quantify the interactions between ocean, earth and atmosphere to be able to…
Rapidly transitioning the world’s vehicle fleet to fully electric could significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, but also dramatically increase demand for critical battery metals like lithium, nickel and…
JAKARTA — Environmental policy experts are calling on the presidential hopefuls in Indonesia’s election next year to lay out their strategies for moving the country away from fossil fuels and…
The world’s linear economy, critically labeled as “take-make-waste,” is blamed for many global environmental problems, including climate change. The circular economy — focused on conserving resources and material reuse — is a proposed alternative.
More carbon is stored in the soil than in all plants, animals and the atmosphere combined, making it among the most critical conservation frontiers as we face the climate crisis.…
Plants and fungi struck a deal way back when. More than 400 million years ago, plants began trading sugar made from sunlight (a.k.a. carbon) for some of the soil nutrients…
It's easy to miss the mosses, the ubiquitous green, silver and brown carpets that drape across nature's surfaces, from forest to fen. It’s also easy to underestimate just how big…
Algae biofuels were initially hailed as a holy grail to sustainably power the transportation sector. Now after more than a decade of boom and bust, the industry says it’s on the verge of globally scalable, climate-friendly jet, ship and truck fuels.
The effects of rising global temperatures are becoming increasingly apparent. Heat waves, droughts, torrential rains and flooding are becoming more frequent. In the first three months of 2023, Latin America…
New research finds that a record Arctic sea ice melt season in 2007 initiated a “regime shift” to thinner, more transient ice that may be “irreversible”; another study shows that atmospheric rivers from the south are warming the Arctic in winter.
Humans must make “deep, rapid, and sustained” cuts to greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst effects of climate change, according to the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…
Analysis of 40 years of climate temperature data shows a connection between Amazon tree loss and Tibetan snow decrease via a 20,000-kilometer oceanic and atmospheric pathway. West Antarctica is also impacted.
Brazilian scientist Antonio Donato Nobre has long been a student of the Amazon Rainforest. An agronomist with a master's degree in tropical biology and a Ph.D. in Earth science, Nobre…