As 2019 melt season nears end, 40 years of satellite data reveal a rapidly warming polar region, with no end in sight, plus multiple impacts for a changing planet. This story has been updated.
High heat and conditioning throughout this year’s melt season put a hurting on Arctic sea ice, but it may still take big storms or more heat to break 2012 extent record.
SAMAL ISLAND, Philippines — Sixty-five-year-old Ruby Gutierrez wakes up at exactly six in the morning, and after preparing breakfast for four grandchildren (she has 13) heads off to the Adecor…
June 2019 was the hottest June recorded in the 140 years since the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) began collecting global temperature data, the agency announced yesterday. Global…
Global climate change poses a severe threat to marine life, but scientists have found at least one species that appears to be successfully adapting to warmer ocean waters. A recent…
A very hot Arctic spring has caused sea ice volume to fall rapidly to a new record, putting 2019 in position to challenge 2012 for lowest ice volume and extent this September.
Though the trend can still change, Arctic sea ice extent could be on track for a record melt year, impacting the jet stream and bringing more extreme weather to the U.S. and world.
Life on this planet, in all its wide diversity, is disappearing more quickly now than it has at any time in human history, and some 1 million species of plants…
In our last Reefscape story, we explored the northern Marshall Islands in search of answers about the long-term effects of nuclear fallout on coral reefs. We visited Rongelap and Ailinginae…
An analysis of 33 years’ worth of data finds that ocean winds and wave heights are becoming more extreme worldwide, with the Southern Ocean seeing the largest increases. In order…
Sea ice melt is nearly two weeks ahead of past records for early April, while a new study finds that the Arctic system is trending away from its 20th century state into an unprecedented state.
Scientists have mapped out an enormous network of potential protected areas, covering more than one-third of the world's oceans, to conserve marine biodiversity threatened by overfishing, emerging deep-sea mining, plastic…
Research over the past few years has shown that ocean acidification impacts Atlantic cod at the earliest stages of their lives, while they are still eggs and larvae. Scientists hoped…
Coral reefs in protected areas that regulate fishing and pollution have declined to the same extent as reef systems in unprotected areas, according to recent research. The study, published in…
Though sea ice extent was up across much of the Arctic at winter maximum, the Bering Sea lost an ice area the size of Montana, and Greenland has been receiving winter rains.
A new marine protected area (MPA) has been founded in the Philippines within what are considered some of the most biologically diverse waters on Earth. The new MPA, which has…
Tallying up the toll of our individual roles in fueling climate change is a daunting task. To make decisions simpler, we rely on the sorts of trade-off behaviors and cognitive…
Blue whales in the northern Pacific Ocean use their memories to guide them to the best feeding spots, instead of seeking out the locations of shorter-term surges in prey, a…
According to independent analyses of the latest global temperature data by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), 2018 was the fourth…
A mystery disease outbreak that has devastated more than 20 species of starfish along the western coast of North America since 2013 has claimed yet another victim: the sunflower sea…
