The effects of climate change encompass the biophysical and socio-environmental consequences arising from long-term shifts in climate variables driven primarily by anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Key effects include increased global mean surface and ocean temperatures, altered precipitation patterns, sea-level rise via thermal expansion and cryosphere melt, and increased frequency and intensity of heatwaves, droughts, extreme precipitation events, and some categories of tropical cyclones. These changes cascade into impacts on hydrological regimes, ecosystem structure and function, species distributions, biogeochemical cycles, agricultural productivity, human health, and infrastructure, often interacting nonlinearly and amplifying existing environmental and socioeconomic vulnerabilities.
In Alaska's boreal forests, a negative feedback loop between wildfires and vegetation plays an important role in governing the size and likelihood of fires. Wildfires clear out mature forests, allowing them to be replaced ...
Environment
Sep 24, 2026
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As climate change brings more extreme weather events, strengthening families before disasters strike can help protect children's health and well-being, says Mary McKay, a professor at the Brown School at Washington University ...
Environment
Sep 24, 2026
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Climate change is causing many fruit trees to flower earlier, increasing their exposure to damaging late spring frosts. A study led by the University of Göttingen shows that the plant growth regulator ethephon can delay flowering ...
Agriculture
Sep 23, 2026
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Global warming is expected to cross the 1.5°C temperature threshold—the lower limit of the Paris Agreement temperature goal—within a handful of years. This temperature increase shows no signs of slowing, and on our current ...
Environment
Sep 23, 2026
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Earth's climate has undergone dramatic changes throughout its history, but new research suggests those changes may not have been as random as previously thought. A study led by an international team of researchers, including ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 23, 2026
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If someone leaves the faucet running in your bathroom and the house floods, it's easy to assign responsibility for the damage. But for other disasters—bigger, more complicated and costlier ones—the link between cause and ...
Earth Sciences
Sep 23, 2026
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14
New research in Plants, People, Planet demonstrates how precision agriculture techniques involving drones and sensor-based irrigation can save water needed to produce tomatoes and grapes while also improving the quality of ...
Agriculture
Sep 23, 2026
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How can regions better adapt their water and soil resources to the impacts of climate change? After four years of research, the European collaborative project Blue Transition, led by the LIAG Institute for Applied Geophysics ...
Environment
Sep 22, 2026
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Recent drops in Brazil's deforestation have been celebrated as a historic achievement. Forest loss in the Amazon fell by 23.5% in 2025 compared with the previous year. This drop contributed to a 21% national reduction in ...
Environment
Sep 22, 2026
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When we talk about climate change, the debate usually centers on energy, biodiversity, carbon emissions or the economic costs of the transition. But another aspect of the problem remains largely underestimated: the impact ...
Environment
Sep 21, 2026
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