Solar farms could do more than generate clean energy—they could also cut dust pollution
Solar farms built around China's Gobi Desert could have the unexpected benefit of reducing the dust pollution reaching cities across northern China.
Environment news
Rivers may be carrying more microplastics into the world's oceans than previously thought
Microplastics are a modern environmental menace and a potential threat to human health. These tiny pieces of plastic, measuring from 1 to 5,000 micrometers, come mainly from larger plastics as well as sources such as paints ...
Southern Ocean may flip from carbon sink to carbon source under mitigation scenarios
Plans to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels depend on reaching net-zero emissions and, in many cases, actively removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air. While this helps limit extreme ...
How atmospheric events at the top of the world could have triggered two devastating California floods
In early 2017 and 2023, California experienced two catastrophic and record-breaking floods that caused billions of dollars in damage, triggered mudslides and forced thousands of people to evacuate. Why this happened left ...
Plants' response to rising CO₂ could put the brakes on dryland expansion
Drylands are defined as regions where rainfall is low relative to the atmosphere's ability to draw water from soil and plants. Expanding boundaries of these regions are frequent concerns in climate change considerations. ...
Lakes aren't just storing water—they're changing the carbon cycle
Lakes may look like picturesque stopping points along a river or stream, but they can have a big influence on what happens to carbon as it moves through a landscape. New research suggests that the more lake-rich a network ...
Salt may have helped turn Earth into a frozen world 700 million years ago
Earth may have been pushed deeper into a global deep freeze by something surprisingly ordinary: salt. Around 700 million years ago, Earth entered periods of extreme glaciation known as Snowball Earth, when ice is thought ...
Weak sea-surface temperature gradients may fuel stronger tropical cyclones
The fact that the ocean gets colder as you go deeper is fairly intuitive, but a similar gradient exists along the surface of the ocean, even at scales of 1 kilometer to tens of kilometers. A new study, published in the Proceedings ...
Geomagnetic superstorm shook GPS accuracy across the US—its timing may have averted agricultural losses
On Nov. 11, 2025, Earth experienced a severe geomagnetic storm triggered by solar flares and coronal mass ejections from an active sunspot region. While this kind of storm brings beautiful auroras admired in many areas around ...
An anomalous return of the Odden ice tongue suggests unusual Arctic conditions
Data from many sources, including NASA, have shown a significant decrease in Arctic sea ice since 1979. However, the processes driving the melting and freezing of sea ice are complex, and fluctuations occur throughout the ...
