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The drought in southwestern North America that lasted from 2000 to 2018 is among the most severe to strike the region in the last 1,200 years, a new study finds. Tree ring–based reconstructions of past climate reveal just one drier 19-year period: a powerful “megadrought” in the late 16th century. The recent drought, researchers say, […] More
The Atlantic hurricane season is likely to be very active, fueled by very warm ocean temperatures in the tropics, according to several forecasts including a report released April 16 by The Weather Channel. A total of 18 named storms — nine of them hurricanes — are predicted in the season starting June 1, according to […] More
Water pollution, Science News, April 11, 1970 — A new water pollution control bill that provides clear assignments of liability without proof of negligence to the source of an oil spill was signed into law by President [Richard] Nixon last week…. It would add pesticide levels to the factors involved in formulating all new water […] More
Allison Fong dangles over the edge of a “river” running through a massive chunk of sea ice floating between the North Pole and Russia’s Komsomolets Island. The river cracked open in the ice just a few days ago, exposing the Arctic Ocean below. Already starting to freeze over, the river’s surface is a dark scar […] More
A curious confluence of atmospheric events has produced the largest ozone hole ever measured over the Arctic. A powerful polar vortex has trapped especially frigid air in the atmosphere above the North Pole, allowing high-altitude clouds to form in the stratosphere, where the ozone layer also sits. Within those clouds, chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons already high […] More
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing its third mass bleaching in just five years — and it is the most widespread bleaching event ever recorded. Results from aerial surveys conducted along the 2,000-kilometer-long reef over nine days in late March, and released April 7, show that 25 percent of 1,036 individuals reefs surveyed were […] More
Once upon a time, there was a swampy rainforest near the bottom of the world. Buried sediment extracted from the seafloor off West Antarctica contains ancient pollen, fossilized roots and other chemical evidence of a diverse forest that flourished millions of years ago, less than a thousand kilometers from the South Pole. The sediment offers […] More
“Waiter, there’s a worm in my sushi.” Diners may be more likely to utter those words today than in decades past, as the abundance of parasitic Anisakis worms infecting fishes around the globe is now 283 times what it was in the 1970s, researchers report March 19 in Global Change Biology. Worms of the genus […] More
