Climate

On a remote island in the Canadian Arctic, researchers have discovered the remains of an ancient glacier that could be over a million years old. The discovery represents what may be the oldest glacier ice ever found buried in permafrost — ground that has been frozen for at least 2 years straight — in the Arctic, researchers report in the January 1 Geology. For researchers keen on studying the glacier, the clock is ticking, as human-caused climate change has exposed the long-preserved ice to melting.

Like notes in the pages of a logbook, the gas bubbles, compounds and particulates trapped in a glacier’s icy layers can yield information about the atmospheres and climates of bygone millennia. But there are precious few reports of such ice older than the last great expansion of the ice sheets, 26,000 to 20,000 years ago. The newfound ice could thus provide researchers with a rare chance to study the climate of the early Pleistocene epoch, during which the Earth underwent episodic ice ages separated by warm periods known as interglacial periods. “These [Pleistocene climate shifts] are analogs for what we can see in the future,” says geomorphologist Daniel Fortier of the University of Montreal.

In 2009, Fortier and colleagues were studying a buried fossilized forest on Bylot Island, in Canada’s Nunavut Territory, when they stumbled across the sites of some recent landslides that had been triggered by the thawing of permafrost. The slides had exposed translucent, layered bodies of ice that had been buried a few meters underground, just above the fossil forest. Much to Fortier’s surprise, radiocarbon dating of organic matter in the ice revealed it was over 60,000 years old. “I was not expecting that at all,” he says.

Researchers are shown digging into the remnant glacier ice, which became exposed by the thawing and slumping of previously frozen ground.Stéphanie Coulombe

What’s more, in the sediment layers overlying the ice, the researchers discovered a flip in the alignment of magnetic minerals that corresponded with a reversal of Earth’s magnetic field roughly 770,000 years old, indicating the ice was at least that old. And previous research had dated the fossil forest upon which the glacier rested to around 2.8 to 2.4 million years ago, providing a maximum possible age for the ice.

The discovery is a testament to the resilience of permafrost, Fortier says. While climate projections suggest permafrost will completely thaw in many regions by the end of the century, this preserved glacier has persisted through interglacial periods that were warmer than today, he notes. “I don’t think permafrost will disappear so fast. The system is more resilient than we think.” More

Unusually dry conditions and hurricane-force seasonal winds are fueling multiple fast-moving and destructive wildfires in Los Angeles County. Gusts that reached over 145 kilometers per hour (90 miles per hour) quickly drove the blazes into urban areas, forcing more than 100,000 people to evacuate from their homes and killing at least two people as of January 8.

The largest of the blazes, known as the Palisades fire, erupted the morning of January 7 on the west side of Los Angeles and has since burned more than 6,400 hectares (15,800 acres) and destroyed around 1,000 structures. The second largest, called the Eaton fire, ignited near Pasadena that night and had burned more than 4,290 hectares by the next morning. A third blaze, the Hurst fire near Sylmar, has burned more than 200 hectares. More

Over and over, the numbers tell the same story: 2024 was Earth’s hottest year on record, knocking the previous record holder — 2023 — out of the top spot (SN: 12/6/23). But temperatures alone can’t describe the human cost: humidity that challenges the body’s ability to cool itself; nighttime temps that rob people of sleep; power outages; wildfire smoke; ruined crops; rising cases of mosquito-borne disease (SN: 9/20/24).

Meanwhile, record-breaking water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico fueled hurricanes Helene and Milton (SN: 10/9/24). Helene’s torrential rains caused flooding across six states in the U.S. Southeast, killing over 200 people (SN: 10/1/24). More

If we learned anything from 2024, it’s that climate change is rapidly reshaping our world. We’re on course to set the hottest year on record. In just the past few months, supercharged hurricanes, 1-in-1,000-year floods and drought-fueled wildfires have devastated parts of the United States.

It’s a very bad time to put the brakes on the aggressive actions — including slashing U.S. carbon emissions and transitioning to greener, lower-carbon sources of energy — that scientists have repeatedly said are necessary to help keep the planet’s warming in check. There is simply no more time for denial or delay, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warned back in 2021 (SN: 8/9/21). More

Earth’s space junk may be wreaking havoc on the stratosphere.

The rapid surge in satellite megaconstellations is connecting much of the world to broadband internet. But each year, hundreds of those satellites die, burning up in the atmosphere as they fall. And each year, more and more satellites are being launched to replace them.

The dying satellites, it turns out, don’t just wink out into the ether. Each one leaves a bit of itself behind. More

As if hurricanes needed any more kick.

Human-caused climate change is boosting the intensity of Atlantic hurricanes by a whole category on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which rates hurricanes based on their peak sustained wind speed, researchers report November 20 in two new studies.

From 2019 to 2023, climate change enhanced the maximum wind speeds of hurricanes by an average of about 29 kilometers per hour (18 miles per hour), or roughly the breadth of a Saffir-Simpson category, researchers report in Environmental Research: Climate. Climate change similarly increased the intensities of all hurricanes in 2024 by an average of about 29 kph (18 mph), escalating the risk of wind damage, a companion analysis from Climate Central shows. More

Stand back, ordinary ocean-dwelling, oxygen-spewing organisms: There’s a new green, hulkish mutant in town.

And hefty UTEX 3222 — dubbed “Chonkus” by the researchers who found it — may have just the right combination of traits to help with some of humanity’s most pressing problems. In particular, Chonkus could help fight climate change, report microbiologist Max Schubert, formerly of the Wyss Institute at Harvard and now launching a start-up, and colleagues in a study published October 29 in Applied and Environmental Microbiology.  

Chonkus (right) settles quickly to the bottom of a water-filled test tube, compared with another strain of cyanobacteria (left). That quick accumulation of green sludge could make it more useful for sequestering atmospheric carbon dioxide.Ted Chavkin

Chonkus was discovered in the shallow sunlit waters off the coast of Italy’s Vulcano Island, where volcanic gas-rich groundwater seeps into the sea. It’s an environment that Schubert and colleagues suspected to be fertile ground for finding photosynthesizing, carbon-consuming microbes. The waters collected from those seeps turned out to contain a spontaneous mutant strain of Synechococcus elongatus, a species of photosynthesizing bacteria that’s at the base of ocean food webs around the world (SN: 10/20/16; SN: 6/9/16).

S. elongatus is a favorite lab organism, because of how quickly it grows and how resistant it is to environmental stressors (SN: 6/14/17). And Chonkus, the new mutant, is like a superpowered version, the team found. When they cultured the strain in the laboratory, its individual cells were larger than those of other fast-growing cyanobacteria, and it built larger colonies. The mutant also contained more carbon than other strains of S. elongatus, apparently stored in white granules within its cells. The strain was also heavy: When placed into a test tube, the cyanobacteria rapidly sank to the bottom, forming a dense sludge. More

Air blowing from an electric fan alone isn’t enough to cool off older adults sweltering indoors in a heat wave, new research shows. A study of 18 adults aged 65 to 72, monitored in a controlled-climate chamber simulating extreme heat wave conditions, found little difference in peak core temperatures as a result of electric fan use, scientists report October 17 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Older adults, many of whom prefer to weather heat waves their own homes, are particularly at risk for heat-related health impacts (SN: 5/14/24). In the absence of access to air conditioning, using pedestal-style electric fans has been one recommended strategy for individuals at home to try to stay cool. Fans can speed up heat loss, lowering the body’s core temperature, by increasing sweat evaporation. More