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- A breakthrough lithium-extraction method could help solve one of clean energy’s dirtiest problems. Researchers at Columbia Engineering have developed a fast new technique that pulls lithium directly from salty underground brines using a temperature-sensitive solvent, avoiding the giant evaporation ponds that can take years and drain precious water supplies. Even better, the method works on low-quality lithium sources that current technologies struggle to use.
- Jupiter’s storms aren’t just gigantic — they may unleash lightning far more powerful than anything on Earth. Using NASA’s Juno spacecraft, scientists discovered that some lightning bolts on the gas giant could pack up to 100 times the punch of Earth’s lightning, and possibly much more. The findings reveal that Jupiter’s atmosphere works very differently from our own, with massive storms building enormous amounts of energy before erupting in violent flashes across cloud tops towering more than 100 kilometers high.
- The French Riviera may look like an unlikely place for a tsunami disaster, but scientists warn the threat is far more real than most people realize. Historical events and new modeling show that destructive waves have already struck the Mediterranean coast — and could hit again with very little warning. Some tsunami scenarios could reach beaches in under 10 minutes, leaving almost no time for traditional alerts.
- Antarctica’s Hektoria Glacier collapsed with shocking speed, retreating 15 miles in only 15 months and setting a modern record for grounded ice loss. Scientists say warming conditions and ocean-driven instability turned the glacier from seemingly stable to rapidly unraveling almost overnight.
- Scientists have uncovered evidence that the vanished Tethys Ocean may have sculpted Central Asia’s mountainous landscape during the dinosaur era. Using decades of geological data, researchers found that distant tectonic activity linked to the ancient ocean appears to match periods of rapid mountain formation. Surprisingly, climate and mantle processes played only a minor role. The discovery could reshape how scientists understand mountain building across the planet.
- Rivers around the world are quietly running out of oxygen — and climate change is emerging as the main culprit. A sweeping global analysis of more than 21,000 river systems found that nearly 80% have been steadily losing dissolved oxygen over the past four decades, threatening fish, biodiversity, and the overall health of freshwater ecosystems. Surprisingly, tropical rivers are being hit the hardest, even more than rivers in rapidly warming polar regions.
- A mysterious underwater fault near Ecuador has been producing nearly identical magnitude 6 earthquakes every five to six years, baffling scientists for decades. Researchers now believe the fault contains hidden “brake zones” where seawater and unusual rock structures work together to stop quakes from becoming even larger. The discovery came from ultra-detailed seafloor recordings that captured how the fault behaves before and after major earthquakes.
- Scientists exploring deep underwater canyons off the coast of Western Australia uncovered a hidden world packed with bizarre and elusive marine life — including signs of the legendary giant squid. By analyzing traces of DNA floating in seawater from depths exceeding 4 kilometers, researchers identified 226 species ranging from deep-diving whales to strange fish rarely or never seen in the region before. Some of the creatures may even be unknown to science.
- Researchers in Japan traced a hidden medieval solar storm using ancient tree rings and centuries-old sky observations. The team linked reports of eerie red auroras with spikes of carbon-14 trapped in buried wood, revealing a powerful solar radiation event around 1200 CE. The findings suggest the Sun was far more active at the time, with unusually short solar cycles.
- A remote island between Australia and Antarctica is showing signs of a dramatic climate transformation. Scientists found storms over Macquarie Island now unleash much heavier rainfall than they did decades ago, soaking ecosystems and altering fragile vegetation. The discovery hints that the Southern Ocean — one of Earth’s biggest climate regulators — may be changing faster than expected. Researchers say the ocean could now be cooling itself by “sweating” more moisture into the atmosphere.
- Researchers created a special kind of algae that can grab microscopic plastic pollution out of water almost like a magnet. The algae produce limonene, an orange-scented oil that helps them bind to water-repelling microplastics, forming easy-to-remove clumps. As a bonus, the algae also clean wastewater while growing.
- A colossal underwater volcano in the South Pacific may have revealed a surprising new weapon against climate change. After the 2022 eruption of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai, scientists detected enormous amounts of formaldehyde in the atmosphere — a telltale sign that methane, one of the planet’s most powerful greenhouse gases, was being destroyed. Researchers now believe volcanic ash mixed with salty seawater and sunlight created reactive chlorine particles that effectively “cleaned up” some of the methane released by the eruption itself.
- Scientists have uncovered strong evidence that a major Atlantic Ocean current system tied to global climate is weakening. The slowdown has been detected across a vast region of the North Atlantic over nearly two decades. Since this ocean circulation helps regulate weather and temperatures, changes could affect storms, rainfall, sea levels, and even winter conditions in parts of Europe and North America.
- Scientists have uncovered a hidden Antarctic threat that could accelerate global sea level rise far faster than expected. Deep beneath floating ice shelves, long channels carved into the ice appear to trap warmer ocean water, dramatically speeding up melting from below. Even regions of East Antarctica once considered relatively stable may be far more vulnerable than scientists realized. Researchers warn that current climate models may be missing this dangerous process entirely, meaning future sea level rise could be underestimated.
- Cumberland, B.C. is reimagining its coal mining past as a clean energy opportunity. Water trapped in abandoned mine tunnels could be used in a geothermal system to heat and cool buildings efficiently and with minimal emissions. The project could lower energy costs, support new development, and attract businesses. It’s a striking example of turning industrial leftovers into a sustainable community asset.
- Southern Alaska’s winter finale delivered a spectacular atmospheric display, captured by a NASA satellite. Cold Arctic air flowing over warmer ocean waters created long bands of clouds, swirling vortex patterns, and even a compact polar storm with powerful winds. As the air traveled offshore, it evolved into increasingly complex cloud formations. The result was a dramatic, ever-changing sky that highlighted the raw energy of the season’s end.
- Scientists are using sunlight to turn plastic waste into clean fuels like hydrogen, offering a breakthrough solution to both pollution and energy challenges. While still in development, the approach could transform trash into a valuable resource for a low-carbon future.
- Australia’s famous Twelve Apostles didn’t just erode into existence—they were slowly pushed up from the ocean floor by powerful tectonic forces over millions of years, new research reveals. Scientists discovered that these towering limestone stacks act like a natural time capsule, preserving clues about ancient climates, sea levels, and even life from up to 14 million years ago.
- Deep beneath the Southern Ocean, a quiet but alarming shift is underway: warm water is creeping closer to Antarctica, and scientists are now seeing it clearly for the first time. By combining decades of ship data with robotic float measurements and machine learning, researchers uncovered that a massive pool of heat—circumpolar deep water—has expanded and edged toward the continent over the past 20 years.
- The mysterious collapse of the Maya civilization may not have been driven solely by drought after all. New evidence from lake sediments in Guatemala reveals that one key city, Itzan, enjoyed a stable climate even as its population abruptly vanished. Instead of environmental collapse, the findings point to something more complex: a tightly interconnected network of cities unraveling under pressure. As drought struck neighboring regions, wars, migration, and economic breakdown likely rippled outward, dragging even stable communities into decline.
- An international team of scientists has used artificial intelligence and 35 years of satellite data to uncover the shocking scale of environmental destruction in one of the world's most important ecosystems.
- The first small satellite of the CloudCT network has been integrated, tested, and prepared for launch from California in June 2026. This precursor mission will be followed, if successful, by the launch of 10 additional CloudCT satellites in 2027, helping to fill gaps in our understanding of clouds and their role in climate.
- Most people think of ice as frozen and lifeless, but research at Umeå University shows the opposite. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that ice actively speeds up the breakdown of iron minerals and may release more iron than current environmental models account for. This is crucial for predicting how nutrient cycles, carbon storage, and water quality will change in polar and mountain regions as the planet warms.
- Across the world, air pollution is associated with more early deaths than any other environmental exposure, raising risks of dying from lung cancer, respiratory infection, heart and lung disease and other causes.
- Some 1,000 people jogged along the banks of the Mapocho River in Santiago one Sunday afternoon, an activity that would have been unthinkable a few years ago due to its heavily polluted waters.
- On the evening of March 7, 2026, a series of explosions and fires occurred at multiple oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran, Iran. A research team has utilized a constellation of satellites to investigate and quantify this sulfur dioxide (SO₂) pollution event.
- Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have categorized a unique, previously unclassified type of heat wave in Japan, so-called "moist heat waves" which are accompanied by an approaching tropical cyclone. These heat waves are accompanied by high humidity and/or heavy precipitation, and their frequency has been rising over the last 30 years, accounting for approximately a quarter of the heat wave days surveyed. They may potentially trigger multiple natural hazards at once.
- Increasingly, the world's oceans are telling us our climate system may be changing faster and more dramatically than expected.
- Across Europe, many landscapes show strong potential to move forward climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and biodiversity benefits, with low socioeconomic risk, according to an analysis using a new climate-smart rewilding framework published in One Earth.
- Changes in land-use across Southeast Asia over the past 15 years are worsening air quality and contributing to thousands of excess deaths each year, according to a study led by researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore).
- Forecasters in Europe warned Tuesday of exceptional heat, as record temperatures driven by a "heat dome" push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent.
- Britain broke its record on Monday for the hottest day in May, according to the national weather agency, with the mercury rising to 33.5C near London as the country baked in a sweltering heat wave.
- British demand for everyday global commodities can be linked to more than 29,000 hectares of deforestation worldwide in a single year, with tens of thousands of hectares stripped directly from overseas ecosystems. The stark figure forms the centerpiece of an environmental assessment released by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York.
- The ocean is an important carbon sink that absorbs 20–30% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the industrial era (1.0–3.0 Pg annually, 1 Pg = 1015 g). Tropical cyclones are among the most devastating weather systems that profoundly disturb the upper ocean. However, their role in the global carbon cycle has been controversial: do tropical cyclones lead to net carbon absorption or release by the ocean, and does it matter?
- To avoid the punishing sun, Inas Gamal abandoned her ambitious plan of spending the days ahead of the hajj praying in Mecca's Grand Mosque and retreated to the comfort of an air-conditioned hotel room to perform her daytime prayers.
- Located in the middle of the North Pacific, between Japan and Canada, lies one of the world's largest oceanic plateaus, the so-called Hess Rise. The plateau is roughly T-shaped and extends over a length of about 1,000 kilometers. Due to its distance from the nearest mainland, the research area at Hess Rise is difficult to access and has therefore been the destination of only a few expeditions to date.
- Thousands of holes are appearing in the Pennine hills, as part of efforts to improve carbon storage by restoring damaged peatland.
- Imagine walking along Ipanema beach on a summer afternoon. The sand is golden, there's a cooling sea breeze, the shade of a parasol and a cold drink in hand. Now look up.
- Marine microplastics affect algae's ability to grow and photosynthesize. Researchers have now calculated what impact this has on the greenhouse effect and the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
- At least 16 people have died of heatstroke in southern India so far this summer, officials said Sunday, as a heat wave grips swathes of the country following official health warnings.
- An international team of scientists has used artificial intelligence and 35 years of satellite data to uncover the shocking scale of environmental destruction in one of the world's most important ecosystems.
- The first small satellite of the CloudCT network has been integrated, tested, and prepared for launch from California in June 2026. This precursor mission will be followed, if successful, by the launch of 10 additional CloudCT satellites in 2027, helping to fill gaps in our understanding of clouds and their role in climate.
- Most people think of ice as frozen and lifeless, but research at Umeå University shows the opposite. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences demonstrates that ice actively speeds up the breakdown of iron minerals and may release more iron than current environmental models account for. This is crucial for predicting how nutrient cycles, carbon storage, and water quality will change in polar and mountain regions as the planet warms.
- Across the world, air pollution is associated with more early deaths than any other environmental exposure, raising risks of dying from lung cancer, respiratory infection, heart and lung disease and other causes.
- Some 1,000 people jogged along the banks of the Mapocho River in Santiago one Sunday afternoon, an activity that would have been unthinkable a few years ago due to its heavily polluted waters.
- On the evening of March 7, 2026, a series of explosions and fires occurred at multiple oil storage and refining facilities in Tehran, Iran. A research team has utilized a constellation of satellites to investigate and quantify this sulfur dioxide (SO₂) pollution event.
- Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have categorized a unique, previously unclassified type of heat wave in Japan, so-called "moist heat waves" which are accompanied by an approaching tropical cyclone. These heat waves are accompanied by high humidity and/or heavy precipitation, and their frequency has been rising over the last 30 years, accounting for approximately a quarter of the heat wave days surveyed. They may potentially trigger multiple natural hazards at once.
- Increasingly, the world's oceans are telling us our climate system may be changing faster and more dramatically than expected.
- Across Europe, many landscapes show strong potential to move forward climate mitigation, climate adaptation, and biodiversity benefits, with low socioeconomic risk, according to an analysis using a new climate-smart rewilding framework published in One Earth.
- Changes in land-use across Southeast Asia over the past 15 years are worsening air quality and contributing to thousands of excess deaths each year, according to a study led by researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore).
- Forecasters in Europe warned Tuesday of exceptional heat, as record temperatures driven by a "heat dome" push temperatures well above seasonal norms across the continent.
- Britain broke its record on Monday for the hottest day in May, according to the national weather agency, with the mercury rising to 33.5C near London as the country baked in a sweltering heat wave.
- British demand for everyday global commodities can be linked to more than 29,000 hectares of deforestation worldwide in a single year, with tens of thousands of hectares stripped directly from overseas ecosystems. The stark figure forms the centerpiece of an environmental assessment released by the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York.
- The ocean is an important carbon sink that absorbs 20–30% of the total anthropogenic CO2 emissions in the industrial era (1.0–3.0 Pg annually, 1 Pg = 1015 g). Tropical cyclones are among the most devastating weather systems that profoundly disturb the upper ocean. However, their role in the global carbon cycle has been controversial: do tropical cyclones lead to net carbon absorption or release by the ocean, and does it matter?
- To avoid the punishing sun, Inas Gamal abandoned her ambitious plan of spending the days ahead of the hajj praying in Mecca's Grand Mosque and retreated to the comfort of an air-conditioned hotel room to perform her daytime prayers.
- Located in the middle of the North Pacific, between Japan and Canada, lies one of the world's largest oceanic plateaus, the so-called Hess Rise. The plateau is roughly T-shaped and extends over a length of about 1,000 kilometers. Due to its distance from the nearest mainland, the research area at Hess Rise is difficult to access and has therefore been the destination of only a few expeditions to date.
- Thousands of holes are appearing in the Pennine hills, as part of efforts to improve carbon storage by restoring damaged peatland.
- Imagine walking along Ipanema beach on a summer afternoon. The sand is golden, there's a cooling sea breeze, the shade of a parasol and a cold drink in hand. Now look up.
- Marine microplastics affect algae's ability to grow and photosynthesize. Researchers have now calculated what impact this has on the greenhouse effect and the ocean's ability to absorb carbon dioxide.
- At least 16 people have died of heatstroke in southern India so far this summer, officials said Sunday, as a heat wave grips swathes of the country following official health warnings.
