Climate & Environment

Glaciers across the region are melting at an extraordinary rate, with new research showing that the vast ice sheets there shrank 10 times faster in the past 40 years than during the previous seven centuries.

Replacing business conferences with virtual meetings and virtual conventions would cut carbon emissions by an estimated 94% and energy use by 90%.

Researchers projected that in 35 to 60 years, the Mountain West will be nearly snowless for years at a time if worldwide greenhouse gas emissions are not rapidly reduced. The Mountain West has already lost 20% of its snowpack since the 1950s and could lose another 50% by the end of this century.

Americans got a stark warning from the government this week: Expect higher heating bills this winter. Here is what you can do to contain costs.

The historian Guillaume Blanc discusses the notion of “green colonialism” at the root of conservation policies in Africa.

We have just completed our latest nationally representative Climate Change in the American Mind survey and find that American views about climate change have shifted significantly in the past 6 months. The results are timely, as members of Congress are […]

The western mega-drought has dried up alarming new sections of some of the largest lakes of the southwest, satellite comparisons show.

Disagreements are common among researchers over who should be listed as an author and in what order, according to a new survey.

Renowned psychologist Dan Ariely literally wrote the book on dishonesty. Now some are questioning whether the scientist himself is being dishonest.

The famous number has many practical uses, mathematicians say, but is it really worth the time and effort to work out its trillions of digits?

U.S. officials for the first time on Monday declared an official water shortage for the massive Lake Mead reservoir, triggering supply cuts to parts of the drought-stricken Southwest, as 10 Western governors appealed for federal drought disaster aid.

Scientists in Idaho are finding that wildfire smoke dampens milk production and coincides with increased risk of disease and even death in dairy cows.

Salmon are much more likely to avoid a black bear-shaped object than a white one.

Air-pollution laws, enforcement sprees and educational campaigns haven’t worked. What will it take to make drivers shut off their engines when they’re parked?

When given the choice between a free meal and performing a task for a meal, cats would prefer the meal that doesn't require much effort. While that might not come as a surprise to some cat lovers, it does to cat behaviorists. Most animals prefer to work for their food—a behavior called contrafreeloading.

"This is a system we don't want to mess with," one scientist said.

A new study analyzing hundreds of aerial readings of emissions above the forest canopy found that forest regions in the southeast were most affected.

Flooding is becoming worse due to the climate crisis. But the risk doesn’t affect us all equally. A report released by the real estate brokerage firm Redfin this week shows that formerly redlined areas are more vulnerable to the threat of floods.

A new study shows that poor communities and communities of color are exposed to higher temperatures all across the U.S.

Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy.

Cutting carbon emissions to zero in the next 30 years would save about 74 million lives this century, a new analysis estimates.

Due to a phenomenon called subsidence, the metropolis's landscape is compacting—and parts of the city are now dropping a foot and a half each year.

In Registered Reports (RRs), initial peer review and in-principle acceptance occurs before knowing the research outcomes. This combats publication bias and distinguishes planned and unplanned research. How RRs could improve the credibility of research findings is straightforward, but there is little empirical evidence. Also, there could be unintended costs such as reducing novelty. 353 researchers peer reviewed a pair of papers from 29 published RRs from psychology and neuroscience and 57 non-RR comparison papers. RRs outperformed comparison papers on all 19 criteria (mean difference=0.46; Scale range -4 to +4) with effects ranging from little improvement in novelty (0.13, 95% credible interval [-0.24, 0.49]) and creativity (0.22, [-0.14, 0.58]) to larger improvements in rigor of methodology (0.99, [0.62, 1.35]) and analysis (0.97, [0.60, 1.34]) and overall paper quality (0.66, [0.30, 1.02]). RRs could improve research quality while reducing publication bias and ultimately improve the credibility of the published literature.