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Increase of Plant Species on Mountain Tops is Accelerating with Global Warming

Over the past 10 years, the number of plant species on European mountain tops has increased by five-times more than during the period 1957-66. Data on 302 European peaks covering 145 years shows that the acceleration in the number of mountain-top species is unequivocally linked to global warming.

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Human-Engineered Changes on Mississippi River Increased Extreme Floods

A new study has revealed for the first time the last 500-year flood history of the Mississippi River. It shows a dramatic rise in the size and frequency of extreme floods in the past century—mostly due to projects to straighten, channelize, and bound the river with artificial levees.

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Algae, Impurities Darken Greenland Ice Sheet and Intensify Melting

The Dark Zone of Greenland ice sheet is a large continuous region on the western flank of the ice sheet; it is some 400 kilometers wide stretching about 100 kilometres up from the margin of the ice. 

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Global Warming Can Turn Monarch Butterflies' Favorite Food Into Poison

LSU researchers have discovered a new relationship between climate change, monarch butterflies and milkweed plants. It turns out that warming temperatures don’t just affect the monarch, Danaus plexippus, directly, but also affect this butterfly by potentially turning its favorite plant food into a poison.

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Power Sector Carbon Intensity Lower Than Ever

Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems (MHPS) and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) today announced the release of the 2018 Carnegie Mellon Power Sector Carbon Index, at CMU Energy Week, hosted by the Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation. The Index tracks the environmental performance of US power producers and compares current emissions to more than two decades of historical data collected nationwide. This release marks the one-year anniversary of the Index, developed as a new metric to track power sector carbon emissions performance trends. 

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Vegetables May Help Protect Elderly Women from Hardening of Neck Arteries

Elderly Australian women who ate more vegetables showed less carotid artery wall thickness, according to new research in Journal of the American Heart Association, the Open Access Journal of the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association.

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Study Counts Lives Saved with Push for 1.50C Climate Target

Speeding up progress on reducing carbon emissions would save millions of lives, mostly in metropolitan areas of Africa and Asia.

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Still Believe an Asteroid Killed the Dinosaurs? Think Again

Some experts have long believed that a massive asteroid was a primary cause of dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago, but new analysis from a University at Albany psychology professor suggests that the dinosaurs were in trouble long before the asteroid hit.

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Research links palm trees’ progression north with climate change

A research project conceived by a Brandon University (BU) professor on the northward spread of palms has been featured in the prestigious science journal Scientific Reports and on Columbia University’s Lamont Earth Institute State of the Planet blog.

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Understanding how society will change as we move to renewable energy sources

Imagine waking up tomorrow in a world that doesn’t depend on oil.

That might seem far-fetched, but as engineers and scientists come up with new ways to harness renewable energy, those new sources of energy may soon shape the way our societies function and how we live our daily lives.

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