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Climate evolution shows some regularities, which can be traced throughout long periods of earth’s history. One of them is that the global average temperature and the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere usually go hand-in-hand. To put it simple: If the temperatures decline, the CO2 values also decrease and vice versa.

Right now, a prairie dog in Colorado is busy increasing soil carbon retention, increasing water infiltration, and clipping vegetation that will help maintain local grasslands and provide nutritious forage for large herbivores like cattle and bison. And, somewhere in Mexico, a pollinating bat is ensuring agave plants make good tequila.

As Tropical Depression 4 was getting organized in the central Atlantic Ocean the Global Precipitation Measurement Mission or GPM satellite peered into the storm and measured rainfall within. The system became Tropical Depression 4 on July 6.

University of Adelaide researchers have for the first time demonstrated that the ocean acidification expected in the future will reduce fish diversity significantly, with small ‘weedy’ species dominating marine environments. 

Structural geologist Michele Cooke calls it the “million-dollar question” that underlies all work in her laboratory at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: what goes on deep in the earth as strike-slip faults form in the crust? This is the fault type that occurs when two tectonic plates slide past one another, generating the waves of energy we sometimes feel as earthquakes.