A mile south of Yosemite National Park, fire ecologist Chad Hanson strides through the Stanislaus National Forest, heading to a great gray owl nest he found earlier this spring. Genetically distinct from its cousins in western North America, these rare birds are 2 feet tall, with a wingspan of about 5 feet. They can be seen almost any time because, unlike most owls, they are active day and night.

A new study co-led by University of Iowa researchers explains how ammonia is distributed in Earth’s upper atmosphere.

The largest ice sheet on Earth was stable throughout the last warm period in geologic time, indicating it should hold up as temperatures continue to rise.

Surface air temperature (SAT) is a very important hydrological and climatic variable in western China. In contrast to the monsoon regions in eastern China, most regions in western China are arid, semi-arid or subject to snow cover. Thus, variations of SAT in summer in western China are key in connection with heat waves, the hydrological cycle, ecosystems and agriculture. The ability to predict SAT skillfully is an important target for science.

El Niño was long considered a reliable tool for predicting future precipitation in the southwestern United States, but its forecasting power has diminished in recent cycles, possibly due to global climate change. In a study published today in Nature Communications, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Irvine demonstrate a new method for projecting wet or dry weather in the winter ahead.

Three-dimensional measurements of the central Brazilian Amazon rainforest have given NASA researchers a detailed window into the high number of branch falls and tree mortality that occur in response to drought conditions. They found that 65 percent more trees and large branches died due to an El Niño-driven drought in 2015-2016 than compared to an average year. Understanding the effects of prolonged drought gives scientists a better sense of what may happen to carbon stored in tropical forests if these events become more common in the future.

Biologists get a new look at plant biodiversity and function with new imaging technology developed at the University of Alberta.

One of the major concerns in climate change studies is how the thermal conditions for the living environment of human beings will change in the future. In a paper recently published in Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters, Prof. GAO Xuejie from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his coauthors, try to answer this question based on their recently completed and unprecedented set of high-resolution (25 km) 21st century climate change simulations. These simulations were produced using the regional climate model RegCM4, driven by four global model simulations over China—the country with the world’s largest population.

No one has a crystal ball to foresee what will happen during the 2018 hurricane season that begins June 1, but NOAA forecasters say there’s a 75 percent chance this hurricane season will be at least as busy as a normal year, or busier.

New research has revealed significant changes to Alaska’s landscape in recent decades.