Nestled among giant fish tanks at the California Academy of Sciences, there's a black box—just big enough to hold six aquariums and maybe five humans. What it lacks in size, though, it makes up for in preciousness: Running here is a experiment that could help save corals from annihilation.

Among the most damaging effects that climate change has wrought on the natural world are those sustained by coral reefs.

Nitrogen is essential to marine life and cycles throughout the ocean in a delicately balanced system. Living organisms—especially marine plants called phytoplankton—require nitrogen in processes such as photosynthesis. In turn, phytoplankton growth takes up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and helps regulate global climate.

Plants are responding in unexpected ways to increased carbon dioxide in the air, according to a twenty-year study conducted by researchers at the University of Minnesota and published in the journal Science. For the first 12 years, researchers found what they expected regarding how different types of grasses reacted to carbon dioxide. However, researchers’ findings took an unanticipated turn during the last eight years of the study.

China’s croplands have experienced drastic changes in management practices related to fertilization, tillage and residue treatment since the 1980s. The impact of these changes on soil organic carbon (SOC) has drawn major attention from the scientific community and decision-makers because changes in SOC may not only affect future food production but also water and soil quality, as well as greenhouse gas emissions.  

A Dutch-Texan team found that most Houston-area drowning deaths from Hurricane Harvey occurred outside the zones designated by government as being at higher risk of flooding: the 100- and 500-year floodplains. Harvey, one of the costliest storms in US history, hit southeast Texas on 25 August 2017 causing unprecedented flooding and killing dozens. Researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands and Rice University in Texas published their results today in the European Geosciences Union journal Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.

Shifts in the timing of life cycle events – known as phenology - of interacting species, such as predator versus prey and plant versus pollinator, are often listed as a consequence of climate change.

“We are at the tipping point, so it is a critical time,” said University of Saskatchewan climate change researcher Yanping Li. “What we are going to do now will have great significance.”

Surface air temperature (SAT) anomalies have pronounced impacts on agriculture, socioeconomic development, and people’s daily lives. For example, the record-breaking hot summer over many parts of the Eurasia resulted in broad wildfires and large economic loss. Many studies have demonstrated that atmospheric circulation anomalies play an important role in modulating the SAT variations. Hence, the persistent characteristics of the Eurasian atmospheric circulation anomalies are crucial for the seasonal prediction of the Eurasian SAT. A question is whether the Eurasian atmospheric circulation anomalies can persist from winter to the following spring.

Step aside, charismatic polar bear stranded on a melting iceberg. The springtail may be the new flag bearer of an uncertain Arctic future.