A century or two from now, people may look back at our current era — with its record-breaking high temperatures year after year, rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice, and gradually rising sea levels — as part of a much cooler and far more desirable past. The spate of extreme weather events in the past month — which have devastated America’s fourth-largest city, Houston; spawned a massive hurricane that tore through the Caribbean and Florida; and swamped large swaths of India and Bangladesh — may well be a prelude to more monster hurricanes, Biblical rain events, and coastal inundations brought about by extreme weather and vastly higher sea levels.

Researchers led by Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego have determined that major changes in plant behavior have occurred over the past 40 years, using measurements of subtle changes in the carbon dioxide (CO2) currently found in the atmosphere.

The two main isotopes, or atomic forms, of carbon are carbon-12 (12C) and carbon-13 (13C). As CO2 has risen since the late 19th century, the ratio of 13C to 12C in atmospheric CO2 has decreased. That’s in part because the CO2 produced by the combustion of fossil fuels has a low 13C/12C ratio. There are other factors in nature as well, however, that have influenced the rate of decrease in the isotopic ratio.  The measured rate of decrease in the isotopic ratio turns out to be different than what scientists previously expected.

Desert locusts are a major pest on numerous crops and pastures throughout a vast area of almost 30 million km2 covering Africa north of the equator, the Near East, the Arabian Peninsula and the Indian subcontinent. Like other locusts, desert locusts can switch from a solitary phase with low population densities during recessions (periods of calm), to a gregarious phase with high population densities during invasions, when hopper bands and swarms can devastate agriculture.

Researchers at the University of Bonn with US colleagues show that the East Coast of the USA is slowly sinking into the sea.

Hundreds of experiments have shown biodiversity fosters healthier, more productive ecosystems. But many experts doubted whether these experiments would hold up in the real world. A Smithsonian and University of Michigan study published today in the journal Nature offers a decisive answer: Biodiversity’s power in the wild does not match that predicted by experiments—it surpasses it.

Today, the NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer is embarking on the last leg of NOAA’s three-year mission to explore the deep Pacific Ocean when it heads to the Musicians Seamounts and the Hawaiian Islands.

Starting September 7, you, too, can join the expedition virtually by following the live video streamed by a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) diving down to the seafloor near Musicians Seamounts. Dives will continue through September 29, usually between 2:00 p.m.–12:00 a.m. Eastern, depending on weather and ocean conditions.

As the Arctic warms twice as fast as the rest of the planet, the range and distribution of at least some fish stocks found in places like the Bering Sea will likely extend northward. That could bring some big changes to the region. More than 60 percent of all seafood caught in the United States comes from the waters off Alaska and generates billions of dollars in revenue each year.

As previously ice-covered areas of the Arctic become seasonally ice-free, there will be pressure to expand US fishing north of the Bering Strait. That can’t happen under the Arctic Management Plan, established in 2009, which prohibits commercial fishing until scientists and fisheries managers understand what’s going on with the ecosystem.

Heatwaves are intensifying in cities due to the double whammy of the urban heat island effect and global warming, according to a new study.

City life is tough for young birds. But if they survive their first year, they are less susceptible to the effects of stress, according to research from Lund University in Sweden.

Hurricane response crews from the U.S. Geological Survey are installing storm-tide sensors at key locations along Florida’s southeast and southwest coastlines in advance of Hurricane Irma.

Under a mission assignment from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the USGS is currently deploying approximately 58 storm tide sensors, 24 barometers and five rapid deployment gauges, and is consulting with federal and state partners about the need for similar equipment for other coastal areas farther north along the coastlines.