The short-term environmental benefits of the COVID-19 crisis, including declines in carbon emissions and local air pollution, have been documented since the early days of the crisis. 

A new study has highlighted the crucial role that sea ice across the Southern Ocean played in controlling atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during times of past climate change, and could provide a critical resource for developing future climate change models.

Campaigns to plant huge numbers of trees could backfire, according to a new study that is the first to rigorously analyze the potential effects of subsidies in such schemes.

Porous rock containing oil and natural gas are buried so deep inside the earth that shale operators rely on complex models of the underground environment to estimate fossil fuel recovery. 

Researchers at São Paulo State University (UNESP) in Araçatuba, Brazil, have developed a computational tool that acts like a “COVID-19 accelerometer,” plotting in real time the rate at which growth is accelerating or decelerating in more than 200 countries and territories. 

Last year, MIT engineers developed a double-sided adhesive that could quickly and firmly stick to wet surfaces such as biological tissues. 

As concern grows among environmentalists and consumers about micro- and nanoplastics in the oceans and in seafood, they are increasingly studied in marine environments, say Baoshan Xing at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and colleagues in China. 

Rice University engineers have created a light-powered catalyst that can break the strong chemical bonds in fluorocarbons, a group of synthetic materials that includes persistent environmental pollutants.

After two years of severe drought, abundant rain finally fell over the Australian state and turned the landscape green.

A tremendous plume of dust from North Africa drifts toward the Caribbean and contiguous United States.