Every month or two, a massive pulse of clouds, rainfall and wind moves eastward around the Earth near the equator, providing the tropics their famous thunderstorms. This band of recurring weather, first described by scientists in 1971, is called the Madden-Julian Oscillation. It has profound effects on weather in distant places, including the United States….

Instead of blood pressure, temperature, and heart rate, the vital signs for a forest are captured in key traits such as the amount of nitrogen in a tree’s leaves, the leaf area, or the density of the wood. These “functional traits” can impact how trees grow — and therefore how forests respond to climate change….

A pair of new studies from researchers at The Ohio State University offers a possible solution, inspired by nature. “We thought: ‘How can we gather water from the ambient air around us?’” said Bharat Bhushan, Ohio Eminent Scholar and Howard D. Winbigler Professor of mechanical engineering at Ohio State. “And so, we looked to the…

Scientists have long struggled to explain how tropical forests can maintain their staggering diversity of trees without having a handful of species take over – or having many other species die out. The answer, researchers say, lies in the soil found near individual trees, where natural “enemies” of tree species reside. These enemies, including fungi…

“Water is used in electricity generation, both directly for hydropower and indirectly for cooling in thermoelectric power plants,” said climate scientist Noah Diffenbaugh, the Kara J. Foundation professor in Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences (Stanford Earth) and senior author of the study. “We find that in a number of western states where…

Recently, a new study in Nature Communications explored the ecological impacts of fire air pollution. Increases in O3 and aerosols have opposite impacts on plant health. O3 is phytotoxic and reduces plant photosynthesis, while aerosols may promote photosynthesis by enhancing diffuse radiation. It is unclear what’s the net impacts of these pollutants on biosphere from…

West Virginia’s wildlands are a “canary in the coal mine for climate change” because of the forests’ biodiversity, which, along with rich soils and abundant rainfall, make them among the strongest forests globally, according to Brenden McNeil, an associate professor of geography at WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences. The state’s forests have been…

The quest to discover what drove the last, long-term global climate shift on Earth, which took place around a million years ago, has taken a new, revealing twist. A team of researchers led by Dr Sev Kender from the University of Exeter, have found a fascinating new insight into the causes of the Mid-Pleistocene Transition…

More than two-thirds of Canada’s biodiversity is made up of species that occur within the country’s borders only at the very northern edge of their range. Biologists have long debated how much effort should be dedicated to conserving these “edge populations.” One argument in their favour is that they may be especially well suited to…

It’s now beyond official: Greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, pose a danger to public health and welfare, according to an exhaustive review that looked at 275 scientific studies published over the past nine years. Researchers did the report to investigate whether the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2009 Endangerment Finding, which found that greenhouse gases…