climate change

by Katie Dagon Imagine if we had an “undo” button for climate change – we could remove all the greenhouse gases from the air or cool the planet’s temperature in an instant. While this might sound like science fiction, the basic idea is not as far off as…

A new study published in Science aims to assess the effect of climate change on the risk of a serious drought hitting the Southwest United States before the year 2100. Megadroughts are defined as decade-long periods of prolonged drought; megadroughts…

Using satellite records and global climate models, scientists have shown that sea level rise is accelerating. Although sea level data from the past 23 years diverged from this long term trend, researchers demonstrate that the abnormal cooling caused by…

by Katie Dagon figures by Utsarga Adhikary Heat waves and droughts are staples of summer weather in America. This summer has proven to be no different! Much of the central and eastern U.S. endured a strong heat wave in mid-July. While the “heat…

by Michael R. Gerhardt As carbon dioxide levels in the Earth’s atmosphere increase, average global temperatures climb. 2015 was the hottest year on record, with 2014 a close second. These warm temperatures bring with them drastic effects on our climate.…

Prior to the year 2000, the Earth’s spin axis was slowly drifting toward Canada (green arrow, left image). Melting ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, as well as a drought in Eurasia, resulted in large changes to the mass composition of the…

by Jordan Wilkerson figures by Michael Gerhardt When someone asks you to consider the impacts of climate change, what do you think of? There’s a good chance that melting ice sheets comes to mind pretty quickly. For that reason, a recent finding…

The warm winter has been hard to miss. January temperatures were higher than average, and a little over a month ago most the Northeast was turning off the heat, opening windows, and wearing shorts in December. The strange weather hasn’t been confined to…

Heads of State and Government at COP21, in Paris, France on November 30, 2015By Narendra Modi (PM at COP21 in Paris) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia CommonsAfter two weeks of discussions the 2015 Paris Climate Conference (COP21) ended December 12th with…