News by Subject Atmospheric Science

Similar to the election needle and the stock market index, scientists have developed a new tracking system to detect danger to rainforests around the world. The data to build the index was culled from advanced satellite measurements of climate and vegetation of each tropical region on Earth.

Many species within Kenya's Tana River Basin will be unable to survive if global temperatures continue to rise as they are on track to do - according to new research from the University of East Anglia. A new study published in the journal PLOS ONE outlines how remaining within the goals of the Paris Agreement would save many species. The research also identifies places that could be restored to better protect biodiversity and contribute towards global ecosystem restoration targets.

In the United States, climate change is controversial, which makes communicating about the subject a tricky proposition. A recent study by Portland State researchers Brianne Suldovsky, assistant professor of communication, and Daniel Taylor-Rodriguez, assistant professor of statistics, explored how liberals and conservatives in Oregon think about climate science to get a better sense for what communication strategies might be most effective at reaching people with different political ideologies.

Every year, Santa Ana Winds drive some of the largest wildfires in Southern California during autumn and winter, and a new analysis of 71 years of data suggests that the total amount of land burned is determined more by wind speed and power line ignitions than by temperature and precipitation. The findings suggest that maintaining utility lines and carefully planning

Common yeast are able to adapt and thrive in response to a long-term rise in temperature by changing the shape, location and function of some of their proteins. The surprising findings demonstrate the unappreciated plasticity in the molecular and conformational level of proteins and bring the power of molecular biology to the organismal response to climate change. Results from the Zhou lab at the Buck Institute are published in Molecular Cell.

The remains of microscopic plankton blooms in near-shore ocean environments slowly sink to the seafloor, setting off processes that forever alter an important record of Earth's history, according to research from geoscientists, including David Fike at Washington University in St. Louis.