Cutting down forests for agriculture vents carbon dioxide into the air just as industries and fossil fuel burning does, and a new study suggests that failing to include land use changes in plans to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gases could lead to massive deforestation and higher costs for limiting carbon emissions. (DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory press release)

An explosion of knowledge has been made in the last few years about the basic biology of corals, researchers say in a new report, helping to explain why coral reefs around the world are collapsing and what it will take for them to survive a gauntlet of climate change and ocean acidification. (Oregon State University press release)

A previously unknown giant volcanic eruption that led to global mass extinction 260 million years ago has been uncovered by scientists. (University of Leeds press release)

A novel method of reconstructing missing data will shed new light on how and why our climate moved us on from ice ages to warmer periods as researchers will be able to calculate lost information and put together a more complete picture. (Institute of Physics press release)

As the frozen soil in the Arctic thaws, bacteria will break down organic matter, releasing long-stored carbon into the warming atmosphere. (University of Florida press release)

Research takes aim at a conundrum that's long vexed geoscientists: How to reconcile convection of the Earth's mantle with observations of ancient noble gases in volcanic rocks. (Rice University press release)

A melting of the Greenland ice sheet this century may drive more water than previously thought toward the already threatened coastlines of New York, Boston, Halifax and other cities in the northeastern United States and in Canada, according to new research. (NCAR/UCAR press release)

Scientists have developed a new methodology to improve forecasting success between 48 and 24 hours before cyclones occur in the Mediterranean Sea. (FECYT - Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology press release)

New fossil findings discovered by scientists challenge prevailing views about the effects of "Snowball Earth" glaciations on life. (University of California - Santa Barbara press release)

Scientists are, for the first time, objectively evaluating ways to help species adapt to rapid climate change and other environmental threats via strategies that were considered too radical for serious consideration as recently as five or 10 years ago. (National Science Foundation press release)

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago—and could be even worse than that. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology press release)

Experts say that more than half of the world's coral reefs could disappear in the next 50 years, in large part because of higher ocean temperatures caused by climate change, but now scientists have found evidence that some coral reefs are adapting and may actually survive global warming. (Stanford University press release)

Global warming may include some periods of local cooling, according to satellite and ground-based sensor data that show sweltering summers can, paradoxically, lead to the temporary formation of a cooling haze in the southeastern United States. (University of California - Berkeley press release)

A team of atmospheric chemists has moved closer to what's considered the "holy grail" of climate change science: the first-ever direct detections of biological particles within ice clouds. (National Science Foundation press release)

While a total or partial collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet as a result of warming would not raise global sea levels as high as some predict, levels on the U.S. seaboards would rise 25 percent more than the global average and threaten cities like New York, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco, according to a new study. (University of Colorado at Boulder press release)

Much is known about the rise of the central Andes mountains, but a new study of the eastern Andes in Colombia indicates that mountain building began much earlier there. (Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute press release)

The familiar model of the Atlantic's ocean currents that shows a discrete "conveyor belt" of deep, cold water flowing southward from the Labrador Sea is probably all wet. (Duke University press release)

There has been recent disagreement about the snowpack decline in the Cascade Mountains of the Pacific Northwest, but new research leaves little doubt that a warmer climate has a significant effect on the snowpack, even if other factors keep year-to-year measurements close to normal for a period of years. (University of Washington press release)

Climate change, fishing and commercial shipping top the list of threats to the ocean off the West Coast of the United States. (University of California - Santa Barbara press release)

Sediments released by many of the world's largest river deltas to the global oceans have been changed drastically in the last 50 years, largely as a result of human activity. (Texas A&M University press release)

Data analyzed following an iron-fertilization experiment in the Southern Ocean show that most of the carbon from lush plankton blooms, both artificially fertilized and natural, never reached the deep ocean. (DOE/Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory press release)

Researchers analyze gas samples collected from a Tasmanian volcano to determine processes at work in Earth's upper mantle. (University of California - San Diego press release)

Earth's earliest ice ages may have been due to the rise of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere, which consumed atmospheric greenhouse gases and chilled the planet's surface. (University of Maryland press release)

Motorway-sized troughs and channels carved into Antarctica's continental shelves by glaciers thousands of years ago could help scientists to predict future sea-level rise. (British Antarctic Survey press release)

The diverse biota of Lake Baikal, the world's largest lake, will come under severe pressure as the climate becomes warmer and wetter, because the food web for the region's myriad organisms relies on a long period of ice cover to shelter microbes that generate the annual production of organic carbon. (American Institute of Biological Sciences press release)

Rising temperatures may lead to more tinder-dry vegetation, but that doesn't mean there will be a higher risk for wildfires in a particular area. (DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory press release)

A new study documents for the first time the process in which increased mercury emissions from human sources across the globe, and from Asia in particular, make their way into the North Pacific Ocean and as a result contaminate tuna and other seafood. (United States Geological Survey press release)