Envisat tracks icebergs on their long trek around Antarctica. (European Space Agency press release)

In research that could lead to more accurate weather forecasts and climate models, scientists at Brookhaven National Laboratory say a physical limit on the number of cloud droplets that grow big enough to form drizzle paradoxically makes drizzle form faster. (Brookhaven National Laboratory press release)

Days and nights when the air temperature dips below freezing will become increasingly less common by the late 21st century across much of the world, according to a modeling study by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). (NCAR press release)

A technique borrowed from the surface physics community is helping chemists and atmospheric scientists understand the complex chemical reactions that occur on low-temperature ice. (Georgia Tech University press release)

Large, nutrient-poor expanses of the open ocean are getting a substantial nitrogen influx from an abundant group of unicellular organisms that "fix," or chemically alter, nitrogen into a form usable for biological productivity. (Georgia Tech University press release)

Australian researchers will tell an international conference on solar hydrogen this week that the means to extract hydrogen fuel from water, using solar energy should be ready within about seven years. (University of South Wales press release)

Siberian forest fire smoke pushed Seattle's air quality past federal environmental limits on one day in 2003, and a University of Washington scientist says rapidly changing climate in northern latitudes makes it likely such fires will have greater effects all along the West Coast. (University of Washington press release)

A team of international researchers working on the North Greenland Ice Core Project recently recovered what appear to be plant remnants nearly two miles below the surface between the bottom of the glacial ice and the bedrock. (University of Colorado at Boulder press release)

Heat waves in Chicago, Paris, and elsewhere in North America and Europe will become more intense, more frequent, and longer lasting in the 21st century, according to a new modeling study by two scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). (NCAR press release)

Existing technologies could stop the escalation of global warming for 50 years and work on implementing them can begin immediately, according to an analysis by Princeton University scientists. (Princeton University press release)

For the second time in three years, a hypoxic "dead zone" has formed off the central Oregon Coast. It's killing fish, crabs and other marine life and leading researchers to believe that a fundamental change may be taking place in ocean conditions in the northern Pacific Ocean. (Oregon State University press release)

In the next 100 years, Alaska will experience a massive loss of its historic tundra, as global warming allows these vast regions of cold, dry, lands to support forests and other vegetation that will dramatically alter native ecosystems. (Oregon State University press release)

Researchers have shown that the Sun can be responsible for, at most, only a small part of the warming over the last 20-30 years. (Max Planck Society press release)

Events like the great Dust Bowl of the 1930s, immortalized in "The Grapes of Wrath" and remembered as a transforming event for millions of Americans, were regular parts of much-earlier cycles of droughts followed by recoveries in the region, according to new studies by a multi-institutional research team led by Duke University. (Duke University press release)

In a study with implications for how North American trees might respond to a changing climate, molecular information collected by Duke University researchers refutes a widely accepted theory that many of the continent's tree species migrated rapidly from the deep South as glaciers retreated at the end of the last Ice Age. (Duke University press release)

While a rapidly changing climate may alter the composition of northern Wisconsin's forests, disturbances such as logging also will play a critical role in how these sylvan ecosystems change over time. (University of Wisconsin-Madison press release)

When it comes to forests, air pollution is not an equal opportunity hazard. While dirty air spreads across large areas of the New England region, it's more scattered in the southeastern part of the United States. (University of Wisconsin-Madison press release)