Climate experts say global temperatures in 2003 could match or beat the modern record set in 1998, when temperatures were raised sharply by El Niño, a periodic disturbance of Pacific Ocean currents that warms the atmosphere. (New York Times)
The Denver metro area today wraps up its driest year on record, with below-average mountain snowpack across Colorado offering scant hope of a quick turnaround. (Scripps-McClatchy Western Service)
Changes to farming in rice patties in China may have led to a decrease in methane emissions, and an observed decline in the rate that methane has entered the Earth’s atmosphere over the last 20 years, a NASA-funded study finds. (ScienceDaily Magazine)
2002 was the second warmest year on record and global warming is continuing to accelerate, the UN’s weather agency said on Tuesday. (SpaceDaily, Los Angeles Times)
Since the early 1970s, astronomers have speculated about the dangers posed to our planet by exploding stars called supernovae. But a new detailed set of calculations shows that such events are probably extremely rare. (Space.com)
NASA scientists hope to get new insight into the future of global ocean levels with the launch this week of a laser-equipped satellite designed to measure the waxing and weaning of the planet’s largest ice sheets. (San Diego Union-Tribune, CBS News, MSNBC News, Washingtonpost.com, CNN, AP)
Scientists for the first time have documented multiple deaths of polar bears off Alaska, where they likely drowned after swimming long distances in the ocean amid the melting of the Arctic ice shelf. (The Wall Street Journal)
Swarms of fungus-eating snails have laid waste to miles of southern U.S. coastal wetlands that are already reeling from drought, say researchers. (Nature)
Coral reefs in several parts of the world are showing tentative signals of recovery after years of damage, scientists say. (BBC)
Large meteorite impacts may not just throw up huge dust clouds but also punch right through the Earth’s crust, triggering gigantic volcanic eruptions. (New Scientist)
The government’s top weather forecasters said Thursday the nation?s weather is being affected by a classic “El Niño” weather pattern that is bringing needed rain to the South and will result in a slightly warmer temperature in the North. (CNN)
El Niño will bring milder temperatures this winter to the northern half of the United States, government forecasters said Thursday. (ABC, CNN, CBS)
Temperature data for the first 11 months of the year show that the average global temperature is on the rise. (Environment News Service)
Fluctuations associated with climate warming are behind the Earth’s mysterious expanding waistline, scientists said this week. (BBC, Nature)
Laser technology can detect exactly how much and what types of pollutants are spewing from the back of a New York City bus. (UPI)
Three Earth-orbiting NASA probes are being readied for launch, two of them to look downward at ice sheets and ocean winds and the third to peer outward at a gas-filled region in our galactic neighborhood. (Orlando Sentinel, Newsday, New York Times)
For now, at least, industrial pollution wafting from Asia across the Pacific Ocean on prevailing winds is leveling off, new research shows. (Nature)
El Niño is not a new weather phenomenon, according to a recent NASA study that looks 750 years into the past using tree-ring records. (Cosmiverse)
A reduced Antarctic ozone hole this fall came from planetary-sized waves moving from the lower atmosphere to the upper atmosphere, NASA researchers say. (UPI, Environment News Service)
Typhoons, the violent storms that are the bane of life across much of Asia, are a boon for sea life, where the cyclones stir up the nutrients that microscopic algae crave, scientists said Saturday. (AP, ABC)
Multiple environmental changes, not just increased carbon dioxide levels, must be considered in assessing the impacts of climate change on ecosystems, conclude researchers at Stanford University. (Environment News Service)
Jennifer McElwain will spend her next year chipping her way through more than a ton of sediment and plant fossils at the Field Museum, hoping to find rock-solid evidence of global warming?s ecological toll. (AP, Canadian TV, ABC)