Environment
press releases.

Environment10 Dec 2025

A new ‘hypertropical’ climate is emerging in the Amazon

The Amazon rainforest is slowly transitioning to a new, hotter climate with more frequent and intense droughts — conditions that haven’t been seen on Earth for tens of millions of years. The conclusions come from a new study led by the University of California, Berkeley, involving a large team of national and international scientists. The researchers predict that, if society continues to emit high levels of greenhouse gases, “hot drought” conditions could become more prevalent across the Amazon ...

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Environment10 Dec 2025

Ancient manatee relative reveals that sea cows have engineered the Arabian Gulf’s seagrass ecosystems for over 20 million years

Today, the Arabian Gulf is home to manatee-like marine mammals called dugongs that shape the seafloor as they graze on seagrasses. A newly described fossil site in Qatar reveals that ancient sea cows engineered aquatic ecosystems in a similar way more than 20 million years ago. In a paper published today in the journal PeerJ, researchers at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History worked with collaborators at Qatar Museums to also name a new species of sea cow that was a miniature version ...

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Environment10 Dec 2025

US fossil reveals early mass-burial event and ancient microbial attack

A remarkably preserved horseshoe crab fossil from North America offers rare insight into some of the earliest known cases of animal disease in a Late Carboniferous swamp – more than 300 million years before the age of dinosaurs. The specimen, uncovered from the mass-burial fossil deposit at the famous Mazon Creek Lagerstätte in Illinois in the US, shows more than 100 small pits across the front of its shell, representing one of the earliest documented examples of microbial or algal infection killing groups of these ancient aquatic animals. “Ancient ...

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Environment10 Dec 2025

Ocean current and seabed shape influence warm water circulation under ice shelves

New research reveals how the speed of ocean currents and the shape of the seabed influence the amount of heat flowing underneath Antarctic ice shelves, contributing to melting. Scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) used an autonomous underwater vehicle to survey beneath the Dotson Ice Shelf in the Amundsen Sea, an area of rapid glacial ice loss largely due to increasing ocean heat around and below ice shelves. The circulation of warm water and the heat transport within ice shelf cavities - significant areas beneath ice shelves - remains mostly unknown. To address this the team collected data ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

The global plastic waste trade contributes to coastal litter in importing countries, study shows

URBANA, Ill. – The ubiquitous plastic beverage bottle makes up about half of plastic waste collected for recycling in the U.S. Most recycled plastic is processed domestically, but a portion is traded overseas. A new study from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign draws on citizen science data to investigate how the global plastic waste trade contributes to litter along coastlines and waterways in importing countries. “There has been a lot of news coverage about the plastic waste ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

Modeling microplastic accumulation under the ocean surface

WASHINGTON, Dec. 9, 2025 — The ocean is saturated with microplastics. While we know the location of the great garbage patches, where plastic particles may accumulate below the ocean surface remains unknown. The vastness of the ocean means particle sampling data is sparse, but modeling how particles aggregate in 3D fluid flows can help determine where to look. In Chaos, by AIP Publishing, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution established a theory for how microplastic particles may accumulate in an idealized eddy, or circular current. Larry Pratt and Irina Rypina began by modeling how fluid moves in a rotating cylinder, a laboratory setup ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

SwRI-led study provides insight into oscillations in solar flares

SAN ANTONIO — December 9, 2025 — A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) links quasi-periodic pulsations (QPPs) in solar flares to dynamic oscillations in magnetic reconnection, a phenomenon that can drive space weather and affect technology on Earth. This research could help refine traditional solar flare models and provide new insights into the mechanisms driving them. Magnetic reconnection occurs when magnetic field lines in plasma break and reconnect, releasing immense energy into the surrounding atmosphere ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

Residential solar panels can raise electricity rates

A modeling study shows how under some conditions, increasing numbers of households with rooftop solar panels can lead to higher rates for those without their own solar system. When utility customers cancel their accounts after switching to residential solar panels, the utility must spread their fixed costs around to a smaller number of remaining customers, which can lead to rate increases. Charles Sims and colleagues studied how this pecuniary externality affects different income groups using agent-based computational economic modeling of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), an area with some of the highest poverty rates in the United States. The authors asked 2,307 TVA residential customers ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

Recycling a pollutant to make ammonia production greener

Ammonia fuels agriculture, supports industry, and is increasingly viewed as a key player in future clean-energy systems. Yet producing it is heat and pressure intensive. A research team has developed an electrocatalyst that helps turn nitrate--a common pollutant found in groundwater and agricultural runoff--into ammonia under far milder conditions. Details of their findings were published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials on November 4, 2025. "Our new catalyst has two main benefits: first, it reduces the emissions linked to fertilizer and chemical manufacturing, ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

Energy and regional factors drive carbon price volatility in China’s emissions trading markets

Background and Motivation China’s national carbon market has grown rapidly in recent years, emerging as one of the world’s largest Emissions Trading Systems (ETS). Carbon price volatility not only affects market stability and pricing credibility but also influences corporate investment and emissions strategies. While prior research has identified various factors affecting carbon price fluctuations, most studies focus on a narrow set of variables and rarely compare broader potential drivers across regions. This leaves a gap in understanding which factors are truly critical in explaining volatility ...

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Environment9 Dec 2025

Adaptive Kalman filter boosts BDS-3 navigation accuracy in challenging environments

Precise Point Positioning (PPP) is widely used for high-accuracy navigation, but broadcast ephemeris from the BDS-3 system still suffers from hourly discontinuities that degrade real-time performance. This study introduces a new PPP strategy that integrates a covariance-adaptive Kalman filter to compensate for sudden orbit and clock jumps during each ephemeris update. By incorporating systematic parameters and dynamically scaling process noise, the algorithm better captures unexpected changes in satellite signals. Tests using one week of static global data and a 10-hour marine kinematic dataset show significant gains in accuracy, demonstrating that the proposed ...

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Environment8 Dec 2025

ASH 2025: Study connects Agent Orange exposure to earlier and more severe cases of myelodysplastic syndrome

MIAMI, FLORIDA (EMBARGOED UNTIL DEC. 8, 2025, AT 6 P.M. EST) – A new national study shows for the first time that people exposed to Agent Orange face a higher risk of developing myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS), tend to develop it earlier, and often have more aggressive disease that is more likely to progress to acute myeloid leukemia. The study was co-led by researchers at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, part of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. Many veterans and doctors have long questioned whether Agent Orange exposure ...

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Environment8 Dec 2025

When climate risk hits home, people listen: Study reveals key to engagement with disaster preparedness messaging

A subtle change in how climate risk is communicated—mentioning a person’s local area—can significantly increase attention to disaster preparedness messages, according to a new study by researchers at the Stockholm School of Economics and Harvard University, published in Nature Human Behaviour. The findings offer a practical, low-cost strategy for governments, insurers and local authorities seeking to boost climate resilience in vulnerable communities. In a large field experiment involving nearly 13,000 homeowners in wildfire-prone areas ...

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Environment8 Dec 2025

Towards sustainable organic synthesis – Mechanochemistry replaces lithium with sodium in organic reactions

Highly reactive organometallic reagents, like organolithiums (molecules with a carbon–lithium bond) are essential reagents in organic synthesis because of their applications from polymer synthesis to pharmaceuticals, and more. Lithium resources, however, are difficult to access because concentrated deposits are geographically restricted and modern extraction methods are burdened with environmental costs. Replacing lithium with sodium would be a significant contribution towards environmentally friendly organic synthesis because it is >1000 times more abundant and its extraction from seawater is sustainable ...

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Environment8 Dec 2025

Greenhouse gases to intensify extreme flooding in the Central Himalayas

Rising greenhouse gas emissions could see the size of extreme floods in the Central Himalayas increase by between as much as 73% and 84% by the end of this century. Geographers at Durham University, UK, simulated the risk of increased flooding on the Karnali River, which spans Nepal and China and has the potential to impact communities in Nepal and India. They found that extreme floods – those with a 1% chance of happening within a year – could increase in size by 22% and 26% between 2020 and 2059, compared to flooding seen in the region between 1975 and 2014. This increase ...

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Environment5 Dec 2025

Robust new photocatalyst paves the way for cleaner hydrogen peroxide production and greener chemical manufacturing

A new study highlights a promising path toward sustainable hydrogen peroxide production using sunlight, oxygen, and water, offering a cleaner alternative to the energy-intensive anthraquinone process that dominates global manufacturing today. In a commentary published in Sustainable Carbon Materials, researchers Bing Han of North China Electric Power University and Yin Zhang of Nanyang Technological University discuss a recent advancement in covalent organic framework technologies that could reshape photocatalytic chemical synthesis. The featured work, led by Yang and colleagues, demonstrates how a rational redesign of catalyst structures can dramatically boost the efficiency ...

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Environment5 Dec 2025

Carbon-negative building material developed at Worcester Polytechnic Institute published in matter

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researchers have created a new carbon-negative building material that could transform sustainable construction. The breakthrough, published in the high-impact journal Matter, details the development of enzymatic structural material (ESM), a strong, durable, and recyclable construction material produced through a low-energy, bioinspired process. Led by Nima Rahbar, the Ralph H. White Family Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, the research team engineered ESM by using an enzyme that helps convert carbon dioxide into solid mineral particles. ...

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Environment5 Dec 2025

DFW backs UTA research to bolster flood resilience

The University of Texas at Arlington and Dallas Fort Worth International Airport are expanding a multi-year partnership to improve stormwater management, environmental protection and long-term operational resilience at one of the world’s busiest airports. After completing the first phase of the project, DFW has extended its partnership with UTA’s Water Engineering Research Center (WERC) with a $2.38 million investment to build on its previous work by shifting from assessment to solutions. In total, DFW has committed more than $4 million to UTA under the interlocal agreement ...

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Environment5 Dec 2025

New approach narrows uncertainty in future warming and remaining carbon budget for 2 °C

How much the planet warms with each ton of carbon dioxide remains one of the most important questions in climate science, but there is uncertainty in predicting it. This uncertainty hinders governments, businesses and communities from setting clear emission-reduction targets and preparing for the impacts of climate change. The changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and surface temperatures are shaped by complex feedback between land, ocean, atmosphere and ecosystems, and this feedback can either amplify or mitigate warming. Reducing this uncertainty ...

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Environment5 Dec 2025

This fossil bird choked to death on rocks, and no one knows why

A fossil only tells part of the story. When an animal’s body is preserved as a fossil, there are often pieces missing, and even a perfectly-preserved body doesn’t tell the whole story of how that animal behaved, how it lived, and how it ultimately died. But the cause of death for one unlucky bird that lived about 120 million years ago is clearer: the cluster of rocks in its throat tells scientists that it probably choked to death. The reason why this bird was swallowing rocks in the first place is more of a mystery, and one that gets into the bigger picture of dinosaur ...

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Environment4 Dec 2025

'Tiny' tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus lancensis, was a distinctive species, not juvenile T. Rex

Microscopic analysis of an unconventional throat bone helps resolve a long-standing debate in paleontology, researchers report, revealing evidence that Nanotyrannus lancensis – long thought by many to be a teenage Tyrannosaurus rex – was in fact a fully mature, distinct species of smaller tyrannosaurid. Because the fossil record is often fragmentary, it is difficult to discern the full range of distinct dinosaur species that lived in ancient ecosystems. This is made more challenging when trying to determine true new species from juveniles of known ones. One of the most ...

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Environment4 Dec 2025

New study confirms Nanotyrannus holotype was distinct species from T. rex

New study confirms Nanotyrannus holotype was diminutive, distinct species from T. rex New research from a team including the University of Nebraska State Museum’s Ashley Poust further moves a decades-long scientific debate toward a conclusion — the Nanotyrannus, a teacup variation of the T. rex, did exist. Poust and the team, led by Christopher Griffin of Princeton University, used a novel approach to determine maturity of the holotype of Nanotyrannus, a fossil skull at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. They examined the ceratobranchial, or hyoid bone, which was intact with the skull, and determined it was an adult when it ...

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Environment4 Dec 2025

Global sports industry holds untapped potential for wildlife conservation

A recently published article in the journal BioScience has revealed a surprising opportunity for conserving threatened species: sports teams and their branding. The research, led by Dr. Ugo Arbieu of Université Paris-Saclay in France, analyzed 727 sporting organizations across 50 countries and 10 team sports. The authors found that "threatened species and species with a declining population trend are more represented than other species, with differences across regions." Arbieu and colleagues explain that "given the ongoing global biodiversity crisis and the importance of sport in modern societies, representations ...

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Environment4 Dec 2025

Turning team spirit into wildlife action

Lions, tigers, wolves, leopards, and bears are some the world’s favourite sport symbols, but while they thrive on jerseys, many of these species are at risk of extinction in the wild. A new international study, co-authored by Flinders University researchers, reveals that nearly 25% of professional sports teams worldwide use a wild animal in its name, logo, or fan identity, presenting a powerful and largely untapped opportunity to support biodiversity conservation. The research, published in BioScience, examined 727 teams across 50 countries and 10 major sports, identifying at least 161 different wild animals featured in professional ...

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Environment4 Dec 2025

New camera traps snap nearly three times more images of endangered Sumatran tigers than before

Destroyed habitats, poaching, and prey depletion have dramatically reduced tiger habitats around the world. Today, tigers occupy just 5 to 10% of their historical habitats. But on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, an important population of critically endangered Sumatran tigers may persevere, a new Frontiers in Conservation Science study showed. Using infrared cameras, researchers working on the island, have set out to estimate sex-specific population densities and tigers’ movements during three surveys. “We documented a robust tiger population, apparently among the healthiest on the island,” said Dr Joe Figel, ...

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