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Environment

US faces rising death toll from wildfire smoke, study finds

Wildfires burning across Canada and the Western United States are spewing smoke over millions of Americans – the latest examples of ashy haze becoming a regular experience, with health impacts far greater than scientists previously estimated. Although wildfires have long been part of life in the Western U.S., warmer, drier conditions are fueling bigger blazes that occur more often and for longer. Smoke from these blazes is spreading farther and lingering longer than in the past. In a Sept. 18 study in Nature, Stanford University researchers estimate that continued global warming could lead ...

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Environment

WMO report on global water resources: 2024 was characterized by both extreme drought and intense rainfall

In global terms, the past year was distinguished not only by extreme drought but also by unusually heavy rainfall. These are the core findings of the report of the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on the status of our planet's water resources that was published today. The regions most affected by severe drought conditions in 2024 were the Amazon basin and Southern Africa. There was excessive rainfall, for instance, in the African tropics and the resultant flooding resulted in the deaths of 2500 people while 4 million were forced from their homes. ...

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Environment

Chung-Ang University develops chloride-resistant Ru nanocatalysts for sustainable hydrogen production from seawater

The growing global demand for clean energy and rising concerns over climate change have intensified the search for sustainable alternatives. Hydrogen emerges as a promising solution due to its high energy density and zero-carbon emissions. Among production methods, alkaline water electrolysis is efficient and environmentally friendly; however, its dependence on freshwater limits large-scale implementation. Seawater electrolysis offers a practical alternative by tapping Earth’s abundant water resources but contains high chloride concentrations that accelerate catalyst corrosion and reduce efficiency, posing a significant ...

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Environment

New insights into melanoma plasticity uncover a critical role of iron metabolism

Leuven, September 18, 2025 – VIB researchers and colleagues have discovered a mechanism through which melanoma cells adapt and switch between two major proliferative and invasive states, revealing promising new targets for cancer therapy. The study, published in Nature Metabolism, reveals that alterations in iron metabolism and organelle crosstalk are central to melanoma cell plasticity—a key factor in tumor progression and resistance to treatment. The changing face of melanoma Melanoma, one of the most aggressive skin cancers, often exhibits a remarkable ability to change its phenotype, enabling it to evade therapies and metastasize. While ...

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Environment

QUT scientists create material to turn waste heat into clean power

QUT scientists create material to turn waste heat into clean power QUT researchers have developed a new material that achieves record-high thermoelectric performance, paving the way for more efficient conversion of waste heat into clean electricity. The study, published in Energy & Environmental Science, found that adding manganese to silver copper telluride made it the most efficient material of its kind. The research team, led by Professor Zhi-Gang Chen and Dr Xiao-Lei Shi from QUT’s School of Chemistry ...

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Environment

Warming of 2°C intensifies Arctic carbon sink but weakens Alpine sink, study finds

Permafrost, ground frozen for at least two years underlying the cold Arctic and alpine regions of the Northern Hemisphere, covers about 17% of the global land surface and stores an estimated one-third of the world's soil organic carbon. As climate change causes this permafrost to thaw, the potential release of greenhouse gases (GHGs) has raised concerns about passing a tipping point, triggering an irreversible positive feedback loop that accelerates warming. A critical unanswered question has been whether these ecosystems can ...

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Environment

‘Teen’ pachycephalosaur butts into fossil record

A “teenaged” pachycephalosaur from Mongolia’s Gobi Desert may provide answers to lingering questions around the dinosaur group, according to new research published today in the journal Nature. The fossil represents a new species of pachycephalosaur and is both the oldest and most complete skeleton of this dinosaur group found to date. “Pachycephalosaurs are iconic dinosaurs, but they’re also rare and mysterious,” says Lindsay Zanno, associate research professor at North Carolina State University, head of paleontology at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and corresponding ...

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Environment

Study provides first evidence that plastic nanoparticles can accumulate in the edible parts of vegetables

Plastic pollution represents a global environmental challenge, and once in the environment plastic can fragment into smaller and smaller pieces. A new study shows for the first time that some of the tiniest particles found in the environment can be absorbed into the edible sections of crops during the growing process. The research used radishes to demonstrate, for the first time, that nanoplastics – some measuring as little as one millionth of a centimetre in diameter – can enter the roots, before spreading and accumulating into the edible parts of the plant. The researchers say the findings reveal another potential pathway for humans and animals to unintentionally consume ...

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Environment

Water’s density is key to sustainable lithium mining

AMHERST, Mass. — One of the biggest obstacles on the road to the low-carbon energy future is caused by the rare-earth element lithium, a critical component for the batteries that can store the abundant and sustainable energy from renewable sources. The element occurs naturally as a salt in briny oases, called salares, in some of the world’s harshest environments, including the “Lithium Triangle” high in South America’s arid Altiplano. Mining lithium has the potential to destabilize already sensitive environments that are host to rare flora and fauna, ...

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Environment

Climate change could drastically reduce aquifer recharge in Brazil

The global climate crisis could significantly impact the natural replenishment of Brazilian aquifers, reducing the groundwater supply across the country. This is the conclusion of a study by scientists from the University of São Paulo’s Institute of Geosciences (IGc-USP) and the National Institute for Space Research (INPE). The scientists analyzed the impact of various climate scenarios on water availability by the end of the century. The study was published in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment. Groundwater ...

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Environment

Chapman University research reveals tropical rainforest soils may fuel climate change as the Earth warms – Accelerating global warming

Orange, Calif. — Sept. 16, 2025 — A new study led by the U.S. Forest Service, with Chapman University as a key senior collaborator, published in Nature Communications, suggests the Earth’s own tropical soils may contribute to climate change as global warming continues, releasing vast amounts of carbon dioxide (CO₂) as they warm and potentially accelerating a dangerous feedback loop. Tropical forests have long been viewed as critical allies in the fight against climate change, natural systems that absorb excess carbon and cool the planet. But this new research shows that warming itself is causing ...

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Environment

Study reveals how different messages motivate people to take conservation actions

ITHACA, NY—A new study published today in the journal Biological Conservation finds that different communication approaches can influence whether people take action to prevent birds from colliding with windows, a leading cause of bird mortality that kills over 1 billion birds annually in the United States and Canada. Researchers from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology tested different message framing approaches among bird enthusiasts and the general public to understand what motivates people to make their windows safer for birds. “If we want people to take action to reduce bird and window collisions, we really have to understand how to communicate with ...

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Environment

Architecture’s past holds the key to sustainable future

Modern ‘sustainable’ innovations in architecture are failing to slow climate change, but revisiting ancient knowledge and techniques found in traditional architecture could offer better solutions. This is the argument of architectural historians Professor Florian Urban and Barnabas Calder in their new book Form Follows Fuel: 14 Buildings from Antiquity to the Oil Age. The authors argue that energy availability has been the biggest influence in architecture throughout human history. Their extensive ...

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Environment

Your ecosystem engineer was a dinosaur

ANN ARBOR—Dinosaurs had such an immense impact on Earth that their sudden extinction led to wide scale changes in landscapes—including the shape of rivers—and these changes are reflected in the geologic record, according to a University of Michigan study. Scientists have long recognized the stark difference in rock formations from just before dinosaurs went extinct to just after, but chalked it up to sea level rise, coincidence, or other abiotic reasons. But U-M paleontologist Luke Weaver shows that once dinosaurs were extinguished, ...

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Environment

Ditches as waterways: Managing ‘ditch-scapes’ to strengthen communities and the environment

Ditches are all around: along roads, through neighborhoods, across fields and marshes. These human-made waterways are so common that they can be easy to miss. A new literature review published in Nature Communications Earth & Environment calls on the public to pay more attention to this often neglected resource, one that could advance sustainability goals and benefit local communities with modern ditch management strategies. In the English language, “ditch” has a bad rap. It evokes images of trash or something that ought to be discarded. That negative connotation ...

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Environment

New species survival commission fills critical gap in conservation

A newly-formed group of scientists will be fighting for the survival of species — the smallest ones on the planet. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has launched a species survival commission for microbiology and microbes to serve as a global safeguard for microbial biodiversity and to pursue coordinated conservation action. The new Microbial Conservation Specialist Group marks a first in the history of international conservation and filling a critical gap in ...

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Environment

Volcanic emissions of reactive sulfur gases may have shaped early mars climate, making it more hospitable to life

While the early Mars climate remains an open question, a new study suggests its atmosphere may have been hospitable to life due to volcanic activity which emitted sulfur gases that contributed to a greenhouse warming effect. This finding comes from a study published in Science Advances, led by researchers at The University of Texas at Austin. Using data from the composition of Martian meteorites, the researchers ran more than 40 computer simulations with varied temperatures, concentrations, and chemistry to estimate how much carbon, nitrogen, and sulfide gases may have been emitted on early Mars. Instead of the high concentrations ...

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Environment

What 3I/ATLAS tells us about other solar systems

Sept. 11, 2025 MSU has a satellite uplink/LTN TV studio and Comrex line for radio interviews upon request. Contact: Emilie Lorditch: 810-844-1460, lorditch@msu.edu; Bethany Mauger: 765-571-0623, maugerbe@msu.edu What 3I/ATLAS tells us about other solar systems The fleeting interstellar visitor offers MSU astrophysicists clues about comets beyond our solar system Why this matters: MSU uncovered images of 3I/ATLAS from two months before it was detected as ...

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Environment

Newly dated 85-million-year-old dino eggs could improve understanding of Cretaceous climate

In the Cretaceous period, Earth was plagued by widespread volcanic activity, oceanic oxygen depletion events, and mass extinctions. Fossils from that era remain and continue to give scientists clues as to what the climate may have looked like in different regions. Now, researchers in China have examined some of them: dinosaur eggs found at the Qinglongshan site in the Yunyang Basin in central China. This is the first time that dinosaur eggs have been dated using carbonate uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating. The team published their results in Frontiers in Earth Science. “We show that these dinosaur eggs were deposited roughly 85 million years ago, ...

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Environment

Natural microfibers may degrade differently to synthetic materials under simulated sunlight exposure in freshwater and seawater conditions, with implications for how such pollutants affect aquatic lif

Natural microfibers may degrade differently to synthetic materials under simulated sunlight exposure in freshwater and seawater conditions, with implications for how such pollutants affect aquatic life Article URL: http://plos.io/3HS46t5 Article title: Structural evolution of microfibers in seawater and freshwater under simulated sunlight: A small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering study Author countries: Italy, Austria Funding: This work was partially funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU, Project Code: ECS00000041, Project Title: Innovation, Digitalization and Sustainability for the Diffused Economy in Central Italy ...

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Environment

Researchers find key to Antarctic ice loss blowing in the north wind

Most of the Earth’s fresh water is locked in the ice that covers Antarctica. As the ocean and atmosphere grow warmer, that ice is melting at a startling pace with sea levels and global currents changing in response. To understand the potential implications, researchers need to know just how fast the ice is disappearing, and what is driving it back. The West Antarctic ice sheet, an unstable expanse bordering the Amundsen Sea, is one of the greatest sources of uncertainty in climate projections. Records indicate that it has been steadily shrinking since the 1940s, but key details are missing. Using environmental data gathered from ice samples, tree rings and corals, ...

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Environment

“Want to, but can’t”: A new model to explain the gap in waste separation behavior

Household waste constitutes 30–40% of municipal solid waste globally. Separating waste at the household level into compostable, recyclable, and non-recyclable is a crucial first step for local governments to process solid waste effectively. However, large gaps between a person’s willingness to separate waste and actually separating waste have been seen across the world. Understanding the factors that affect people’s intention and behavior of separating household waste can help create more effective policies regarding household-level waste separation. However, ...

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Environment

Study finds critically endangered sharks being sold as food in U.S. grocery stores

A new study from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has uncovered that shark meat sold in U.S. grocery stores, seafood markets, and online vendors often comes from endangered species and is frequently mislabeled. Researchers purchased and DNA barcoded 29 shark meat products to determine their species identity, finding that 93% of samples were ambiguously labeled and included meat from 11 different shark species. Among the species identified were the great hammerhead and scalloped hammerhead, both listed as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Despite global ...

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Environment

Meat from critically endangered sharks is commonly sold under false labels in the US

Sharks have been around for more than 450 million years, but these days they are in deep trouble. Since the 1970s, shark populations have gone down by more than 70% due to unsustainable practices such as shark finning, bycatch, and overfishing, habitat destruction, pollution, and climate change. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has estimated that of the approximately 550 species of sharks in existence, 14% are vulnerable, 11% endangered, and 12% critically endangered. As a result, 74 species of shark are considered at risk by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), meaning that ...

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Environment

Predicting the green glow of aurorae on the red planet

Planetary scientists believe they can now predict the green glow of an aurora in the night sky above Mars, and they have the images to prove it. The first observations of a visible-light aurora from the surface of the Red Planet were made by NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover in 2024. Now, presenting at the Europlanet Science Congress–Division of Planetary Science (EPSC–DPS) joint meeting in Helsinki this week, Dr Elise Wright Knutsen of the University of Oslo will reveal a second snapshot of the aurora by Perseverance and, more importantly, the tools to predict when an aurora will occur on Mars. "The fact that we captured the aurora again demonstrates that our method ...

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