By Bob Berwyn

Research released this week raises new questions about how much more Earth may warm, or cool, if and when human carbon dioxide emissions zero out. Best estimates to date suggest that the global surface temperature would stabilize within a few decades, but the new paper in the journal Frontiers in Science examines the uncertainties around that conclusion, including how the planet’s key carbon dioxide-absorbing systems, like forests and oceans, will respond. 

By Nicholas Kusnetz

Earlier this month, environmental advocates in Alaska noticed that a new document had been quietly posted on the website of the federal agency that manages a huge swath of Arctic lands. 

By Lydia Larsen

The brisk increase in warming rates in the Arctic is bringing rapid shifts in range for plants and animals across the region’s tree of life. Researchers say those changes can lead species that normally wouldn’t encounter each other to interbreed, creating new hybrid populations.  

By Bob Berwyn

In 2008, polar bears had the dubious distinction of being the first animal placed on the United States’ endangered species list due to climate threats, specifically the loss of Arctic sea ice. 

By Bob Berwyn

At the current level of human-caused global warming, extreme rainfall from atmospheric rivers, as well as an extensive network of previously undetected micro-cracks, could degrade large parts of the Greenland Ice Sheet faster than expected and accelerate melting toward worst-case projections for ice loss and sea level rise, recent research shows. 

By Lydia Larsen

For most of the year, snow and ice cover the Zackenberg research station on the coast of northeast Greenland. But every spring the temperatures rise and the ice melts to uncover a landscape of flowering plants, insects and migratory birds that arrive from all over the world to nest through a brief arctic summer. 

By Emma Ricketts

Beverly Hoffman grew up on the Kuskokwim River, a storied 700-mile waterway that flows from the Alaska Range to the Bering Sea. Now 71 years old, she says its fish have nourished her for most of her life—particularly the salmon, which is woven into family routines and tribal traditions.

By Lydia Larsen

The remote Arctic islands of Svalbard, Norway, the northernmost settlement in the world, have been called a canary in the coal mine of climate change, warming more than two times faster than other areas of the Arctic and five to seven times faster than the rest of the planet.  

By Bob Berwyn

June 2023 may be remembered as the start of a big change in the climate system, with many key global indicators flashing red warning lights amid signs that some systems are tipping toward a new state from which they may not recover.

By Bob Berwyn

With the planet warming by a fraction of a degree every few years, glaciers melting away in a trickle and sea level rising two inches per decade, global warming sometimes seems to be happening at a slow and steady pace.