• Blue Marble – NASA

  • Bhutan – Courtesy of Aaron Putnam

  • Oregon – Courtesy of Adam Hudson

  • New Zealand – Courtesy of George Denton

  • Mongolia – Jennifer Draper/Medill

  • Michigan – Medill photo

  • Pacific Ocean – Medill photo

  • Drought, Iowa – Medill photo

  • Medill photo

  • Thwaites Glacier, West Antarctica - NA

  • Greenland icebergs - Gary Comer/Courtesy of the Comer Family Foundation

TOP STORIES

Scientists Track the Tipping Points of Climate Change

Scientists Track the Tipping Points of Climate Change

By Chelsea Zhao Crystal Rao, a geoscience graduate student at Princeton University, bases her research on the environmental changes and climate impacts on the species in clues from nitrogen isotopes in fossils. Rao uses the ratio of two common forms of nitrogen as a standard, and compares it with the nitrogen inside the tooth of…Read More

Glacier geologists search for global climate clues to support urgent action now

Glacier geologists search for global climate clues to support urgent action now

By Poonam Narotam, Dec. 15, 2021 – When he’s not teaching earth science classes and analyzing data at the University of Maine, glacier whisperer Aaron Putnam is trekking into the high Himalayas or New Zealand’s Southern Alps to study where glaciers once stood. The United Nations officials behind the recent global COP26 climate conference urged…Read More

COLDEX: The search for Earth’s oldest ice and new climate solutions

COLDEX: The search for Earth’s oldest ice and new climate solutions

By Christian Elliott, Dec. 9, 2021 – Even summer days are cold in the Allan Hills Blue Ice Area, a meteorite-strewn expanse of glacier flanked by mountains at the eastern edge of the Antarctic ice sheet near the McMurdo Station research center. Jeff Severinghaus, a paleoclimatologist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, and his colleagues…Read More

Into the unknown: Exploring caves to uncover climate change clues

Into the unknown: Exploring caves to uncover climate change clues

By Christian Elliott and Brittany Edelmann, Dec. 8, 2021 – Nearly 20 years ago, then Ph.D. student Gina Moseley walked into a bar in Bristol to meet fellow members of the University of Bristol Spelæological Society caving club. An older caver talked with her over drinks about some small caves in northeastern Greenland he’d always…Read More

FEATURED COVERAGE

Enhanced weathering: When climate research takes unexpected turns

Enhanced weathering: When climate research takes unexpected turns

By Brittany Edelmann and Carly Menker, Dec. 5, 2021 – Oxford University Ph.D. student Frankie Buckingham collected the 30, 1-meter-long cylindrical tubes of soil she needed for climate research in August 2018 on a British farm in North Oxfordshire. The farm had previously cultivated oats and barley in the soil. A variety of crushed rocks…

COVID-19’s minimal climate impact highlights need for momentous action now

COVID-19’s minimal climate impact highlights need for momentous action now

By Liam Bohen-Meissner, Jan 28., 2021 – PODCAST  Global carbon dioxide emission dropped 7 percent worldwide due to a decrease in human activity after COVID-19 brought much of the world to a standstill. Despite this, the climate impacts of COVID-19 turned out to be negligible, with 2020 tied with 2016 as the hottest year on…

Melting glaciers on Mount Everest could threaten freshwater for millions and world economies

Melting glaciers on Mount Everest could threaten freshwater for millions and world economies

By Shivani Majmudar, Dec. 18, 2020 – Amid this year’s global pandemic, the world is also fighting more frequent and severe hurricanes, larger wildfires and prolonged heat waves—indicative that climate change is real and it’s happening now. “We’re at the blinking yellow light,” said Laura Mattas, a graduate research student at the University of Maine’s…

Next generation climate scientists study Earth’s responses to rapidly rising temperatures

Next generation climate scientists study Earth’s responses to rapidly rising temperatures

By Grace Rodgers, Dec. 18, 2020 – In a race against climate change, Yuxin Zhou, 26, is among the next generation of climate scientists studying the Earth’s responses to rapidly rising temperatures, threatening life on the planet. As a fifth-year Ph.D. student at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, studying how the Earth’s climate behaved in…

Rare-earth metal reveals ancient ocean currents linked to climate triggers

Rare-earth metal reveals ancient ocean currents linked to climate triggers

By Marisa Sloan, Dec. 18, 2020 – Despite the sci-fi name of this rare-earth element, neodymium is actually pretty common. The silvery metal is used in everything from cell phones and wind turbines to tanning booths and electric guitars. But it’s the neodymium found thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface that captured the interest…

4,000 floating robots take on climate change

4,000 floating robots take on climate change

By Elena Bruess, Oct. 16, 2019 – I ziplined recently with a scientist who told me that her work involved almost 4,000 floating robots and a massive global computer database that could help her predict the future of our world’s climate. This was during a break in the Comer Climate Conference and the woods behind…

HOT TOPICS

MORE STORIES


Medill School Of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications
1845 Sheridan Road, Evanston, IL 60208-2101 © 2020 Northwestern University