Smoke from wildfires burning across the West has clogged skies in the U.S. and Canada and prompted air quality warnings in several states, the National Weather Service (NWS) said Wednesday.
Segments of the Amazon rainforest now emit more carbon dioxide than they can absorb because of human-caused disturbances, according to a study published in the journal Nature on Wednesday.
Why it matters: The Amazon region hosts the world's largest tropical rainforests and stores vast quantities of CO2, the primary long-lived greenhouse gas. Accelerating rates of deforestation and climate shifts due to human-caused global warming have damaged the region's effectiveness as a climate change buffer.
The Biden administration has appointed a new head of the National Climate Assessment (NCA), a pivotal, congressionally mandated report on how human-caused global warming is affecting the U.S.
Driving the news: The next NCA will be overseen by Allison Crimmins, an environmental scientist who has spent a decade at the EPA and has expertise in scientific communication.
A "wobble" in the moon's orbit will combine with rising sea levels due to the Earth's warming to bring "a decade of dramatic increases" in high-tide coastal floods across the U.S. in the 2030s, NASA warns in a new study.
Why it matters: Low-lying areas near sea level already increasingly at risk from flooding will see their situation "only get worse," per a statement from NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
Finding indicators of life on Jupiter's icy moon Europa will likely be more complicated than just taking snapshots of the world's surface, a new study suggests.
Why it matters: Europa is thought to be one of the best places to search for life in the solar system, with its subsurface ocean that could be habitable, but scientists are learning more about just how difficult it might be to actually find those signs of life.
Low-income residents and communities of color in the U.S. face much higher and more dangerous urban heat extremes than people living in richer and whiter city neighborhoods, new peer-reviewed research shows.
Driving the news: Areas with higher rates of poverty can see summer land surface temperatures up to a whopping 4°C, or 7°F, higher than the richest areas, the paper in Earth's Futurefinds.
Billionaire entrepreneurs are fundamentally changing the public's relationship with space.
Why it matters: Richard Branson and Jeff Bezosare thrusting the industry into a new era of marketing for mass appeal, angling to make citizens into customers and changing the rhetoric around space in the process.
Lawsuits filed Monday are seeking damages from Dow Chemical and its successor company over a bug killer that allegedly causes brain damage in children, AP reports.
Why it matters: Chlorpyrifos is approved for use on over 80 crops, per AP. But studies show the pesticide damages the brains of fetuses and children. It was banned for household use in 2001.
