Earth has experienced climate change in the past without help from humanity. We know about past climates because of evidence left in tree rings, layers of ice in glaciers, ocean sediments, coral reefs ...

The creosote bush (Larrea tridentata) is a medium-sized evergreen shrub. It has small pointed green leaves with a waxy coating. These leaves have adapted to conserve water and survive high ...

In Earth’s history before the Industrial Revolution, Earth’s climate changed due to natural causes not related to human activity. Most often, global climate has changed because of variations in ...

Among the mysteries of the South American Monsoon, explains Fu, is how the first thunderstorms of the wet season get started. A monsoon is an atmospheric see-saw in which the large-scale circulation ...

Every month on Earth Matters, we offer a puzzling satellite image. The November 2024 puzzler is shown above. Your challenge is to use the comments section to tell us where it is, what we are looking ...

Air temperatures on Earth have been rising since the Industrial Revolution. While natural variability plays some part, the preponderance of evidence indicates that human activities—particularly ...

Desertification. The word invokes images of sand dunes blowing over abandoned farms as some irresistible, dark force steadily transforms fertile fields into inhospitable wasteland. The United Nations’ ...

Recognizing that different people and businesses treat their lawns differently, she had a computer simulate the effect on the water cycle and carbon cycle of different lawn management techniques. The ...

When scientists started to analyze the paleoclimate evidence in the Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, they found that the record also supported Milankovitch’s theory of when ice ages should occur.

The most valuable fossils found in sediment cores are from tiny animals with a calcium carbonate shell, called foraminifera. One species of foraminifera lives in the icy waters of the Arctic above ...

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on March 23, 1923, Joanne Gerould did not have an ideal childhood. Watching her mother struggle through a bad marriage and subsequent divorce gave Simpson a strong drive ...

The water, or hydrologic, cycle describes the pilgrimage of water as water molecules make their way from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back again, in some cases to below the surface. This ...