Climate-related environmental disasters have not let up this summer. Heat waves are roasting the United States, Europe, China and North Africa (SN: 7/19/23), while wildfires are raging in Canada and Greece. Choking…
Author: Carolyn Gramling
July 2023 nailed an unfortunate world record: hottest month ever recorded
Most humans felt the scorching touch of climate change in July. July 2023 was the hottest month ever recorded, and climate change made the elevated temperatures across 51 percent of Earth’s land…
Cow poop emits climate-warming methane. Adding red algae may help
Earth has a cow problem. Cow agriculture is one of the largest emitters of climate-warming methane to the atmosphere. But adding a type of red algae known for its methane-inhibiting properties to…
50 years ago, scientists thought they had found Earth’s oldest rocks
Oldest rocks — Science News, July 21, 1973 Until recently, Greenland possessed the oldest known rocks in the world. They date back 3.7 billion years (SN: 12/9/72, p. 374). Now granite and…
The most intense sunlight on Earth can be found in the Atacama Desert
Forget Arizona or Florida — sun worshippers ought to head to the Atacama Desert in South America. It’s there that the sun’s rays on Earth are most intense, beating out places like…
‘The Next Supercontinent’ predicts a future collision of North America and Asia
The Next SupercontinentRoss MitchellUniv. of Chicago, $30 Today, there are seven continents. Some 200 million years from now, there will be just one. In The Next Supercontinent, geophysicist Ross Mitchell previews what…
Mystery of gravity hole in Indian Ocean solved
The mystery around a region where Earth’s gravitational pull is weaker than other parts of our planet may finally have an answer. In the middle of the Indian Ocean lies a gravity…
AI detectors have a bias against non-native English speakers
GPT detectors wrongfully flagged a majority of submissions by non-native English speakers as AI-generated content, raising concerns about their use. For better or worse, generative AI models have sparked a revolution. Their…
Canada’s Crawford Lake could mark the beginning of the Anthropocene
Scientists are one step closer to defining a new chapter in geology, one in which humans have become the dominant driver of Earth’s climate and environment. Out of 12 locations around the…
This seagrass is taking over the Chesapeake Bay. That’s good and bad news
On the U.S. mid-Atlantic seaboard, efforts to restore the health of the Chesapeake Bay over the last 10 years have faced a mysterious challenge — massive booms and busts of the seagrass…