Planets & Transits
New Moon in Leo August 12, 2026
The New Moon arrives in Leo August 12 at 8:36 PM UTC, and with it comes a singular...
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- Written by: Fabio Bergamin, ETH Zurich
With the help of satellite data, scientists have shown that low-level cloud cover in the tropics thins out as Earth warms. Because this cloud cover has a cooling effect on the climate, the two-degree warming target set by the Paris Agreement may arrive sooner than predicted.
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- Written by: Jenny McGuire, Georgia Institute of Technology
If you flip over a log in a forest in the southeastern U.S., you are likely to find a squirming salamander.
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- Written by: Eric Daniel Fournier, University of California, Los Angeles and Alex Ricklefs, University of California, Los Angeles
Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) recently started the process of shutting down the Diablo Canyon generation facility, the last active nuclear power plant in California.
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- Written by: Kate Brauman, University of Minnesota
Water crises seem to be everywhere. In Flint, the water might kill us. In Syria, the worst drought in hundreds of years is exacerbating civil war. But plenty of dried-out places aren’t in conflict. For all the hoopla, even California hasn’t run out of water.
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- Written by: Sally Neas, YES! Magazine
Scientists believe that simple land management techniques can increase the rate at which carbon is absorbed from the atmosphere and stored in soils.
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- Written by: Andrew King, University of Melbourne and Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, UNSW Australia
The State of the Climate in 2015 report, led by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was released. Unfortunately, it paints a grim picture of the world’s climate last year.
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- Written by: Jane McAdam, UNSW Australia
Ethicist Peter Singer told Q&A that climate change-related sea level rises are “estimated to cause something like 750 million refugees just moving away from that flooding”.
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- Written by: Stephen Whitfield and Julian Ramirez-Villegas, University of Leeds
In a context of unprecedented climate change and food insecurity, adaptation in agricultural systems is critical in Africa. It is crucial to breed new varieties of staple crops that are adapted to deal with climatic conditions.
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- Written by: Brian Huntley, Durham University
Southern Africa is noted for its wealth of biological diversity and for its high proportion of endemic species. These are species that are unique to a specific location and are found nowhere else in the world. Many of the region’s endemic species can be found in South Africa’s fynbos and succulent Karoo biomes.
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- Written by: Philip Lloyd, Cape Peninsula University of Technology
The problem the world faces is that many of the resources that are truly threatened are the renewable ones, not, as so often assumed, the non-renewables.
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- Written by: Peter Fairley, Ensia
Political hurdles and low prices have made carbon pricing a low-impact affair. But there’s still hope it can help limit climate change. Earth’s atmosphere has long served as a free dump for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases generated by humans.
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- Written by: Peter Rayner, University of Melbourne; Cathy Trudinger, CSIRO; David Etheridge, CSIRO, and Mauro Rubino, Second University of Naples
The dip in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the Little Ice Age wasn’t caused by New World pioneers cutting a swathe through native American agriculture, as had been previously thought.
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- Written by: Daniel Stolte, University of Arizona
Forests take up 25 to 30 percent of human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide—a strong greenhouse gas—and therefore are considered to play a crucial role in mitigating the speed and magnitude of climate change.
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- Written by: Nick Longrich, University of Bath
Sixty six million years ago, the dinosaurs suddenly disappeared, along with most of the species on the planet. The extinction occurred at precisely the same time that a giant asteroid struck the Earth.
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- Written by: Mark Diesendorf, UNSW Australia
Global climate change, driven by human emissions of greenhouse gases, is already affecting the planet, with more heatwaves, droughts, wildfires and floods, and accelerating sea-level rise.
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- Written by: Charlotte Hsu, University at Buffalo
Experts say the results of a study of ancient zooplankton fossils offer a warning about mass extinction events: There’s a tipping point, at which dramatic declines in populations begin.
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- Written by: Dick Williams, Charles Darwin University and James Camac
Think of an Australian landscape and you’re unlikely to picture snow-capped mountains or alpine meadows. But that’s what you’ll find atop the peaks of the country’s southeastern corner.
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- Written by: Faith Kearns, University of California, Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources
The common wisdom about climate change is that it’s too big and too abstract for humans to comprehend, that it’s too hard to talk about. But it turns out many people are having tangible experiences of our changing environment.
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- Written by: Susan J. Prichard, University of Washington
In recent years wildfire seasons in the western United States have become so intense that many of us who make our home in dry, fire-prone areas are grappling with how to live with fire.
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- Written by: InnerSelf Staff
Even though Iowa is typically associated with red state politics, everyone there seems to agree that wind power makes economic sense for one of the windiest states in the country.
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- Written by: XiaoZhi Lim, Ensia
Smoldering peat gives off massive quantities of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, but the search for solutions is on.
