Earth and Atmospheric Sciences News

In the film The Day After Tomorrow, the world enters the icy grip of a new glacial period within the space of just a few weeks. Now new research shows that this scenario may not be so far from the truth after all.

A new study provides "incontrovertible evidence" that the volcanic super-eruption of Toba on the island of Sumatra about 73,000 years ago deforested much of central India, some 3,000 miles from the epicenter, researchers report.

Paleontologists now recognize that there were five particularly large, worldwide mass extinction events during the history of life,

Much of our planet's mineral wealth was deposited billions of years ago when Earth's chemical cycles were different from today's.

Researchers at UC Santa Barbara's Center for Polymers and Organic Solids (CPOS) have announced a major advance in the synthesis of organic polymers for plastic solar cells.

Increasing temperatures at high altitudes are fueling the post-1950 growth spurt seen in bristlecone pines, the world's oldest trees, according to new research.

A dangerous level of carbon dioxide and methane gas haunts Lake Kivu, the freshwater lake system bordering Rwanda and the Republic of Congo.

Contrary to preconceived notions, the atmosphere and the oceans were perhaps not formed from vapors emitted during intense volcanism at the dawning of our planet.

New data show that the balance between the airborne and the absorbed fraction of carbon dioxide has stayed constant since 1850, despite emissions of carbon dioxide having risen from about 2 billion tons a year in 1850 to 35 billion tons a year now.

The Alps are growing just as quickly in height as they are shrinking. This paradoxical result comes from a new study by a group of German and Swiss geoscientists.