The zombie diseases of permafrost

What lurks in the Arctic’s thawing permafrost? Climate change, in other words, could awaken Earth’s forgotten pathogens. It is one of the most bizarre symptoms of global warming. And it has already begun to happen.

Expedition braves Arctic perils for climate science

After being foiled for years by the harsh conditions, researchers were finally able to collect key core samples from a remote lake in Svalbard—which may provide valuable insight into how our climate will change over the coming decades.

NASA launches powerful polar weather satellite

A workhorse Delta 2 rocket finally streaked away from the California coast early Saturday carrying a state-of-the-art $1.6 billion weather satellite into an orbit around Earth’s poles, the first of four intended to ensure reliable forecasting over the next two decades.

Engineering a more efficient system for harnessing carbon dioxide

A team of international scientists has reverse engineered a biosynthetic pathway for more effective carbon fixation. This novel pathway is based on a new CO2-fixing enzyme that is nearly 20 times faster than the most prevalent enzyme in nature responsible for capturing CO2 in plants by using sunlight as energy.

The Changing Colors of our Living Planet

Life. It’s the one thing that, so far, makes Earth unique among the thousands of other planets we’ve discovered. Since the fall of 1997, NASA satellites have continuously and globally observed all plant life at the surface of the land and ocean.

Global Carbon Emissions Once Again on the Rise

Global carbon emissions have risen 2 percent in 2017, to 37 billion tons, ending a three-year period of no growth that some experts had hoped meant that greenhouse gas emissions had peaked, according to a new analysis by 76 scientists in 15 countries.