The Great Barrier Reef has died 5 times in the last 30,000 years
The Great Barrier Reef has resurrected itself five times in the last 30,000 years after being wiped out by dramatic environmental shifts.
Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs caused massive global warming
The asteroid that struck Earth 66 million years ago caused dramatic climate change, which could mean we are underestimating how much the planet will warm in the coming centuries
Worst-case climate change scenario is even worse than we thought
A possible future that climatologists treat as the worst of the worst, because it would produce huge greenhouse gas emissions, might lead to even more emissions than believed
We messed up our figures on how much carbon dioxide is too much
Climatologists have tried to set a “carbon budget” that tells us how much greenhouse gas we can emit and stay below 2°C, but their efforts have only caused confusion
Tourism is four times worse for the climate than we thought
Tourism is being blamed for 8 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions, and it emits more every year – making it harder to stop dangerous climate change
People adapted to the cold and got more migraines as a result
A gene variant that helps humans cope with colder climates also seems to have put people living in northerly regions at a higher risk of migraine
Worst mass extinctions may have been caused by rising mountains
A pair of mass extinctions struck in quick succession just before the dinosaur era, and the birth of a mountain range in South Africa may have been partly to blame
Plants love carbon dioxide, but too much could be bad for them
Most plants were expected to grow more as CO2 levels rise, but a 20-year experiment suggests that the extra CO2 is somehow stunting plant growth, which could make climate change worse
Most UK plants will flower at once in short ‘condensed spring’
Plants in the UK are set to blaze into flower virtually simultaneously, because flowering has been delayed two weeks by the unusually cold weather
A melting ice shelf can cause rapid ice loss 900 kilometres away
If one part of an ice shelf starts to thin, it can trigger rapid ice losses in other regions as much as 900 kilometres away – contributing to sea level rise