News by Subject Earth Science

The best known sauropod dinosaurs were huge herbivorous creatures, whose brain structures were markedly different from those of their evolutionary predecessors, for the earliest representatives of the group were small, lithe carnivores.

Satellite imagery shows that Jose is a large storm, with a large reach. NASA's Aqua satellite captured cloud top temperatures of Tropical Storm Jose that revealed the strongest storms were in the northeastern part of the tropical cyclone but the storm is so large that it is causing dangerous ocean conditions from Bermuda to the US East coast.

The rainfall over the Yangtze River valley in the summer of 2016 was much weaker than that in 1998, despite the intensity of the 2016 El Nino having been as strong as that in 1998. A group of scientists from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, have now revealed the remarkable role played by the mid-latitude circulation in this surprising feature.

Sea Surface Temperature forcing can explain about 2/3 heat wave variability and the other 1/3 comes from atmospheric internal variability during 1979-2008.

When the government gives citizens a personal stake in forested land, trees don't disappear as quickly and environmental harm slows down.

Categorizing species can get hazy at small, microbial scales. After all, the classical definition of species as interbreeding individuals with sexually viable offspring doesn't apply to asexual organisms. Examining shared DNA doesn't help either: collectively, E. coli bacteria have only 20 percent of genes in common. In new research, a Harvard researcher asks: could organism interactions be described without mentioning species at all?

Forest fires in Southeast Asia during the El Niño droughts of 2015 caused considerable disruption to the biodiversity of the region due to the smoke-induced 'haze' they created, according to new research led by Benjamin Lee at the University of Kent and the National Parks Board in Singapore.