Reefs are made up of many coral species that live in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with microscopically small algae hosted in their tissue. These symbiont algae produce sugars that…

Researchers have quantified how the Greenland Ice Sheet reacted to a warm period 8,000-5,000 years ago, when temperatures were 2-4 degrees C warmer than present and so could inform us what might…

Remote monitoring of large swathes of otherwise inaccessible ocean using satellites reveals an alarming picture: ocean acidity. The Earth's oceans take up about a quarter of global CO2 emissions,…

There've been some recent environmental claims about methane seepage, flaming tapwater, but what were not staged have been due to nature.  It's a tale almost as old as earth. But outside…

Arctic sea ice extent plunged 2001 to 2007 but then rebounded between 2007 and 2013. Warming world or not, periods of no change - and rapid change - at the world's northern reaches are the new normal…

GOCE gravity satellite. ESA We might like to think of the earth as fixed and unmoving but that is not the case. Things are always shifting, even if we may not have noticed in the past. But when sea…

Looks healthy, but still lacks the big predatory fish... how would it rate on the Promonitor Index? AF Johnson, CC BY-NC-SA By Andrew Frederick Johnson, University of California, San Diego We know…

As the Earth warms and glaciers all over the world begin to melt, the natural concern has been how all of that extra water will contribute to sea level rise. Less considered is what happens to…

Scientists propose a new, potentially more accurate way, to measure the rate of sea level rise. Shutterstock By Carling Hay, Harvard University When you ask yourself what the biggest unanswered…

After mass bleaching in 1998, more than half of coral reefs in the Seychelles have slowly recovered. Nick Graham By John Pandolfi, The University of Queensland Coral reefs are the poster child for…