Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are rising more rapidly than expected, increasing the danger that without aggressive action to reduce emissions the climate system could cross a critical threshold by the end of the century, warns a leading member of the Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Stephen Schneider also calls for academics to help by doing outreach and says developed nations must get their own greenhouse gas emissions under control if they expect developing nations to do so.

Two BYU researchers who just returned from Antarctica are reporting a hardy worm that withstands its cold climate by cranking out antifreeze. And when its notoriously dry home runs out of water, it just dries itself out and goes into suspended animation until liquid water brings it back to life.

Increasing greenhouse gases could delay, or even postpone indefinitely the recovery of stratospheric ozone in some regions of the Earth, a new study suggests. This change might take a toll on public health.

The existing infrastructure for responding to maritime accidents in the Arctic is limited and more needs to be done to enhance emergency response capacity as Arctic sea ice declines and ship traffic in the region increases, according to new report released today by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Glaciers around the globe continue to melt at high rates. Tentative figures for the year 2007, of the World Glacier Monitoring Service at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, indicate a further loss of average ice thickness of roughly 0.67 meter water equivalent (m w.e.). Some glaciers in the European Alps lost up to 2.5 m w.e.

Here on Earth we worry about our planet's atmosphere warming by a few degrees on average over the next century, and even weather fronts bring temporary changes in temperature of no more than tens of degrees.

A new study reports that charcoal particles left by wildfires in sediments of 35 North American lake beds don't readily support the theory that comets exploding over the continent 12,900 years ago sparked a cooling period known as the Younger Dryas.

Pete Fulé, an NAU associate professor in the School of Forestry and a director of the university's Ecological Restoration Institute, is a coauthor of "Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States," an article to be published in the Jan. 23 issue of Science journal.

An extensive thirty years study published in Science magazine on Thursday indicates that the trees of the western U.S. forests are disappearing at an accelerated rate.

Scientists studying climate change have long believed that while most of the rest of the globe has been getting steadily warmer, a large part of Antarctica – the East Antarctic Ice Sheet – has actually been getting colder.