Struggling to keep my balance, I teeter along a narrow plankway that wends through the rolling foothills near Denali National Park and Preserve. Just ahead, Northern Arizona University ecologist Ted Schuur, a lanky 6-footer, leads the way to Eight Mile Lake, his research field site since 2003. Occasionally I slip off the planks onto the squishy vegetative carpet below. The feathery mosses, sedges and diminutive shrubs that grow here—Labrador tea, low bush cranberry, bog rosemary—are well-adapted to wet, acidic soils.

Environmental scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have led an international collaboration to improve satellite observations of tropical forests.

The Silk Road pattern in meteorology, is a wave-like teleconnection pattern in summer propagating eastward under the wave-guidance of the upper-tropospheric Asian westerly jet stream. It shows up as alternate southerly and northerly anomalies (or cyclonic and anticyclonic circulation anomalies) along the jet, and is the leading mode of the interannual variability of upper-tropospheric meridional winds. It is interesting that this meteorological teleconnection pattern covers most domains along the ancient Silk Road, and exerts significant influences on climatic anomalies over a broad area of the Eurasian continent.

Predicting the weather a few days in advance is a complex undertaking. But what about the weather 3 to 4 weeks from now? Producing that kind of forecast is a daunting challenge  — but is crucial for a slew of communities. These future forecasts, called sub-seasonal predictions, can help energy companies determine how much power to produce to meet demands for upcoming months; they assist water resource managers controlling reservoir levels ahead of upcoming water use; they even help farmers understand which crops to plant in the face of potential dry weather.

A NASA study based on an innovative technique for crunching torrents of satellite data provides the clearest picture yet of changes in Antarctic ice flow into the ocean. The findings confirm accelerating ice losses from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and reveal surprisingly steady rates of flow from its much larger neighbor to the east.

Tropical trees in the Amazon Rainforest may be more drought resistant than previously thought, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Riverside.

New CU Boulder-led research has established a causal link between climate warming and the localized extinction of a common Rocky Mountain flowering plant, a result that could serve as a herald of future population declines. 

The ocean around the Galápagos Islands has been warming since the 1970s, according to a new analysis of the natural temperature archives stored in coral reefs.

Peaking global CO2 emissions as soon as possible is crucial for limiting the risks of sea-level rise, even if global warming is limited to well below 2°C. A study now published in the journal Nature Communications analyzes for the first time the sea-level legacy until 2300 within the constraints of the Paris Agreement.

Recent changes to vegetation cover are causing the Earth's surface to heat up. Activities like cutting down evergreen forests for agricultural expansion in the tropics create energy imbalances that lead to higher local surface temperatures and contribute to global warming.