Environmental Awareness News

July 16, 2025

Top Headlines

25 Years, 1 Coastline Report Card: The Shocking Wins and Misses

July 16, 2025 — Twenty-five years after first warning that oil spills would wane while invasive species and climate impacts would surge, an international team revisits its coastal forecasts and finds many bull's-eyes, alongside surprising misses. Plastic pollution, ...

Lasers Capture the Invisible Dance of Wind and Waves

July 10, 2025 — A laser-equipped research platform has, for the first time, photographed airflow just millimeters above ocean waves, revealing two simultaneous wind–wave energy-transfer tricks—slow short waves steal power from the breeze, while long giants ...

No Training Needed: How Humans Instinctively Read Nature’s Signals

July 10, 2025 — People can intuitively sense how biodiverse a forest is just by looking at photos or listening to sounds, and their gut feelings surprisingly line up with what scientists ...

Where Wild Buffalo Roam Free — and Collide With City Life in Hong Kong

July 8, 2025 — Feral water buffalo now roam Hong Kong s South Lantau marshes, and a 657-person survey shows they ignite nostalgia, wonder, and worry in equal measure. Many residents embrace them as living links to a fading rural past and potential conservation ...

Antarctica’s Slow Collapse Caught on Camera—and It’s Accelerating

July 7, 2025 — Long-lost 1960s aerial photos let Copenhagen researchers watch Antarctica’s Wordie Ice Shelf crumble in slow motion. By fusing film with satellites, they discovered warm ocean water, not surface ponds, drives the destruction, and mapped “pinning ...

Scientists Thought the Arctic Was Sealed in Ice — They Were Wrong

July 5, 2025 — For decades, scientists believed the Arctic Ocean was sealed under a massive slab of ice during the coldest ice ages — but new research proves otherwise. Sediment samples from the seafloor, paired with cutting-edge climate simulations, show that ...

Even Low Levels of Air Pollution May Quietly Scar Your Heart, MRI Study Finds

July 3, 2025 — Breathing polluted air—even at levels considered “safe”—may quietly damage your heart. A new study using advanced MRI scans found that people exposed to more air pollution showed early signs ...

Antarctica’s Ocean Flip: Satellites Catch Sudden Salt Surge Melting Ice from Below

July 2, 2025 — A massive and surprising change is unfolding around Antarctica. Scientists have discovered that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, and sea ice is melting at record speed, enough to match the size ...

New Orleans Is Sinking—and So Are Its $15 Billion Flood Defenses

June 28, 2025 — Parts of New Orleans are sinking at alarming rates — including some of the very floodwalls built to protect it. A new satellite-based study finds that some areas are losing nearly two inches of elevation per year, threatening the effectiveness of ...

Only 3 Years Left: The Carbon Budget for 1. 5 °C Is Almost Gone

June 27, 2025 — At current emission rates, we re just over three years away from blowing through the remaining carbon budget to limit warming to 1.5 C. This new international study paints a stark picture: the pace of climate change is accelerating, seas are rising ...

Tiny Creatures, Massive Impact: How Zooplankton Store 65 Million Tonnes of Carbon Annually

June 27, 2025 — Zooplankton like copepods aren’t just fish food—they’re carbon-hauling powerhouses. By diving deep into the ocean each winter, they’re secretly stashing 65 million tonnes of carbon far below ...

This Breakthrough Turns Old Tech Into Pure Gold — No Mercury, No Cyanide, Just Light and Salt

June 27, 2025 — At Flinders University, scientists have cracked a cleaner and greener way to extract gold—not just from ore, but also from our mounting piles of e-waste. By using a compound normally found in pool ...

Latest Headlines

updated 2:31pm EDT

Fighting Fire With Fire: How Prescribed Burns Reduce Wildfire Damage and Pollution

June 30, 2025 — Wildfires are becoming more intense and dangerous, but a new Stanford-led study offers hope: prescribed burns—intentionally set, controlled ...

Ancient Carbon ‘burps’ Caused Ocean Oxygen Crashes — and We’re Repeating the Mistake

June 24, 2025 — Over 300 million years ago, Earth experienced powerful bursts of carbon dioxide from natural sources—like massive volcanic eruptions—that ...

123,000-Year-Old Coral Fossils Warn of Sudden, Catastrophic Sea-Level Rise

June 23, 2025 — Ancient coral fossils from the remote Seychelles islands have unveiled a dramatic warning for our future—sea levels can rise in sudden, sharp bursts even when global temperatures stay ...

Winter Sea Ice Supercharges Southern Ocean’s CO2 Uptake

June 18, 2025 — A breakthrough study has uncovered that the Southern Ocean's power to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere fluctuates dramatically depending on winter sea ice. When sea ice lingers longer into ...

Collaboration Can Unlock Australia's Energy Transition Without Sacrificing Natural Capital

June 3, 2025 — Australia can reach net-zero emissions and still protect its natural treasures but only if everyone works together. New research from Princeton and ...

Molecular Link Between Air Pollution and Pregnancy Risks

June 3, 2025 — A new study found exposure to specific tiny particles in air pollution during pregnancy are associated with increased risk of various negative birth ...

Geological Time Capsule Highlights Great Barrier Reef's Resilience

June 2, 2025 — New research adds to our understanding of how rapidly rising sea levels due to climate change foreshadow the end of the Great Barrier Reef as we know it. The findings suggest the reef can withstand ...

Air-Quality Monitoring Underestimates Toxic Emissions to Salton Sea Communities, Study Finds

June 2, 2025 — Researchers showed that hydrogen sulfide, which is associated with numerous health conditions, is emitted from California's largest lake at levels ...

Small Currents, Big Impact: Satellite Breakthrough Reveals Hidden Ocean Forces

May 30, 2025 — While scientists have long studied currents of large eddies, the smaller ones -- called submesoscale eddies -- are notoriously difficult to detect. ...

Does Outdoor Air Pollution Affect Indoor Air Quality? It Could Depend on Buildings' HVAC

May 30, 2025 — Researchers determined how much outdoor particulate pollution affects indoor air quality. Their study concluded pollution from inversion and dust ...

A Cheap and Easy Potential Solution for Lowering Carbon Emissions in Maritime Shipping

May 29, 2025 — Reducing travel speeds and using an intelligent queuing system at busy ports can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from oceangoing container vessels by 16-24%, according to researchers. Not only ...

The Ocean Seems to Be Getting Darker

May 27, 2025 — Scientists, who have spent more than a decade examining the impact of artificial light at night on the world's coasts and oceans, have shown that more than one-fifth of the global ocean -- an ...

How Marine Plankton Adapts to a Changing World

May 23, 2025 — Plankton may be tiny, but they play an important role in the ocean. As the foundation of marine ecosystems, they support ocean food webs and help regulate Earth's climate by storing carbon. ...

When the Sea Moves Inland: A Global Climate Wake-Up Call from Bangladesh's Delta

May 23, 2025 — As sea levels climb and weather grows more extreme, coastal regions everywhere are facing a creeping threat: salt. Salinization of freshwater and soils adversely affects 500 million people around the ...

Managing Surrogate Species, Providing a Conservation Umbrella for More Species

May 23, 2025 — A new study shows that monitoring and managing select bird species can provide benefits for other species within specific ...

Why Europe's Fisheries Management Needs a Rethink

May 22, 2025 — Every year, total allowable catches (TACs) and fishing quotas are set across Europe through a multi-step process -- and yet many fish stocks in EU waters remain overfished. A new analysis reveals ...

Imaging Technique Removes the Effect of Water in Underwater Scenes

May 21, 2025 — SeaSplat is an image-analysis tool that cuts through the ocean's optical effects to generate images of underwater environments reveal an ocean scene's true colors. Researchers paired the ...

Yeast Reveals How Species Adapt to a Warmer Climate

May 21, 2025 — How do organisms adapt to climate change? A new study reveals the complex interplay between genetic diversity and temperature tolerance ...

Fool's Gold: A Hidden Climate Stabilizer

May 21, 2025 — Researchers look to extremes in the past to study how the system reacts to imbalances. They detail an overlooked mechanism for how the ocean can help stabilize massive releases of carbon into the ...

Southeast Asia Could Prevent Up to 36,000 Ozone-Related Early Deaths a Year by 2050 With Stricter Air Pollution Controls

May 21, 2025 — A study has found that implementing robust air pollution control measures could mean Southeast Asian countries prevent as many as 36,000 ozone-related premature deaths each year by ...

Agrivoltaics Enjoys Comparatively High Acceptance

May 20, 2025 — Photovoltaic systems are increasingly being installed not only on roofs but also on open land. This does not always meet with citizens' approval. What is known as agrivoltaics (Agri-PV), ...

Thousands of Animal Species Threatened by Climate Change

May 20, 2025 — A novel analysis suggests more than 3,500 animal species are threatened by climate change and also sheds light on huge gaps in fully understanding the risk to the animal ...

Surprise Baby Whale Sightings Reveal There's Still Much to Learn About Humpbacks

May 20, 2025 — Humpback whales are not always born in tropical waters, new research has shown -- challenging long-held assumptions about their breeding and migration behaviors, while raising new questions for ...

Bees Facing New Threats, Putting Our Survival and Theirs at Risk

May 19, 2025 — A new report identifies the top 12 emerging threats that could accelerate pollinator losses within the next 5-15 years, according to ten of the world's leading ...

Scientists Use Salinity to Trace Changes in the US Northeast Coastal Ocean

May 19, 2025 — The near-bottom water on the U.S. Northeast continental shelf provides a critical cold-water habitat for the rich regional marine ecosystem. This 'cold pool' preserves winter temperatures, ...

Study Reveals Healing the Ozone Hole Helps the Southern Ocean Take Up Carbon

May 16, 2025 — New research suggests that the negative effects of the ozone hole on the carbon uptake of the Southern Ocean are reversible, but only if greenhouse gas emissions rapidly decrease. The study finds ...

Ancient Ocean Sediments Link Changes in Currents to Cooling of Northern Hemisphere 3.6 Million Years Ago

May 16, 2025 — New research from an international group looking at ancient sediment cores in the North Atlantic has for the first time shown a strong correlation between sediment changes and a marked period of ...

Scientists Use Fossils to Assess the Health of Florida's Largest Remaining Seagrass Bed: Surprisingly, It's Doing Well!

May 15, 2025 — A new study shows that seagrass ecosystems along the northern half of Florida's Gulf Coast have remained relatively healthy and undisturbed for the last several thousand ...

What Behavioral Strategies Motivate Environmental Action?

May 14, 2025 — A collaborative study tested 17 strategies in an 'intervention tournament.' Interventions targeting future thinking, such as writing a letter for a child to read in the future, are the most ...

Sharp Depletion in Soil Moisture Drives Land Water to Flow Into Oceans, Contributing to Sea Level Rise

May 14, 2025 — The increasing frequency of once-in-a-decade agricultural and ecological drought has underscored the urgency of studying hydrological changes. A research team has analyzed the estimated changes in ...