Early Climate News

February 7, 2025

Top Headlines

Lead Contamination in Ancient Greece Points to Societal Change

Jan. 30, 2025 — Studies of sediment cores from the sea floor and the coastal regions surrounding the Aegean Sea show that humans contaminated the environment with lead early on in antiquity. Geoscientists conducted the analyses, which revealed that human activity ...

Sharks and Rays Benefit from Global Warming, but Not from CO2 in the Oceans

Jan. 30, 2025 — Sharks and rays have populated the world's oceans for around 450 million years, but more than a third of the species living today are severely threatened by overfishing and the loss of their habitat. Palaeobiologists have now investigated whether ...

Research on Past Hurricanes Aims to Reduce Future Risk

Jan. 17, 2025 — New research emphasizes that studying the impacts of past tropical storms can help communities better prepare for future storms. A key part of the study is analyzing the types and quantities of storm-related precipitation in affected regions to ...

Volcanic Eruption Caused Neolithic People to Sacrifice Unique 'Sun Stones'

Jan. 16, 2025 — 4,900 years ago, a Neolithic people on the Danish island Bornholm sacrificed hundreds of stones engraved with sun and field motifs. Archaeologists and climate scientists can now show that these ritual sacrifices coincided with a large volcanic ...

Latest Headlines

updated 9:24am EST

Asteroid Impact Sulfur Release Less Lethal in Dinosaur Extinction

Jan. 16, 2025 — Previous studies have posited that the mass extinction that wiped the dinosaurs off the face of the Earth was caused by the release of large volumes of sulfur from rocks within the Chicxulub impact ...

Speleothem and Ice Cores: Natural Climate Archives Offer New Insights Into the Climate History of Central Europe

Jan. 16, 2025 — The synchronization of data from two natural climate archives -- a speleothem from the Herbstlabyrinth Cave in Hesse (Germany) and ice cores from ...

Pioneering Research Exposes Huge Loss of Glaciers in One of the Fastest-Warming Places on Earth

Jan. 16, 2025 — A new study has revealed the alarming extent glaciers have shrunk over the past 40 years in a global warming hotspot -- and the biggest retreat has ...

Early Humans Adapted to Harsh Conditions More Than a Million Years Ago

Jan. 16, 2025 — A long-standing question about when archaic members of the genus Homo adapted to harsh environments such as deserts and rainforests has been answered in a new research ...

Ice Patches on Beartooth Plateau Reveal How Ancient Landscape Differed from Today's

Jan. 6, 2025 — Scientists say the frozen remnants of an ancient forest discovered 600 feet above the modern tree line on the Beartooth Plateau may portend possible ...

Lead Pollution Likely Caused Widespread IQ Declines in Ancient Rome, New Study Finds

Jan. 6, 2025 — Lead exposure is responsible for a range of human health impacts, with even relatively low levels impacting the cognitive development of children. ...

Increased Wildfire Activity May Be a Feature of Past Periods of Abrupt Climate Change

Jan. 2, 2025 — A new study investigating ancient methane trapped in Antarctic ice suggests that global increases in wildfire activity likely occurred during periods ...

Paleobiologists Unlock 500,000 Years of Fossil Records: Climate Change Impacts and Risks of Marine Carbon Removal

Dec. 23, 2024 — Climate change impacts not only life on land but also the largely unexplored deep-sea ecosystem, home to unique and largely unexplored fauna. ...

Dripstones Offer Insights Into Climate Dynamics in Europe

Dec. 20, 2024 — Investigations into precipitation patterns in eastern Central Europe since the end of the last ice age have shown that dynamic processes in atmospheric circulation, such as the North Atlantic jet ...

Researchers Identify a Mysterious Fossil Seed to Reveal New Chapters in Climate History of Los Angeles

Dec. 19, 2024 — Scientists have successfully identified a previously unknown species to Southern California from fossilized seeds, revealing a drought-fueled dance ...

Chart of Life Extended by Nearly 1.5 Billion Years

Dec. 19, 2024 — Fossilized skeletons and shells clearly show how evolution and extinction unfolded over the past half a billion years, but a new analysis extends the chart of life to nearly 2 billion years ago. The ...

Massive Volcanic Eruptions Did Not Cause the Extinction of Dinosaurs

Dec. 18, 2024 — While volcanism caused a temporary cold period, the effects had already worn off thousands of years before the meteorite, the ultimate cause of the dinosaur extinction event, ...

Prehistoric Rock in Japan Reveals Clues to Major Ocean Anoxic Event

Dec. 17, 2024 — Researchers analyzed radioisotopes in layers of fossilized volcanic ash. Decay of uranium to lead within tiny crystals enabled scientists to precisely pinpoint dates for certain events. They ...

Buried Landforms Reveal North Sea's Ancient Glacial Past

Dec. 13, 2024 — Glaciologists used sound waves to reveal Ice Age landforms buried beneath almost 1 km of mud in the North Sea. The results suggest that the landforms were produced about 1 million years ago, when an ...

Antarctica's Irregular Heartbeat Shows Signs of Rapid Melting

Dec. 10, 2024 — Geoscientists have created a new climate record for early Antarctic ice ages. It reveals that the early Antarctic ice sheet melted more rapidly than previously ...

Was 'Snowball Earth' a Global Event? Study Delivers Best Proof Yet

Nov. 11, 2024 — A series of rocks hiding around Colorado's Rocky Mountains may hold clues to a frigid period in Earth's past when glaciers several miles thick covered the entire ...

Groundbreaking Study Provides New Evidence of When Earth Was Slushy

Nov. 5, 2024 — At the end of the last global ice age, the deep-frozen Earth reached a built-in limit of climate change and thawed into a slushy planet. Results provide the first direct geochemical evidence of the ...

Reconstructing Ancient Climate Provides Clues to Climate Change

Nov. 4, 2024 — Research helps reconstruct an ancient climate and challenges the timing of the Andes Mountains ...

Buried Alive: Carbon Dioxide Release from Magma Deep Beneath Ancient Volcanoes Was a Hidden Driver of Earth's Past Climate

Oct. 30, 2024 — A team discovered that, contrary to present scientific understanding, ancient volcanoes continued to spew carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from deep within the Earth long past their period of ...

Melting Arctic Sea-Ice Could Affect Global Ocean Circulation

Oct. 27, 2024 — The warming climate in polar regions may significantly disrupt ocean circulation patterns, a new study indicates. Scientists discovered that in the distant past, growing inflows of freshwater from ...

Fossils Unveil How Southern Europe's Ecosystem Changed Through Glacial-Interglacial Stages

Oct. 23, 2024 — Fossils from more than 600,000 years ago reveal how Southern Europe's animal community shifted between warm and cold climate fluctuations, according to a new ...

New Ice Core Data Provides Insight Into Climate 'Tipping Points' During the Last Ice Age

Oct. 21, 2024 — New research from multiple ice cores collected across Greenland with data spanning up to 120,000 years provides new understanding of abrupt Dansgaard-Oeschger events, how they unfold and what that ...

Weather-Changing El Nino Oscillation Is at Least 250 Million Years Old

Oct. 21, 2024 — A new modeling study shows that the El Nino event, a huge blob of warm ocean water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can change rainfall patterns around the globe, was present at least 250 million ...

Adaptability of Trees Persists After Millions of Years of Climate Change

Oct. 14, 2024 — Seven of the most common forest trees in Europe have been shown to be able to shelter their genetic diversity from major shifts in environmental conditions. This is despite their ranges having shrunk ...

Early Human Species Benefited from Food Diversity in Steep Mountainous Terrain

Oct. 10, 2024 — A new study shows that the patchwork of different ecosystems found in mountainous regions played a key role in the evolution of ...

Iron Nuggets in the Pinnacles Unlock Secrets of Ancient and Future Climates

Oct. 2, 2024 — Small iron-rich formations found within Western Australia's Pinnacles, which are part of the world's largest wind-blown limestone belt spanning more than 1000km, have provided new insights ...

Discovery of 3,775-Year-Old Preserved Log Supports 'Wood Vaulting' as a Climate Solution

Sep. 27, 2024 — A new study suggests that an ordinary old log could help refine strategies to tackle climate change. A team of researchers analyzed a 3,775-year-old log and the soil it was excavated from. Their ...

Harvests, Wildfires, Epidemics: How the Jet Stream Has Shaped Extreme Weather in Europe for Centuries

Sep. 25, 2024 — Tree-ring data reveal that periodic shifts in strong winds high above the Earth's surface have driven opposite climates in different parts of Europe for the past 700 years and likely much ...

Over Nearly Half a Billion Years, Earth's Global Temperature Has Changed Drastically, Driven by Carbon Dioxide

Sep. 19, 2024 — A new study offers the most detailed glimpse yet into how Earth's surface temperature has changed over the past 485 million years. The data show that Earth has been and can be warmer than today ...

Explaining Dramatic Planet-Wide Changes After World's Last 'Snowball Earth' Event

Sep. 18, 2024 — Some of the most dramatic climatic events in our planet's history are 'Snowball Earth' events that happened hundreds of millions of years ago, when almost the entire planet was encased ...