Reference Terms
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Fossil fuel
Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons, primarily coal, fuel oil or natural gas, formed from the remains of dead plants and animals. In common dialogue, the term fossil fuel also includes hydrocarbon-containing natural resources that are not derived from animal or plant sources. These are sometimes known instead as mineral fuels. The utilization of fossil fuels has enabled large-scale industrial development and largely supplanted water-driven mills, as well as the combustion of wood or peat for heat. Fossil fuel is a general term for buried combustible geologic deposits of organic materials, formed from decayed plants and animals that have been converted to crude oil, coal, natural gas, or heavy oils by exposure to heat and pressure in the earth's crust over hundreds of millions of years. The burning of fossil fuels by humans is the largest source of emissions of carbon dioxide, which is one of the greenhouse gases that allows radiative forcing and contributes to global warming. A small portion of hydrocarbon-based fuels are biofuels derived from atmospheric carbon dioxide, and thus do not increase the net amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
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Earth & Climate News
September 16, 2026
Sep. 16, 2026 Scientists have developed a solar-powered desalination system that turns seawater into fresh water while removing nearly all of the leftover salt as a solid instead of producing harmful brine. The self-cleaning technology could also recover valuable ...
Sep. 16, 2026 U.S. irrigation produces some greenhouse gas emissions, but new research suggests it prevents vastly more by allowing farmers to grow more food on less land. Without irrigation, replacing lost crop yields could require converting natural ecosystems ...
Sep. 15, 2026 The Hunga Tonga eruption may have triggered a surprising chemical reaction that destroyed some of the methane released into the atmosphere. Scientists say the discovery could reshape estimates of methane pollution and inspire new methods for slowing ...
Sep. 14, 2026 More than 60 years after surveys suggested a deep coral reef off Benin was probably dead, scientists have found it alive. Cameras revealed healthy-looking coral patches supporting multiple fish species more than 50 meters beneath the surface. The ...
Sep. 14, 2026 A World War I submarine wreck off Denmark is leaking TNT into the surrounding water, seabed, and marine life more than a century after it sank. Scientists warn that thousands of similar wrecks could pose growing environmental risks as they continue ...
Sep. 13, 2026 Mount Etna’s ancient eruptions followed radically different paths, with some magma lingering near the surface for weeks while other magma raced upward from nearly 30 kilometers deep in just hours. Scientists traced the difference to volcanic gases ...
Sep. 13, 2026 Scientists have found that Arctic cyclones become especially destructive when several strike one after another. These storm clusters cause about twice as much sea ice loss as isolated cyclones, with impacts that persist roughly two and a half times ...
Sep. 13, 2026 The Indian and Pacific oceans have been climatically linked for centuries, but scientists say that connection is now breaking down in an exceptional way. Ancient climate records suggest volcanoes disrupted the relationship in the past, while today ...
Sep. 12, 2026 Ancient rocks from Western Australia suggest water was reaching deep inside Earth more than three billion years ago, long before modern plate tectonics may have fully developed. Researchers propose that water-rich pieces of crust periodically sank ...
Sep. 11, 2026 Britain’s wasps have become mysteriously scarce this summer, and scientists suspect an unusual combination of temperature swings, heatwaves, and food shortages may be responsible. Even the wasps that remain appear unusually small, potentially ...
Sep. 10, 2026 The Mediterranean may seem far removed from the world’s major tsunami zones, but history and modern modeling show that destructive waves can strike the French Riviera with surprisingly little warning. Some tsunamis could reach shore in under 10 ...
Sep. 6, 2026 East Antarctica gained an astonishing 695 billion tons of ice between 2021 and 2023, temporarily slowing Antarctica’s long-term decline. Researchers found that warming thousands of miles away in ...
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Sep. 16, 2026 A new study suggests Earth formed almost entirely from material in the inner Solar System, challenging the idea that water-rich material from beyond ...
Sep. 10, 2026 Scientists have used DNA from living descendants to identify four more members of the doomed Franklin expedition, including Harry Peglar, whose identity had remained uncertain for 166 years. The ...
Sep. 9, 2026 Volcanic rocks in Colombia are rewriting the timeline of the collision between Central and South America. Their magnetic signatures show that major ...
Sep. 6, 2026 Indonesia’s dangerous peat fires are surging early in the 2026 fire season as a strengthening El Niño and severe drought dry out wetlands that can burn underground for months. These slow ...
Sep. 4, 2026 Puerto Rico’s normally rainy season has instead brought a severe and fast-growing drought. By August 25, three-quarters of the territory was in at least moderate drought, with extreme drought ...
Sep. 4, 2026 A giant iceberg measuring more than 76 square kilometers broke from Greenland’s Petermann Glacier in August 2026, marking the Arctic’s largest glacier calving event since 2020. The berg later ...
Sep. 3, 2026 Morning glories may be getting caught in an evolutionary tug-of-war between surviving climate change and attracting increasingly scarce pollinators. Over just nine years, researchers found that the ...
Sep. 3, 2026 Deep beneath Mars, scientists have found evidence of enormous magmatic systems once thought to require Earth-like plate tectonics. Seismic measurements suggest molten rock repeatedly evolved and ...
Sep. 3, 2026 Elephant Butte Reservoir, New Mexico’s largest reservoir, plunged to just 1.4 percent capacity in July 2026 after years of extreme drought and record early snowmelt. The dramatic decline exposed ...
Sep. 2, 2026 NASA-funded studies suggest Earth’s climate has been influenced by both the Sun’s travels through dense regions of the Milky Way and the violent superflares of its youth. Those events may help ...