Subscribe Now

As Earth’s climate warms and local temperatures and precipitation patterns change, plants and animals move to stay within their zones of preferred temperature and moisture levels. Obviously, animals can move much more readily than plants, which can only move generation-by-generation as their seeds are spread by winds, water and the more mobile animals. A particular [...]

Climate change means geographic changes in the distribution of certain temperature and moisture conditions. Because most species are optimized to live within specific climate conditions, a mobile species will try to track these conditions as they expand, contract or shift to the north/south or uphill/ downhill. Less mobile species may adjust their life cycles or [...]

Living organic matter has its origins in the atmosphere: energy from the Sun enables plants and some microbes to build sugars out of water and atmospheric carbon dioxide. These sugars ultimately feed the rest of life on Earth. When an organism, or a part of an organism such as a leaf, dies, it decomposes and [...]

Mosquitoes have existed in the same basic form for at least 76 million years and have spread to every continent except Antarctica. What’s the secret to their success? Mosquitoes are one of the few insects that routinely lay eggs and mature in small, transient bodies of water, such as tree cavities and even hoof prints. [...]

Ever notice how some things take longer to cool than others? Go outside at night during the summer and you will notice that objects like brick walls and concrete sidewalks are still warmer than the surrounding air, while wooden fences and the ground itself are not as warm. These differences in temperature exist because various [...]

Today, the Indian subcontinent is connected to Eurasia. Seventy million years ago, however, this was not the case. Between 70 and 40 million years ago, the configuration of Earth’s tectonic plates moved the subcontinent north across what was then known as the Tethys Ocean and slammed it into Eurasia. The Himalaya Mountains were created by [...]

If Earth had a newspaper to chronicle its 4.5 billion year existence, one of the biggest headlines of the last 10 million years would be the joining of North and South America through the closure of the Central American Seaway (CAS). The Central American nations of Panama and Costa Rica are “young” landscapes, formed by [...]

As Earth’s temperature rises the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. This increase in water vapor causes changes in how, where and when clouds form and these changes influence the general state of Earth’s climate. Trivia Question: How do clouds impact Earth’s climate? a)    They cool the planet by reflecting sunlight. b)    They [...]

As continental interiors move between hot conditions in the summer and cold conditions in the winter, ocean temperatures stay relatively steady. Seasonal contrasts between land and ocean temperatures create differences in atmospheric pressure, and these differences drive circulations systems that create seasonal precipitation patterns. Trivia Question: Seasonal precipitation patterns driven by land-ocean temperature contrasts are [...]

Shifts in temperature related to climate change cause species to shift their favored territories, the seasonal timing of their activities and physiological traits including body size. As a given location becomes warmer, a population of warm-blooded animals such as mammals become: a)    bigger over successive generations. b)    smaller over successive generations. The correct answer is [...]

Plants take carbon out of the air and combine it with water to build their bodies, releasing oxygen as a bi-product, which sustains animals and humans. On land, plants like trees, grasses and shrubs, do most of the carbon uptake while in the oceans most of the job is done by microscopic, photosynthetic organisms called [...]

Measuring how much energy is in Earth’s climate system involves measuring things like surface temperatures, ocean temperatures, the planet’s ice volume, sea level and the persistence and frequency of certain weather events like heavy rains. Sustained changes in the amount of energy in Earth’s climate system and corresponding changes in things like temperature, ice volume [...]

Volcanoes are openings in the Earth’s crust that allow magma and gases to erupt into the surrounding atmosphere. Large volcanic eruptions, particularly eruptions in the tropics like Mt. Pinatubo, which blew in 1991, have noticeable effects on global temperature. Trivia Question: Following periods of frequent volcanic eruptions, what does Earth’s climate tend to do? a.   [...]

Warmer temperatures in the Great Lakes region have been accompanied by declines in annual -mean lake ice cover since 1973. On average, each year during this period has had 520 fewer square miles of ice cover than the year before.  Overall, annual-mean lake ice cover loss for the Great Lakes has declined by 71 percent. [...]

As the planet has warmed over the past 40 years, where, when and how much snow has fallen has changed. Warmer temperatures mean more moisture is in the air, which can lead to more snowfall, particularly in regions like the north-central United States with very cold winter temperatures. Warmer temperatures can also cause regions that [...]

The Great Salt Lake is a prominent feature of the Intermountain West landscape. Geologists who study the region believe that the size of the lake varies on long time scales. Trivia Question: 20,000 years ago, when Earth’s climate was much cooler and a massive ice sheet extended form the Arctic south all the way to [...]

As the Earth warms, a few things happen to the water cycle. Warmer temperatures mean more evaporation from the soil, which can cause land surfaces to dry. They also mean, however, that the air holds more moisture, which can lead to more rainfall in certain regions. The polar regions, for example, are wetter than they [...]

Trivia Question: True or False: Bacteria can cause rainfall. The correct answer is true. Bacteria are single-celled organisms that are found on every continent, at the bottom of the ocean and as high as 50 miles in the atmosphere. Each year, between 90 million and four billion pounds of bacteria travel from the Earth’s surface [...]

Between about 50 degrees north (the southern part of Ontario) and 70 degrees north (the northern tip of Scandinavia) lay the boreal forests, dominated by coniferous trees such as larches, spruces, firs and pines. To the north of these forests lies the tundra, lands with short growing seasons where the soil remains frozen for all [...]

Earth receives a lot of solar radiation – about 3,850,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules each year or 3,850 zettajoules! One joule is about enough energy to lift an apple one meter off the ground. For further comparison, how does this annual amount of solar radiation compare with human energy consumption? Trivia Question: How much time does it take [...]