September 7th, 2021
Climate Change Pushes Fires to Higher Ground

Scientists have known for decades that climate change makes wildfires more common, larger and more intense. Now an international team of scientists has demonstrated a new connection between fires and global warming. Using data from Landsat satellites, they discovered that wildfires in the western United States have been spreading to higher elevations due to warmer

August 25th, 2021
Evapotranspiration: Watching Over Water Use

As soil and other surfaces dry, water is transferred into the air as water vapor (i.e., evaporation). Plants actively release water, moving it out of their leaves and stems and into the drier air (i.e., transpiration). The two combine for evapotranspiration: the process through which water leaves plants, soils and other surfaces. It’s a measurement

August 10th, 2021
IPCC: Climate Change Widespread, Rapid and Intensifying 

Scientists are observing changes in the Earth’s climate in every region and across the whole climate system, according to the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Report released Aug. 9, 2021. Many of the changes observed in the climate are unprecedented in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, and some of the

July 27th, 2021
NASA Study Finds Tropical Forests’ Ability to Absorb Carbon Dioxide Is Waning

Earth’s trees and plants pull vast amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere during photosynthesis, incorporating some of that carbon into structures such as wood. Areas that absorb more carbon than they emit are called carbon sinks. But plants can also emit the greenhouse gas during processes like respiration, when dead plants decay or