Of all our planet’s continents, we know the least about the icy landmass of Antarctica. Now, scientists have used satellite imagery to peer into Earth’s tectonics, revealing the hidden structures of Antarctica as part of their work. Due to its remote location and abundance of ice, charting the geological characteristics of Antarctica is tricky, but

Ozone-depleting substances are continuing to decrease more than three decades after a major international agreement phased out their production, according to a recently released UN-backed report. We’ll need to wait a few decades before raising the ‘Mission Accomplished’ banner. Knowing it’ll take unprecedented levels of social change to combat global warming, the report even provides

You may never have heard of the small Japanese island of Esanbe Hanakita Kojima, but it’s just hit the headlines after disappearing into the ocean – apparently without anyone noticing for quite some time. A combination of wind and the impacts from drift ice is thought to have sunk the island beneath the waves, as

No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy that it generates. The solar industry has been snagged on this branch for a while, but in the past year alone, a series of four papers has ushered in

Sir David Attenborough is much beloved as a broadcaster and naturalist, but a recent interview about his new BBC documentary series has stirred up some heated discussions in the environmental community. Ahead of the latest five-part nature series called Dynasties, Attenborough was interviewed by Jonathan Watts at the Observer (a UK Sunday newspaper and sister publication to The Guardian) about

Nothing lasts forever, especially an iceberg drifting away from its frigid home. This coffin-shaped iceberg was spotted by astronauts on the International Space Station as it drifted northwards. It split off from a much larger iceberg about 18 years ago, and is moving into warmer and warmer waters. The coffin-shaped iceberg has a name: B15-T.

Once upon a time the Earth was ours to share. But after decades of heavy industrial expansion, the most pristine and untouched parts are held by just a few. Today, 70 percent of the world’s remaining wilderness is confined to just five countries. The reality of this widespread destruction is illustrated in a new global

The oceans are the world’s thankless, built-in air purifiers. Over the past couple hundred years, as humans have burned coal, cleared forests, put gas-powered cars and trucks on the road, and run air conditioners and refrigerators, the oceans have been quietly gathering up most of the carbon emissions those activities spew into the air. They

Rolling back a decades-old ban, the Chinese government will permit the use of rhino horn and tiger bone for use in traditional Chinese medicine, in a move that conservation groups warned could devastate the dwindling species. China’s State Council said Monday it would legalize the trade of rhino and tiger parts sourced from farmed animals,

The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) has released its latest summary of the state of Earth’s biosphere. You don’t need depressing headlines to tell you it isn’t full of good news. Between 1970 and 2014, populations of vertebrate animals declined by an average of 60 percent. Freshwater animals have it even worse, with drops

NASA scientist Jeremy Harbeck was on a surveying flight over the Antarctic Peninsula earlier this month when he spotted an iceberg that looked like no other. It was almost perfectly rectangular, with square sides and a flat top that made it look more human-made than natural. “I thought this rectangular iceberg was visually interesting and

For years, a mystery puzzled environmental scientists. The world had banned the use of many ozone-depleting compounds in 2010. So why were global emission levels still so high? The picture started to clear up in June. That’s when The New York Times published an investigation into the issue.  China, the paper claimed, was to blame for these mystery emissions. Now it turns

The next time you pee, think about this: Your urine could one day create the sustainable building materials of the future. Dyllon Randall is a research engineer at the University of Cape Town. He’s also the supervisor on a new project in which students harvested urine from urinals so they could transform the waste into

Scientists at the Kaloko-Honokohau National Historical Park are doing some great work. They’re looking after the park on Hawaii’s Big Island, and showing off the little critters they find on their Facebook page along the way. But back in August, while the park’s marine biologists were conducting coral reef monitoring, they found a doozy –

On Monday, President Trump tweeted out a map, exclaiming that American air is the best air by far. That’s not exactly true. The map, grabbed from a World Health Organisation report out earlier this year, is an estimate of how much ultra-fine particulate matter (PM) people are breathing in around the world. This kind of

For East Island, a remote stretch of sand in the Hawaiian archipelago, it was only a matter of time. And that time just came. Satellite images released this week reveal that the entirety of East Island was basically wiped out by powerful storm surges in the wake of Hurricane Walaka, one of the most intense

There is more to the Greenland ice sheet than meets the eye. Hiding in the depths of West Greenland’s Store Glacier, scientists have found a surprising amount of liquid water. The new analysis is the very first to demonstrate liquid water trapped in solid, glacial ice. And if the feature extends to other glaciers, it

An oil spill that has been quietly leaking millions of barrels into the Gulf of Mexico has gone unplugged for so long that it now verges on becoming one of the worst offshore disasters in US history. Between 300 and 700 barrels of oil per day have been spewing from a site 12 miles (19

A deep-sea swimming sea cucumber, Enypniastes eximia, also known as a headless chicken monster, has been filmed for the first time in Southern Ocean waters off East Antarctica using underwater camera technology developed by Australian researchers. The creature, which has only been filmed before in the Gulf of Mexico, was discovered in 3 kilometres of

Taupo is resting now, and for that we should all be very grateful. The highly active Taupo Volcanic Zone, situated in New Zealand’s North Island, produced history’s most recent supereruption, unleashing some 530 cubic kilometres of fiery magma upon Earth’s surface. For context, what’s widely regarded as the most destructive volcanic eruption in US history –