It took over two-and-a-half-years for the journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics to finally accept a paper outlining a new meteorological hypothesis in which condensation, not temperature, drives winds. If proven correct, the hypothesis could have massive ramifications on global policy—not to mention meteorology—as essentially the hypothesis means that the world’s forest play a major role…

Once an active silver mine in the early 19th century, Hope Mine recently transformed from a barren, abandoned plot into a verdant, restored landscape. Sierra Club Green Home explores the innovative biochar initiative led by the Aspen Center for Environmental Studies (ACES) that made it possible. Following the devaluation of silver and the Silver Panic…

North America’s largest land animal will roam the Alaskan wilderness once again if a plan unveiled last week is approved. Wood bison, a subspecies of the more familiar plains bison, once lived throughout Alaska and much of western Canada but haven’t been seen in the state’s wilderness for more than a century due to hunting…

An urban heat island is a metropolitan area that is significantly warmer than its surrounding rural areas due to human activities. The temperature difference usually is larger at night than during the day, and is most apparent when winds are weak. The main cause of the urban heat island is modification of the land surface…

While scientists have yet to isolate cause and effect, many suspect chemicals used in drilling and hydrofracking (or “fracking”) operations are poisoning animals through the air, water, or soil. Last year, Michelle Bamberger, an Ithaca, New York, veterinarian, and Robert Oswald, a professor of molecular medicine at Cornell’s College of Veterinary Medicine, published the first…

In Darkush, Syria, civilians must turn to their environment for the basic need of warmth. Day after day, freezing temperatures prevail, and tree after tree is cut down. The national park to the northwest of Idlib, a herding area, is slowly becoming a flatland. Without the trees, which are beautiful and rare, the volume of…

Dung beetle occurs in coastal dunes and marshes around the Mediterranean Basin. They are also known as scarab beetles that were sacred to the ancient Egyptians. These insects roll balls of dung across the earth just as the sun god Ra rolled across the sky. A team of scientists from South Africa and Sweden have…

It has been known for a long time that cities create warmer temperatures due to heat stored in buildings, roads, and other man-made structures. They also add heat from air conditioners, boilers, and other combustion sources. This is known as the urban “heat island”. What has not been known until now, is that cities also…

It sounds a bit like justice served, doesn’t it? When Cargill announced the closing of its Plainview, Texas, cattle operation, they cited a record low cattle supply as the result of the region’s severe drought. Though scientific models don’t yet have the precision to directly tie a particular weather event, be it a storm or…

The Sun is the center of our Solar System. Scientists have long puzzled over why the surface of the sun is cooler than its corona, the outer hazy atmosphere visible during a solar eclipse. Now thanks to a five-minute observation by a ultraviolet telescope they have some magnetic answers. A rocket-borne camera has provided some…