The western U.S. has seen record-breaking high temperatures over the past week as a heat dome, or mass of warm air, blankets the Pacific Northwest.

Current rates of plastic emissions globally may trigger effects that we will not be able to reverse, argues a new study by researchers from Sweden, Norway and Germany published on July 2nd in Science.

A key factor in America’s prodigious agricultural output turns out to be something farmers can do little to control: clean air.

Maternal exposure to air pollution during pregnancy has often been linked to adverse effects on the health of the newborn.

When extreme heat becomes more frequent and temperatures remain high for extended periods of time, as it is currently the case in Canada and the American Northwest, physiological stress increases in humans, animals and crops.

The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission took a big step toward launch this week when a team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California shipped the scientific heart of the satellite to France.

Ten estuaries on the West Coast of North America have been identified as priority locations for expanding the use of conservation aquaculture in a study led by the Native Olympia Oyster Collaborative and funded by the Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP). SNAPP is a research collaboration supported by the National Center for Ecological Analysis & Synthesis(link is external) (NCEAS) at UC Santa Barbara.

Ecosystems can buffer impacts from hazard events and provide other benefits such as clean water, biodiversity and human well-being.

QUT researchers have developed a new machine learning mathematical system that helps to identify and detect changes in biodiversity, including land clearing, when satellite imagery is obstructed by clouds.

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have upgraded their laser frequency-comb instrument to simultaneously measure three airborne greenhouse gases — nitrous oxide, carbon dioxide and water vapor — plus the major air pollutants ozone and carbon monoxide.