Science

Glowing lava spewed early Thursday from a new fissure on Iceland's Reykjanes peninsula, the third eruption to hit the area since December, deepening worries about the area's viability for towns and villages.

Live video images of the crack in the Earth's surface, stretching an estimated three kilometers (two miles), showed the fissure illuminating plumes of smoke rising under the dark sky that was visible from the capital of Reykjavik.

Population numbers of endangered monarch butterflies have fallen sharply at their wintering sites in Mexico, experts said Wednesday, blaming the "sobering" drop primarily on climate change and the use of pesticides.

The orange, black and white-spotted insects covered 0.90 hectares (2.2 acres) of forest in the 2023-2024 season, Gloria Tavera, conservation director at the National Commission for Natural Protected Areas, said.

Earth has endured 12 months of temperatures 1.5C hotter than the pre-industrial era for the first time on record, Europe's climate monitor said Thursday, in what scientists called a "warning to humanity".

Storms, drought and fire have lashed the planet as climate change, supercharged by the naturally-occurring El Nino phenomenon, stoked record warming in 2023, making it likely the hottest in 100,000 years.

I have always been fascinated by genetics, a branch of biology that helps explain everything from the striking resemblance between different members of a family to the fact that strawberry plants are frost-resistant. It’s an impressive field!

I also have a personal connection to genetics. Growing up, I learned that members of my family had a form of muscular dystrophy called dysferlinopathy. I watched as my mother gradually lost the ability to climb stairs and had to use a cane, then a walker, and finally a wheelchair to get around. Her leg muscles were less and less able to repair themselves and became weaker with time.

Humans have always looked at the sky, using the stars as navigation guides or for spiritual storytelling. Every human civilization has looked to the stars and used celestial movements to measure time and find meaning.

This insatiable thirst for knowledge combined with technological advancements have made it possible for us to dream of travelling in space. These dreams became more and more real after the Second World War, the Industrial Revolution, the Cold War and the large-scale exploitation of the Earth’s resources.

Tigers in India have been photographed in high-altitude mountains rarely seen before, with experts suggesting relentless human pressure and a heating climate are driving them from traditional hunting grounds.

Researchers from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) said they were surprised to find "multiple pictures" of tigers in the mountains of Sikkim -- the Indian state squeezed between Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet -- including one snapped at 3,966 metres (13,011 feet).

Building on arguments and warnings that climate campaigners and experts have shared for years, a pair of scientists on Monday published a research article exploring the "growing inadequacy" of the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale and possibly adding a Category 6.

Global heating—driven by human activities, particularly the extraction and use of fossil fuels—is leading to stronger, more dangerous storms that are called hurricanes in the North Atlantic and Northeast Pacific, typhoons in the Northwest Pacific, and tropical cyclones in the South Pacific and Indian oceans.