• Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • News
  • News
GeoSpiral

U.S. Geological Survey

Scientists are reconstructing Earth’s climate history to understand what past changes reveal about the present and future.

Scientists nail down past climate record to show high stakes of global warming

by Gretchen Roecker and Megan Taylor Morrison

Researchers at the premier science conference on abrupt climate change report new findings with critical implications for rising temperatures, drought and flooding in a warming world.

water

Global warming threatens worldwide availability of fresh water

by Mike DiFerdinando

As temperatures on Earth continue to increase, glaciers melt and ocean levels rise ever more rapidly, claiming coasts and causing floods. But this isn’t the only impact global warming will have on the planet’s water resources.

Joerg on rock

Getting personal: Top climate scientists share how they limit carbon emissions

by Megan Taylor Morrison

Top climate scientists such as Richard Alley and Joerg Schaefer share what they do to reduce their carbon footprints. Individual efforts count in the planet-sized challenge of human-influenced global warming.

Video Icon Video: Small cars, local food, vegetarian fare
Ice bergs in Greenland

Photo by Gary Comer

Icebergs break off and flow through Greenland’s coastal waters. The stunning ice armada comes at a potentially high cost to the island’s disappearing ice sheet.

Chasing Greenland’s melting ice in search of climate clues

by Gretchen Roecker

Climate researchers are racing to collect clues exposed as Greenland's vast ice sheet melts. The goal is to better understand how unprecedented warming could affect the not-so-frozen north and the rest of the world.  

GLACIER_print_image

Climate of the two hemispheres differed in past ages - both are heating up now

by Rosa Lin

Scientists find that climate conditions in the Southern and Northern hemispheres used to be very different. Their research underscores the unprecedented nature of current climate change, with rapid warming causing the unusual match. 

Video Icon Video: Climate in sync - not a good sign
CHINA_treepic

Where's the water? Signs of ancient lakes in China's parched desert

by Rosa Lin and Gretchen Roecker

China, with one of the world's fastest growing economies and skyrocketing energy use, still left a gaping hole in the global climate change map - until recently. What an international team of scientists found there surprised them.

Video Icon Video: A Chinese climate change treasure hunt
Scott Travis - Peppers

Sustainability fuels science at major climate conference

GaryComer-BigThree

Foundation spurs a legacy of pioneering research

public

Why people struggle to understand climate change

iceberg

Finally: Your 'operators’ manual' for planet Earth

Fa2010_Eskalac_AXFORD

Geologist uses mud to clarify Arctic warming

Global Warming - NS Project

Medill investigates national security threat of climate change

  • U.N. climate envoy urges action to avert floods, drought, hunger
  • River gyms and stackable cars: Designs for a warming world
  • Calming the clash: Energy demand and climate change
  • Glacial quakes—How climate change shakes the earth
  • Tracking carbon dioxide and climate — It's all in the family
  • Top climate scientists welcome their next generation
  • Small organisms paint big picture
  • The fundamental physics of carbon dioxide
  • Obama’s top science guy talks climate in a warming world
  • footer