ScienceDaily: Earth & Climate News

Heat from a comet exploding just above the ground fused the sandy soil into patches of glass stretching 75 kilometers, a new study found.

Incorporating energy efficiency measures can reduce the amount of storage needed to power the nation's buildings entirely with renewable energy, according to a recent analysis.

The haze that blurs a blue sky or a beautiful skyline is caused by particulate matter, often made from pollution, less than 2.5 microns wide. Despite their microscopic size, PM2.5 are responsible for more than 4 million premature deaths every year. A new study shows that the pollution caused by consumption in the world's biggest economies leads to half of those deaths.

Natural sounds, and bird song in particular, play a key role in building and maintaining our connection with nature - but a major new study reveals that the sounds of spring are changing, with dawn choruses across North America and Europe becoming quieter and less varied. An international team of researchers led by the University of East Anglia (UEA) developed a new technique, combining world-leading citizen science bird monitoring data with recordings of individual species in the wild, to reconstruct the soundscapes of more than 200,000 sites over the last 25 years.

Precambrian cratons -- some of Earth's oldest rocks -- were uninhabitable for microbes for much of their existence, with the longest period of habitability not much beyond a billion years, and many only for the past 50 million to 300 million years, according to a paper correlating Earth's deep biosphere with geologic history.

The development of transport infrastructure is a central issue for states, which spend billions to connect cities. But what is their real effect on the municipalities concerned? Researchers have looked at the evolution of the income composition of the population of cities in Switzerland once they are connected to the motorway network. By analyzing data from 1950 to 2010, they found that this new accessibility leads to substantial benefits for wealthy people, but indirect costs fall disproportionately on people with low incomes.

Exposing male crickets to artificial light at night (ALAN) can impair their activity cycles. According to the researchers, nocturnal chirping is the male's way of calling females to come and mate with him, and its disruption can interfere with reproduction processes and even endanger the entire species.

Dwarf mongooses remember which groupmates have picked fights with others during the day and later shun the aggressors during pre-bedtime socializing sessions, according to new research.

New computer simulations predict deep changes in growing conditions affecting the productivity of major crops already within the next 10 years if current global warming trends continue. Maize crop yields are projected to decline by almost a quarter by the end the century, while wheat could potentially see global yield increases of about 17%. Current key breadbasket regions will see severe changes much quicker than previously expected, requiring farmers around the world to adapt to new climate realities now.

Is ski tourism on a downward slope or can winter holiday resorts weather the ongoing impact of climate change? Researchers investigated the impacts of melting snow and ice on the future of tourism.

Global warming has caused extreme ice melting events in Greenland to become more frequent and more intense over the past 40 years according to new research, raising sea levels and flood risk worldwide.

Polyethylene is the most abundantly manufactured plastic in the world. Due to properties like durability, it has many diverse, and even long-term uses. Chemists have now incorporated polar groups in the material's molecular chains in order to expand its properties and simultaneously reduce the problematical persistence of plastic in the environment. The desired favorable properties of polyethylene remain unchanged.