Climate & Environment

Breaking ice, moving earth: Greenland will release more sediment into ocean as climate warms

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 20:28:03 +0000

Breaking ice, moving earth: Greenland will release more sediment into ocean as climate warms Megan M Rogers Thu, 02/05/2026 - 13:28

INSTAAR

A new paper from Irina Overeem and Ethan Pierce describes how icebergs export Greenlandic sediment into the Arctic Ocean—and how that process might change in the future.

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1 photo, many whales: Scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle

Megan M Rogers — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 17:02:34 +0000

1 photo, many whales: Scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle Megan M Rogers Thu, 02/05/2026 - 10:02

Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine

For CU Boulder ecology and evolutionary biology alum Emma Vogel, an award-winning photo captured a vital moment of research and science.

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Wildlife need social connections too

Yvaine Ye — Thu, 05 Feb 2026 16:59:12 +0000

Wildlife need social connections too Yvaine Ye Thu, 02/05/2026 - 09:59

Yvaine Ye

Imagine an asteroid striking Earth and wiping out most of the human population. Even if some lucky people survived the impact, Homo sapiens might still face extinction, because the social networks humans rely on would collapse.

This dynamic also plays out in the wild.

Social interactions are essential for many animals, helping them to locate food, spot predators and raise offspring. Without such connections, individuals can struggle to survive.

In a new CU Boulder study, researchers challenge a long-held assumption that social connections matter most for “highly social species”, like humans and wolves. They show that much more common “loosely social species,” those that make temporary friends rather than living in stable groups, might be more vulnerable to extinction due to population declines that limit social interactions. Deer, squirrels, chickadees and a whole host of other animals, including invertebrates, all fall into this category.

Mike Gil. (Credit: Heather Hillard)

The study was published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.

“This finding comes at a moment when many wildlife populations are shrinking or fragmenting due to climate change, habitat loss and exploitation,” said senior author Mike Gil, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology in the College of Arts and Sciences. “We provide a new framework for predicting which species are most susceptible to collapse so we can better forecast risk.”

The extroverts

Nearly a century ago, American ecologist Warder Clyde Allee showed that animals often do better when they are in larger groups, a phenomenon known as an Allee effect.

Studies have since linked larger group sizes to higher reproductive success and survival in many highly social animals, which are those that live in a fixed group. For example, meerkats with more group mates tend to have more offspring, and more of those offspring survive.

Having more individuals in a group means the group members can get more help when needed, said Samantha Rothberg, the paper’s first author and a doctoral student in Gil’s lab in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

“We can relate to that as humans, because we can benefit a lot from the information provided by individuals around us,” she added.

While many explanations for Allee effects point to benefits from social interactions, research to date has failed to show that social behavior, or the loss of it, can tip a species’ chances of survival.

For example, in African wild dogs, larger packs often have more pups per animal. But when wild dog populations decline across the region, the remaining dogs form new social groups, allowing group sizes and overall survival rates to remain unchanged.

Confused by the inconsistency, Rothberg, Gil and Ella Henry, another doctoral student in Gil’s lab, reviewed decades of ecological theory, models and case studies on social interactions and survival.

What they found suggested that ecologists might have been looking at the wrong animals.

Samantha Rothberg. (Credit: Andy Tan)

The introverts

For decades, ecologists assumed that if social interactions are driving Allee effects, it would be the most pronounced in highly social species like meerkats and wild dogs. But those animals, Gil said, appear to have a built-in buffer against the loss of social interactions.

“It’s intuitive that we think the more social a species is, the more vulnerable it is to losing those interactions,” Gil said. But it turns out, highly social animals can actively compensate.

Much like extroverted humans who have no trouble making friends when they move to a new city, wild dogs seek out new members to restore their group size when they lose members of their pack.

Loosely social animals, by contrast, are more like introverted people. They make friends, but they don’t always have to hang out with them. These species don’t go out of their way to replace lost companions to maintain their social interactions. As a result, when their populations decline, they lose social benefits from experiencing fewer interactions.

“When you remove individuals, you're not just removing those individuals from the population, you're also removing the benefits that they conferred on surviving individuals. That creates a feedback loop,” Rothberg said.

A driver of collapse

Gil said the study highlights a glaring possibility that more species are susceptible to population collapse than previously thought.

According to the World Wildlife Fund, global wildlife populations have declined by at least 73% in the past 50 years. Many scientists have declared this period the “sixth mass extinction,” with human resource extraction wiping out species hundreds of times faster than they would otherwise disappear.

“I’m looking out my window right now, and there are a couple of birds sitting on branches. They’re being social. But those moment-to-moment interactions are easy to take for granted. We now realize that, in aggregate, they can determine whether a population survives or collapses,” Gil said.

New research reveals that ‘introverted’ animals that don’t live in stable social groups may be more vulnerable to extinction.

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Deer on CU Boulder campus during a snow storm. (Credit: Casey A. Cass/CU Boulder)

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A group of deer on CU Boulder campus during a snow storm. (Credit: Casey A. Cass/CU Boulder)

US-Greenland science partnerships are on thin ice

Yvaine Ye — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 19:40:57 +0000

US-Greenland science partnerships are on thin ice Yvaine Ye Wed, 02/04/2026 - 12:40

Yvaine Ye

After months of repeated threats to “take over” Greenland, President Trump said last week that he had reached the framework of a deal with NATO over the island’s future.

Amid the geopolitical chaos, researchers have compiled a “statement from U.S. scientists in solidarity with Greenland” to voice their support for the autonomous territory of Denmark. So far, more than 200 scientists who have conducted research in Greenland and worked with Greenlanders have signed the letter, including at least 20 from CU Boulder.

“We vehemently oppose President Trump’s aggressive stance regarding Greenland and reiterate – as Greenland’s leaders have clearly stated – that Greenland is not anyone’s to ‘buy’ or ‘take.’ Greenland belongs to its people,” the letter stated.

Twila Moon, deputy lead scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), signed the letter.

Twila Moon

“I have been studying the ice sheet and going to Greenland for more than 20 years,” said Moon. “The Greenlanders have been very generous in sharing information with us and providing resources to us. We would like to see this peaceful collaborative relationship continue.”

CU Boulder Today sat down with Moon to chat about the letter, the role Greenland and its people play in global research and what would be at stake if the U.S.-Greenland relationship collapses.

What is Greenland like?

I first visited the Greenland Ice Sheet in 2006 as a graduate student. I probably have been there more than a dozen times.

It is a stunningly beautiful landscape. On the west coast, you have large, smoothed-over hills and mountains, which were covered by the ice sheet at one point in history. There are huge fjords all around the coast, so there is a lot of contrast with the ocean meeting up with these big hills and mountains. As you move further inland, you run into the massive ice sheet that still covers 80% of the island.

What do you study there?

When I first began studying Greenland, I was focused on the ice sheet. I was participating in research to understand how quickly the ice sheet was retreating, or advancing, and where the edge of the ice sheet was in recent history.

Over the years, I’ve expanded my research to study how the ice sheet and the ocean interact with each other, how ecosystems are connected to ice sheet changes and how the changes are affecting communities in Greenland and communities really far from Greenland.

Why is Greenland so important in climate research?

The Greenland Ice Sheet holds enough water to raise global sea levels by roughly 24 feet. It has now lost ice every year since the late 1990s, and the rate is much faster than that of Antarctica’s.

When we think about sea level rise over the next few decades, and about changes in currents and weather driven by shifts in the Atlantic Ocean, all of these are tied back to the Greenland Ice Sheet and the very rapid, substantial changes we’re seeing there right now.

In addition to climate research, Greenland also has a wide variety of biodiversity to study. Just a few years ago, I worked with biologists to discover the world’s 20^th sub-population of polar bears in southeast Greenland. Scientists are even in Greenland to study space and astrophysics.

What do you hope to achieve by signing the letter?

We want to help people in the United States who maybe haven't been paying attention to Greenland understand that we have a really good past relationship with Greenland. The Greenlanders have been important partners in being able to understand environmental changes that impact the United States directly.

Greenlanders have been incredibly generous in getting researchers around the island and on the ice sheet, helping people understand the landscape around them, and taking care of instruments at times when international scientists can't be there.

We also wanted to tell our Greenlandic partners that we support them and stand with them.

How important is it to continue the research collaboration between Greenlanders and the United States?

Rapid changes are happening in the Arctic, and we have to run to keep pace with understanding them. I worry that if we see a decline in our relationship with Greenlanders, they might not be as open to providing information or assistance, and this would really be a challenge for U.S. researchers. I've already seen some hesitancy from Greenlanders to participate in projects that include U.S. federal funding.

Science in Greenland is really important for us in America and for all other countries of the world.

CU Boulder Today regularly publishes Q&As on news topics through the lens of scholarly expertise and research/creative work. The responses here reflect the knowledge and interpretations of the expert and should not be considered the university position on the issue. All publication content is subject to edits for clarity, brevity and university style guidelines.

CU Boulder researcher Twila Moon shares what is at stake as President Trump bids for Greenland.

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A view of a small town with mountains in the background, Tasiilaq, Greenland. (Credit: Bernd/Pixabay)

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A view of a small town with mountains in the background, Tasiilaq, Greenland. (Credit: Bernd/Pixabay)

Some tropical land may experience stronger-than-expected warming under climate change

Yvaine Ye — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 16:11:07 +0000

Some tropical land may experience stronger-than-expected warming under climate change Yvaine Ye Mon, 02/02/2026 - 09:11

Yvaine Ye

Some tropical land regions may warm more dramatically than previously predicted, as climate change progresses, according to a new CU Boulder study that looks millions of years into Earth’s past.

Lina Pérez-Angel and her colleagues studying a sediment core from Colombia. (Credit: Maria Fernanda Almanza)

Using lake sediments from the Colombian Andes, researchers revealed that when the planet warmed millions of years ago under carbon dioxide levels similar to today’s, tropical land heated up nearly twice as much as the ocean.

The study was published February 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The tropics are home to about 40% of the world’s population, yet we’ve had very little direct evidence of how tropical land temperatures respond to climate change,” said lead author Lina Pérez-Angel, who conducted the study as a doctoral student at CU Boulder’s Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) and the Department of Geological Sciences. “If we want to study climate change to help people, we need to pay more attention to the regional changes so those living there know what to expect.”

Climate archive from sediments

�Թ�� 2.5 to 5 million years ago, giant sloths still roamed Earth. The planet was on average 2.5 to 4 °C (4.5 to 7.2°F) warmer than today, and Greenland was largely ice-free.

This period, known as Pliocene, was the last time Earth had carbon dioxide levels similar to what they are today. As such, it is one of the best analogs for what would happen if Earth’s temperatures continued to rise.

Sediment cores are one of the main tools scientists use to reconstruct Earth’s past climate. As sediments slowly accumulate layer by layer, they trap chemical signals, fossils and minerals that reflect temperature, rainfall and atmospheric conditions at the time they were deposited. By drilling and extracting a column of these sediments, scientists can retrace past climate.

Lina Pérez-Angel holding two rock samples from the sediment core that are around a million years apart. (Credit: Ellen Jorgensen)

Most of what scientists know about Earth’s ancient temperatures comes from ocean cores. This is because sediments on the seafloor build up slowly and remain largely undisturbed, whereas on land, rapid landscape changes from erosion, landslides, shifting rivers and mountain building often scramble older sediments, making continuous records hard to come by.

In 1988, a team of Dutch and Colombian scientists retrieved an impressive 580-meter (1,902 feet) long sediment core from the Bogotá basin in Colombia. Pérez-Angel grew up in the region, located at nearly 2,550 meters above sea level in the Andes. The lush high-plain basin is home to Colombia’s capital, Bogotá, South America’s second most populous city with about 11 million people.

Formed millions of years ago, the basin has preserved sediment continuously and largely undisturbed since the late Pliocene.

For the study, Pérez-Angel, senior author Julio Sepúlveda, associate professor in the Department of Geological Science, and their team analyzed a type of fat in bacteria preserved in the core. This enabled them to reconstruct a temperature record of the region from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene, or Ice Age.

They found that compared to the Holocene, which is the current epoch, this land region of the tropical Andes was about 3.7 °C (6.6°F) warmer than today, whereas the tropical sea surface was only 1.9 °C (3.4°F) warmer. This means that land temperatures in the tropics changed about 1.6 to nearly 2 times more than the tropical ocean.

Feedback loop

Pérez-Angel, now a senior research associate at Brown �Թ��, said that the Pacific Ocean had a nearly permanent El Niño condition during the late Pliocene, which in turn heated up the tropical Andes even more.

Modern El Niño events have already caused significant warming and drought in the northern Andes. The team warned the area could experience additional warming with El Niño potentially happening more frequently due to climate change.

Pérez-Angel (fourth from the left) and Sepúlveda (right) with co-authors Kathryn Snell (third from left), Peter Molnar (fifth from left) and Angélica Parrado (sixth from left), as well as colleagues at the Colombian Geological Survey. (Courtesy of Julio Sepúlveda).

“If you compare the temperature records for the past couple of decades with what climate models predicted a few decades ago, you see that all the real-world data is at the uppermost end of those predictions,” said Sepúlveda, who is also a fellow at INSTAAR. “This is partly because there are so many feedback mechanisms in nature, and crossing certain thresholds could trigger a series of cascading events that amplify changes.”

Overlooked land

The tropics don’t get as much attention as other regions in climate science, Pérez-Angel said, partly because most of the leading institutions studying climate change are located in middle and high latitude areas, like North America and Europe. The tropics are also not warming as fast as colder regions like Greenland or Antarctica.

But in a region where temperatures are already very high, any increase could push it beyond the threshold of what people and wildlife can tolerate.

“When we model climate change, we tend to focus on how temperatures are going to change globally. But people experience climate change at the regional level,” Pérez-Angel said. With only two high-income countries across the entire tropics, many communities have limited resources to adapt to climate change.

“Understanding what the future might look like for people, ecosystems and the land they depend on is very important for building resilience at a regional level,” she said.

A sediment record millions of years old revealed that the tropical Andes heated up dramatically when atmospheric CO2 levels were similar to today’s.

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Bogotá, Colombia. (Credit: Juan Felipe Ramírez/Pexels)

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Bogotá, Colombia. (Credit: Juan Felipe Ramírez/Pexels)

The pine beetles are back. Here's why—and what you can do about it

Yvaine Ye — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 16:13:55 +0000

The pine beetles are back. Here's why—and what you can do about it Yvaine Ye Wed, 01/28/2026 - 09:13

Yvaine Ye

Colorado’s warm and dry winters have tipped the balance in a long-running ecological tug-of-war.

The mountain pine beetles, native insects to the Centennial State, have recently exploded in numbers in the Front Range after a decade of relatively low populations. The mild winter temperatures have allowed more beetle larvae to survive, while the lack of water has weakened pine trees’ natural defenses against the bugs.

Already, thousands of pine trees along the U.S. 285 and I-70 corridors are turning brown. The devastation prompted Gov. Jared Polis to sign an executive order in December to slow the spread of the beetles.

“A very high level of tree mortality, especially among ponderosa pines, is likely to continue for the next decade,” the order warned.

But the insects are not the antagonists of the story, said Samuel Ramsey, assistant professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the BioFrontiers Institute.

Samuel Ramsey looking at a beehive in his lab. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder)

“They are doing exactly what evolution has primed them to do, and they are just able to do it to the maximum because of the ways that climactic contexts have shifted. That is our fault,” he said.

The impact extends beyond tree loss. For the Front Range, a densely populated region already under persistent wildfire threat, dead trees can exacerbate risk.

To unpack what’s behind the outbreak and what may come next, CU Boulder Today sat down with Ramsey to chat about its causes, the outlook for Colorado’s forests and steps people can take to limit the damage.

The Mountain pine beetles are native to Colorado. Why are they causing problems now?

As the climate has shifted, it has knocked the beetles out of their normal balance with the trees. Because the weather has been warm for longer stretches of time, these beetles are able to produce an additional generation of babies, in addition to the dozens of offspring they usually produce.

How do the pine beetles attack trees?

An adult mountain pine beetle. (Credit: Colorado State Forest Service)

The mountain pine beetles are smaller than a grain of rice. When a single pine beetle attacks a tree, it actually can’t do much damage. So, when a pine beetle locates a tree, it will release a smell that tells all the pine beetles in the area to come and attack it. When 1,000 pine beetles all attack the same tree, some get through and lay eggs in the tree. Once inside, the beetles will gum up the tree’s vascular system, cutting off its water and nutrient supply.

Do trees have a defense mechanism for keeping beetles out?

They did in the original climactic circumstances, such as secreting sap to push out the beetles. But when there isn't enough water, they can only produce a small amount of sap, and that is not enough to fend off thousands of beetles that just keep coming at them.

With the warm weather, pine beetles are also maturing faster. That means the trees are starting their battle against the beetles earlier than they had planned. The trees are also fighting later into the season because of the additional generation of beetles.

How bad will this round of the outbreak be?

I'm not a prognosticator, so I cannot tell you that this is going to be a terrible year. But the data is pointing in the direction. In the past, when we have had the same set of circumstances, we have had a banner year for mountain pine beetles. It is estimated that out of more than 4 million acres of pine forests across the state, more than 80% were damaged by the beetles between 1996 and 2013.

This winter has been really warm. That means that more pine beetles are going to survive the winter. So starting this year, their population will be large enough to likely overcome the defense of a lot of these trees. We could have dead stands of pine trees just sitting there ready to welcome the next wildfire.

Are mountain pine beetle outbreaks unique to Colorado?

The mountain pine beetles are distributed in many parts of North America, but Colorado kind of has a perfect storm of circumstances. We have these issues with a warmer winter. Really high winds can help these pine beetles move farther distances when they're flying. In addition, the wind can drive wildfires. Together, those factors make the risks here especially high.

Are there any actions individuals can take to reduce the damage?

There are ways that we can lean into our agency here.

If you have a pine tree in your yard, you need to make sure that it has adequate water by watering it and reducing competition for water from other plants around it.

If you are getting firewood, get it and burn it locally. It’s a really, really bad idea to move firewood, because you could inadvertently help spread the beetles.

If you're seeing mountain pine beetles in your area, and you haven't seen that before, contact your local forest service office.

The pheromone packets people used in the past might not be the best solution, because they won't stop an infestation, and sometimes they can make the problem worse by drawing more beetles to an area than would've arrived otherwise.

As the climate continues to warm, these sorts of ecological issues are going to happen more often. So we need to make sure that instead of only treating the symptoms of climate change, we are reducing the amount of carbon that is going into the atmosphere.

Mountain pine beetles are exploding in numbers again, killing ponderosa pines across large swaths of Colorado. A CU Boulder entomologist explains why it's happening and what it means for wildfire risk.

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A moutain pine beetle chewing on a tree. (Credit: Colorado State Forest Service)

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A moutain pine beetle chewing on a tree. (Credit: Colorado State Forest Service)

Precious waterways: How contaminated mountain streams could power American-made technology

Megan M Rogers — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 18:56:12 +0000

Precious waterways: How contaminated mountain streams could power American-made technology Megan M Rogers Mon, 12/22/2025 - 11:56

INSTAAR

Diane McKnight and Tom Marchitto are collaborators on a new project looking for a way to extract rare earth metals from contaminated Colorado streams. The goal is to improve water quality while also increasing the domestic supply of raw materials for advanced technologies.

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CUriosity: Why hasn't it snowed much this year, and what does that mean for Colorado?

Daniel William Strain — Thu, 18 Dec 2025 22:59:54 +0000

CUriosity: Why hasn't it snowed much this year, and what does that mean for Colorado? Daniel William… Thu, 12/18/2025 - 15:59

Daniel Strain

In CUriosity, experts across the CU Boulder campus answer questions about humans, our planet and the universe beyond.

Jennifer Kay, professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences and fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder, talks about why this winter has been so dry.

A deer on the CU Boulder campus on Dec. 3, 2025, during a short-lived dusting of snow. (Credit: Patrick Campbell/CU Boulder)

Jennifer Kay has a message for the skies above Colorado: “Let it snow.”

Kay is an atmospheric scientist who, in her free time, likes to go cross-country skiing in the Rocky Mountains.

But this year, the season’s typical white-out blizzards haven’t arrived.

Denver didn’t get its first snow—a wimpy dusting of just 0.2 inches—until Nov. 29, the second latest first snow on record. Temperatures around the Front Range have also been downright balmy, drawing close to or even setting record highs.

Could the late start to the winter be a bad omen for Colorado’s ski industry and its future water supplies?

Kay weighs in on the question from CU Boulder’s East Campus with a view of the Flatiron Mountains behind her. They’re almost completely dry, with almost none of the sprinkling of white that usually marks them this time of year.

She says it’s not time to panic—yet.

“It's also really early in the season still, so people shouldn’t be too worried about what’s going to happen with the ski season or water,” says Kay, a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at CU Boulder. “There are still a lot of different ways this season could unfold.”

In 2021, for example, Denver didn’t see its first snow until Dec. 10 (the latest on record). But snowfall totals inched closer to normal in the months that followed.

Kays says it’s not possible to predict how much snow will come to Colorado in an individual winter season months ahead of time.

A lot of that stems from a phenomenon known as the jet stream. That’s the name for a narrow band in the atmosphere above North America where winds reach tremendous speeds, sometimes over 250 miles per hour. When this band hovers above Colorado, it tends to bring big, rumbling storms to the state.

“When the jet stream brings storms to us, we get...a lot of wet, snowy days,” Kay said. “If the jet stream goes another direction, maybe to the north or south of us, we don’t get as many snowstorms.”

Previously in CUriosity

Why do so many people watch football on Thanksgiving?

Or read more CUriosity stories here

But, she adds, any number of complex factors can make the jet stream wiggle from month to month—although meteorologists can often predict what the jet stream will do several days in advance.

Recently, the jet stream has stuck mostly to the north of Colorado, crossing over states like Montana and the Dakotas.

This year’s less-than-snowy winter has Kay thinking about what the future may hold.

With warming, she says, many storms that might normally produce snow may instead bring rain. That could have a wide range of consequences for the state.

A thick blanket of snow on the ground, for example, can keep wildfires from starting and spreading. The Marshall Fire, which devastated parts of Boulder County in December 2021, erupted at a time when the ground was relatively dry, and winds were especially fierce.

Kay believes it’s important for Coloradans to prepare themselves for hotter and dryer weather.

She lives in Boulder and keeps a go-bag packed at all times, even during the winter months. It includes a change of clothes, important documents, chargers for electronic devices and contact information for her neighbors.

“I have already adapted to the reality of more fires as we get hotter and drier in Colorado,” she says. “Understanding what's happening around you and having a plan for extreme events like the strong wind events we have along the Front Range is important.”

This year, the normal blizzards haven't come to most of Colorado, but atmospheric scientist Jennifer Kay says there's still time for the season to turn around.

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Record heat, ice loss and rust-stained rivers mark another year of Arctic change

Elizabeth Lock — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 23:49:30 +0000

Record heat, ice loss and rust-stained rivers mark another year of Arctic change Elizabeth Lock Tue, 12/16/2025 - 16:49

The 2025 Arctic Report Card shows record heat, record-low sea ice, shrinking glaciers, rivers turning rusty orange, a typhoon, the continued warming of Arctic seas and more.

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CIRES research reconstructs ancient Indus River flow to understand a disappeared civilization

Megan M Rogers — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 20:20:44 +0000

CIRES research reconstructs ancient Indus River flow to understand a disappeared civilization Megan M Rogers Tue, 12/16/2025 - 13:20

CIRES

Research co-authored by Balaji Ragagopalan of CIRES helped identify hydrologic records that are key to understanding a disappeared civilization.

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Climate & Environment

Breaking ice, moving earth: Greenland will release more sediment into ocean as climate warms

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1 photo, many whales: Scholar captures research above the Arctic Circle

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Wildlife need social connections too

The extroverts

The introverts

A driver of collapse

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US-Greenland science partnerships are on thin ice

What is Greenland like?

What do you study there?

Why is Greenland so important in climate research?

What do you hope to achieve by signing the letter?

How important is it to continue the research collaboration between Greenlanders and the United States?

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Some tropical land may experience stronger-than-expected warming under climate change

Climate archive from sediments

Feedback loop

Overlooked land

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The pine beetles are back. Here's why—and what you can do about it

The Mountain pine beetles are native to Colorado. Why are they causing problems now?

How do the pine beetles attack trees?

Do trees have a defense mechanism for keeping beetles out?

How bad will this round of the outbreak be?

Are mountain pine beetle outbreaks unique to Colorado?

Are there any actions individuals can take to reduce the damage?

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