When scientists in the early 2000s developed a set of standardized scenarios to show how accumulating greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will affect the climate, they were trying to create a framework for understanding how human decisions will affect the trajectory of global warming. The scenarios help define the possible effects on climate change—how we can limit the worst impacts by curbing greenhouse gas emissions quickly, or suffer the horrific outcome of unchecked fossil fuel burning.The scientists probably didn’t think their work would trigger a sometimes polarized...…When scientists in the early 2000s developed a set of standardized scenarios to show how accumulating greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere will affect the climate, they were trying to create a framework for understanding how human decisions will affect the trajectory of global warming. The scenarios help define the possible effects on climate change—how we can limit the worst impacts by curbing greenhouse gas emissions quickly, or suffer the horrific outcome of unchecked fossil fuel burning.The scientists probably didn’t think their work would trigger a sometimes polarized...WW…

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe American West is well on its way into one of the worst mega-droughts on record, a new study warns, a dry period that could last for centuries and spread from Oregon and Montana, through the Four Corners and into West Texas and northern Mexico.Several other mega-droughts, generally defined as dry periods that last 20 years or more, have been documented in the West going back to about 800 A.D. In the new study, the researchers, using an extensive tree-ring history, compared recent climate data with conditions during the historic...…This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe American West is well on its way into one of the worst mega-droughts on record, a new study warns, a dry period that could last for centuries and spread from Oregon and Montana, through the Four Corners and into West Texas and northern Mexico.Several other mega-droughts, generally defined as dry periods that last 20 years or more, have been documented in the West going back to about 800 A.D. In the new study, the researchers, using an extensive tree-ring history, compared recent climate data with conditions during the historic...WW…

Tim Brodribb has been measuring all the different ways global warming kills trees for the past 20 years. With a microphone, he says, you can hear them take their last labored breaths. During blistering heat waves and droughts, air bubbles invade their delicate, watery veins, cracking them open with an audible pop. And special cameras can film the moment their drying leaves split open in a lightning bolt pattern, disrupting photosynthesis.Science, reviewed the last 10 years of research on tree mortality, concluding that forests are in big trouble if global warming  continues at the...…Tim Brodribb has been measuring all the different ways global warming kills trees for the past 20 years. With a microphone, he says, you can hear them take their last labored breaths. During blistering heat waves and droughts, air bubbles invade their delicate, watery veins, cracking them open with an audible pop. And special cameras can film the moment their drying leaves split open in a lightning bolt pattern, disrupting photosynthesis.Science, reviewed the last 10 years of research on tree mortality, concluding that forests are in big trouble if global warming  continues at the...WW…