Climate
This paint ‘sweats’ to keep your house cool
This new passive cooling paint reflects sunlight, emits heat and mimics sweating to cool buildings without air conditioning, even in the tropics.
Earth
We summarize the week's scientific breakthroughs every Thursday.
More Stories in Earth
- Plants
Trees ‘remember’ times of water abundance and scarcity
Spruce trees that experienced long-term droughts were more resistant to future ones, while pines acclimatized to wet periods were more vulnerable.
- Climate
Penguin poop gives Antarctic cloud formation a boost
Penguin poop provides ammonia for cloud formation in coastal Antarctica, potentially helping to mitigate the impacts of climate change in the region.
- Earth
Gamma rays flared as this lightning bolt formed
Thunderstorms are known to generate gamma rays, the highest energy radiation on Earth. But pinning the burst to a specific bolt is new.
- Artificial Intelligence
A new AI-based weather tool surpasses current forecasts
The AI tool used machine learning to outperform current weather simulations, offering faster, cheaper, more accurate forecasts.
- Oceans
Seafloor amber may hold hints of a tsunami 115 million years ago
Oddly shaped deposits of tree resin point to massive waves that struck northern Japan roughly 115 million years ago and swept a forest into the sea.
- Animals
This tool-wielding assassin turns its prey’s defenses into a trap
This assassin bug's ability to use a tool — bees’ resin — could shed light on how the ability evolved in other animals.
- Environment
Skyborne specks of life may influence rainfall patterns
A study of weather on a mountain in Greece reveal that bioparticles in the sky may drive fluctuations in rainfall patterns more broadly.
- Oceans
Before altering the air, microbes oxygenated large swaths of the sea
Hundreds of millions of years before oxygen surged in the atmosphere 2.4 billion years ago, swaths of oxygen winked in and out of existence in the ocean.
- Climate
Losing a key U.S. climate report would hurt future disaster prep
A scientist who worked on the National Climate Assessment explains how stopping work on it may make us more vulnerable to extreme weather disasters.
