Annalisa Bracco Zachary HandlosAug 31, 2024 3:00 AM THIS ARTICLE IS republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. The North Atlantic Ocean has been running a fever for months, with surface temperatures at or near record highs. But cooling along the equator in both the Atlantic and eastern Pacific may finally be starting to bring some relief, particularly for vulnerable coral reef ecosystems. This cooling comes from two climate phenomena with similar names: La Niña, which forms in the tropical Pacific, and the less well-known Atlantic Niña. Both can affect the Atlantic hurricane season. While La Niña tends to bring conditions ideal for Atlantic hurricanes, the … Continue reading A Rare Coincidence of La Niña Events Will Weaken Hurricane Season

The delicate balance of one of the planet’s largest natural systems for storing carbon depends on the humble black spruce tree. Manuela Andreoni, a climate reporter, and Bryan Denton, a photographer, traveled with researchers to Canada’s boreal forests in the Northwest Territories.Aug. 12, 2024 The dead black spruce looked like a collection of giant burned matchsticks standing tall above the gray landscape as far as Jennifer Baltzer could see. But here, at the edge of one of the largest areas of scorched forest that scientists have ever documented in Canada, what caught Dr. Baltzer’s attention was closer to the ground. The … Continue reading Parts of Canada’s Boreal Forest Are Burning Faster Than They Can Regrow