When rainforests died, the planet caught fire: New clues from Earth’s greatest extinction When Siberian volcanoes kicked off the Great Dying, the real climate villain turned out to be the rainforests themselves: once they collapsed, Earth’s biggest carbon sponge vanished, CO₂ rocketed, and a five-million-year heatwave followed. Fossils from China and clever climate models now link that botanical wipe-out to runaway warming, hinting that losing today’s tropical forests could lock us in a furnace we can’t easily cool.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r....eleases/2025/07/2507

Antarctica’s ocean flip: Satellites catch sudden salt surge melting ice from below A massive and surprising change is unfolding around Antarctica. Scientists have discovered that the Southern Ocean is getting saltier, and sea ice is melting at record speed, enough to match the size of Greenland. This change has reversed a decades-long trend and is letting hidden heat rise to the surface, melting the ice from below. One of the most dramatic signs is the return of a giant hole in the ice that hadn’t been seen in 50 years. The consequences are global: stronger storms, warmer oceans, and serious trouble for penguins and other polar wildlife.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r....eleases/2025/07/2507

Fighting fire with fire: How prescribed burns reduce wildfire damage and pollution Wildfires are becoming more intense and dangerous, but a new Stanford-led study offers hope: prescribed burns—intentionally set, controlled fires—can significantly lessen their impact. By analyzing satellite data and smoke emissions, researchers found that areas treated with prescribed burns saw wildfire severity drop by 16% and smoke pollution fall by 14%. Even more striking, the smoke from prescribed burns was just a fraction of what wildfires would have produced in the same areas.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r....eleases/2025/06/2506

A giant pulse beneath Africa could split the continent — and form an ocean Beneath the Afar region in Ethiopia, scientists have discovered pulsing waves of molten rock rising from deep within the Earth — a geological heartbeat that could eventually split Africa in two. These rhythmic surges of mantle material are helping to stretch and thin the continent’s crust, setting the stage for a new ocean to form in millions of years. The pulses aren’t random: they follow patterns shaped by the tectonic plates above, behaving differently depending on how thick the plates are and how fast they’re spreading.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r....eleases/2025/06/2506

New Orleans is sinking—and so are its $15 billion flood defenses Parts of New Orleans are sinking at alarming rates — including some of the very floodwalls built to protect it. A new satellite-based study finds that some areas are losing nearly two inches of elevation per year, threatening the effectiveness of the city's storm defenses.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/r....eleases/2025/06/2506