Arctic tundra becoming a source of carbon dioxide emissions, NOAA warns
CBSN
Foreboding environmental milestones abounded again this year in the Arctic, where experts say dramatic climate shifts are fundamentally altering the ecosystem and how it operates. One recent turning point for the region involves its carbon footprint: Where conditions in the Arctic historically worked to reduce global emissions, they're now actively contributing to them.
That's a major transition that could reap consequences on human, plant and animal life far beyond Earth's northernmost arena, warned a cohort of scientists whose research appears in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's 2024 Arctic Report Card, published Tuesday. The report is an annual assessment of the polar environment, which in recent years has become a stark alert signal marked by unprecedented and ominous observations all linked to rising temperatures from human-caused climate change.
A focus of the latest Arctic evaluation was the effects of warmer weather and wildfires on the tundra, a far-northern biome that's typically known for extreme cold, little precipitation and a layer of permanently frozen soil, called permafrost, covering the land. Those traits collectively made the Arctic an important carbon sink for millennia, meaning the region essentially helped reduce carbon dioxide emissions worldwide by absorbing more carbon than it emitted into the atmosphere.
Bob Fernandez thought he'd go dancing and see the world when he joined the U.S. Navy as a 17-year-old high school student in August 1941.
Syrian insurgents have reached the suburbs of Damascus as part of a rapidly moving offensive that has seen them take over some of Syria's largest cities, opposition activists and a rebel commander said Saturday.
Most ruling party lawmakers were boycotting a parliamentary vote Saturday to deny a two-thirds majority sought by the opposition to impeach President Yoon Suk Yeol over his short-lived imposition of martial law, as protests grew nationwide calling for his removal.
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol apologized Saturday for the public anxiety caused by his short-lived attempt to impose martial law earlier this week, hours ahead of a parliamentary vote on impeaching him.
Washington — The family of Austin Tice, the freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Syria more than 12 years ago, said they have been told that he is alive and well, and they're frustrated with the U.S. government's inability to bring him home.
Thirteen children under the age of 14 died in central Mexico and authorities said they suspect contaminated IV feeding bags as the culprit.
A crocodile attacked and killed a woman as she worked on a palm oil plantation in central Indonesia, local police said, with her body later recovered from the animal's clutches.
Three mountain climbers — two from the U.S. and one from Canada — missing for five days on Aoraki, New Zealand's tallest peak, are believed to have died in a fall, the authorities said Friday.
A record number of unaccompanied migrant minors have traveled through Latin America and the Caribbean this year, according to estimates from UNICEF, the United Nations children's agency.
Crime-solving techniques applied to a medieval illuminated manuscript in Paris may have solved a centuries-old puzzle - the true identity of a leading Byzantine painter who injected humanity into the rigid sanctity of Orthodox religious art.
Mexican soldiers and marines have seized over a ton of fentanyl pills in two raids in the north, with officials calling it the biggest catch of the synthetic opioid in the country's history.