Researchers find that shifts in Earth’s orbit can trigger abrupt climate changes, even in warm periods without ice sheets.

To spread awareness that “climate change isn’t just an environmental issue; it’s a human story woven into the fabric of our civilization’s rise and fall,” Georgetown University historian Professor ...

Have you ever wondered why Earth goes through massive climate swings, from freezing ice ages to warmer periods like today?

The Fertile Crescent, a boomerang-shaped region spanning modern-day Middle Eastern countries, is considered the cradle of civilization and where farming first emerged. But little is known about how ...

Last summer, marked by deadly extreme heat and devastating wildfires, was the warmest in at least 2,000 years, according to new research, which analyzed weather data and tree rings to reconstruct a ...

Our species likes it cold. Homo sapiens evolved in — and still inhabits — one of Earth’s rare and fragile ice ages, periods distinguished not by an abundance of saber-toothed cats and woolly mammoths ...

Smithsonian researcher Ingrid Romero studies fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient climates and predict future changes Erin Wunderlich Researcher Ingrid Romero holds a case full of pollen slides at the ...

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction: Intimations of the Planetary -- Part I. The Globe and the Planet -- Part II. The Difficulty of Being Modern -- Part III. Facing the Planetary -- Postscript: ...

About three hundred years ago a rural farming community in the Shetland Islands, Britain’s northernmost group of islands, was overwhelmed by windblown sand. The environmental catastrophe was probably ...