Marathon talks enabled Europe to break deadlock over global-warming deal with major greenhouse-gas emitters. Did it?

Nature looks at the hurdles faced by Alberta and other jurisdictions over their emissions trading schemes

While the event that began the carbon-discharge cycle 56 million years ago remains a mystery, the implications are clear, says Rice University professor Gerald Dickens

The Arctic covers around 5% of the planet's surface, but it is capturing a disproportionate amount of attention. With temperatures rising at twice the global rate, the region's summer sea ice is shrinking rapidly, making access easier than ever before. At the same time, countries are racing to claim parts of the Arctic's sea floor and the vast deposits of hydrocarbons that lie beneath it

The European Union remains well on track to achieve its Kyoto Protocol target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions despite a 2.4 % emissions increase in 2010, according to first estimates by the European Environment Agency (EEA). The 2010 increase follows a 7 % drop in 2009, largely due to the economic recession and growth of renewable energy generation

Gaze at the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia and you'll be looking into a hazy cloud hovering above the range's deciduous forests. But it's not all lovely: The cloud contains organic chemicals from trees, called isoprenes, that can be converted into ozone, a dangerous pollutant and greenhouse gas

Despite its distance from the region in question, in late August Reykjavik hosted the third workshop on the Third Pole Environment (TPE) — a region centred on the Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayas that boasts the largest store of ice outside the Arctic and Antarctic

A desert may need no defining, but desertification is not so easy to pin down. Although the loss of soil nutrients and moisture threatens roughly a third of the world's land area, imperilling farming and biodiversity, scientists lack a clear definition of it or agreed standards to measure its causes and progression

When the weather gets weird, as happens a lot these days, one question inevitably arises from reporters, politicians and the general public alike: is this global warming? 

The Obama Administration announced today that it will not lower air pollution limits this year for smog-causing ozone -- a move welcomed by industry but decried by public health advocates. The decision derails a proposed tightening by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) of a controversial standard developed in the final year of the Bush Administration

The paper, by US scientists Roy Spencer and William Braswell, claimed that computer models of climate inflated projections of temperature increase. It was seized on by "sceptic" bloggers, but attacked by mainstream scientists. Wolfgang Wagner, editor of Remote Sensing journal, says he agrees with their criticisms and is stepping down

A significant message from those who are still observing  games by adults.

A not-for-profit organization targeting market-driven solutions to climate change, announced today the launch of a series of online and live seminars for shipping industry participants on its Shippingefficiency.org online service - launched at the UN climate change talks in December.

The 2010 meteorological year, which ended on 30 November, was the warmest in NASA's 130-year record. The main driver for the increased warmth was the Arctic, where sea ice was absent during months when it should have normally covered the water. Water devoid of ice absorbs much more solar radiation.

Unusually warm ocean temperatures in the summer and fall of 2005 caused a mass die-off of Caribbean corals that is the worst ever recorded there, according to new research published yesterday in the online journal PLoS ONE. Such events are also likely to become more common as global warming continues, concludes a team of 65 authors in 22 countries.

Delegates to a United Nations meeting herelast week made scant headway on a global strategy for reiningin greenhouse gas emissions. But amid the pessimism and recriminations, one nation won praise from observers for its efforts to boost energy efficiency and invest in green technologies: the host, China.

Studying the atmospheric aerosol particles, which impact cloud formation and particles, above a pristine forests, researchers discovered that when left alone the Amazon acts as its own 'bioreactor': clouds and precipitation are produced by the abundance of plant materials.

Meteorologists are meeting this week to hammer out a solution to one of the thorniest problems in climate science: how to make raw climate data freely available to all. It follows years of discussion within the climate-science community, which wants to draw disparate climate data together into a single, comprehensive repository to streamline research.

Using a trick of sunlight itself, tiny metallic disks could be levitated to the stratosphere where they would shade Earth's surface and counteract the effects of global warming, a new paper proposes. But even the scientist who dreamed up the idea says the little saucers should be used only as a last resort.

In 1959, Robert A. McCabe ventured to Antarctica as a freelance photojournalist. For the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen’s and Robert Falcon Scott’s race to the South Pole, he has published a book of photographs and journal entries called “DeepFreeze! A Photographer’s Antarctic Odyssey in the Year 1959.”