Tipping points are thresholds within key Earth systems beyond which lasting changes to the environment occur. Breaching a tipping point kicks off a feedback loop that sends systems into a different ...

Pinpointing when early land plants colonized terrestrial environments and began influencing Earth's systems is a core ...

Earth’s green center has been drifting steadily for decades, reflecting a change in where vegetation grows most intensely.

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine are private, nonprofit institutions that provide expert advice on some of the most pressing challenges facing the nation and world. Our ...

On Jan. 31, 1958, Explorer 1 became the first satellite launched by the United States. Its primary science instrument, a ...

Earth will only remain able to provide even a basic standard of living for everyone in the future if economic systems and technologies are dramatically transformed and critical resources are more ...

Without deep cuts to emissions, there's a chance Earth could embark on a dangerous "hothouse trajectory" to complete climate chaos. That's one takeaway from a new report that found 22 of Earth's 34 ...

Assistant Professor of Applied Mathematics Ashesh Chattopadhyay will build AI models to project extreme Earth-system events.

In a white paper published by a multidisciplinary team of top scientists in China, Earth system is defined to encompass both internal and external geospheres from solid Earth system through surface ...

WASHINGTON — To explore the complex interactions between the natural world and society and enhance our understanding of Earth’s systems — the atmosphere, hydrosphere, geosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, ...

Climate scientists are warning that global warming could trigger a cascade of "tipping points" that threaten to plunge our planet into chaos. But what exactly are tipping points, what happens if we ...