Researchers report that pollen in White Sands rock shows conifers and a lake 24,200 years ago giving way to oak and sagebrush in two millennia. The authors say the people who left the footprints kept using the area as it warmed.
Perspective Coverage
3 publishers
- Builder
- Builder 40%
- Operator
- Operator 43%
- Investor
- Investor 17%
Reality
- Evidence62
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence58
Sea-ice algae from 6,000 years ago lower Arctic winter ice projections by 1 million square kilometers
Researchers at Cambridge and CIMAT used 6,000-year-old algae records to project Arctic winter sea ice about 1 million km2 below earlier estimates. They say the weighting narrows the uncertainty range by as much as 85%.
Reality
- Evidence60
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence58
Jili Lake swelled 20 meters in the dry centuries when Silk Road trade peaked
Sediment cores from Jili Lake in Xinjiang show the lake rose about 20 meters in 250 years of dry climate, during the centuries of peak Silk Road trade. The cores measure water, and the step to busier oasis markets is the team's interpretation.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Most plant extinctions and new species in the pollen record fall in two extremely warm intervals
Australian and Austrian researchers found plant extinctions and new species clustered in the two warmest intervals of the past 140 million years. They say it could explain flowering-plant dominance, a step the fossil evidence does not yet show.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+22
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Oxygen isotopes in one Queensland snail shell line up with cyclones Marcia and Debbie
Researchers matched oxygen isotopes in one Biggenden banded snail's shell to ex-tropical-cyclone rain across about 4.5 years of its life. It is one shell from a limestone-free park, so use at other sites is a projection.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence40
Models point to a continent-long cliff as the cause of the Grand Canyon's missing billion years
Thomas Gernon's team used computer models to propose that a cliff up to 2 km high, formed as Rodinia split, wore away a billion years of Grand Canyon rock. Snowball Earth glaciers are cast as the accomplice, and testing the idea now depends on dating whether the rock was stripped before, during or after the ice.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Niobium carried into a Greenland fjord records thousands of years of NAO-driven precipitation
MARUM-led researchers used niobium in a Greenland fjord core to tie local precipitation to the North Atlantic Oscillation over thousands of years. The paper's title limits that persistent link to the Late Holocene, and its glacier forecast assumes the relationship survives warming.
Reality
- Evidence50
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+15
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
Capybara relative's 9-million-year-old molar points to a wet interval in the Atacama Desert
Researchers found a 9-million-year-old molar from a water-dependent capybara relative in Chile's Atacama Desert. It adds to evidence that the desert had wet intervals long after its hyperarid core began forming in the Eocene.
Reality
- Evidence55
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence50
Charcoal in a West Antarctic seafloor core records Earth's southernmost known wildfires
Scientists report charcoal from 90-million-year-old fires in a seafloor core drilled about 900 km from the South Pole, the southernmost wildfires on record. Fire grew more common as rainforest gave way to moss bog, but the case that fire drove the change rests on timing in one core.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives
- Not scored
- Confidence55
East Antarctica's least-observed ice basin holds 3 to 4 metres of potential sea-level rise
Researchers reviewing East Antarctica's Wilkes Subglacial Basin say its ice would raise seas 3 to 4 metres if it all melted. The basin shrank sharply in past climates 2 to 3 degrees warmer, yet too little ocean data exists to project how fast it could retreat now.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+10
- Incentives55
- Confidence50
NASA's two Sun papers ask paleoclimate to carry an astrophysical term
Simulations strand Earth outside the heliosphere three times in 14 million years, and dust in sediment cores agrees. The cadence, roughly one encounter every 4.5 million years, limits what it explains.
Reality
- Evidence45
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+35
- Incentives55
- Confidence45
Extinction peaks cluster at the switches between Earth's five recurring climate states
An international team sorted 539 million years of CO2 and temperature proxies into five recurring regimes and found elevated extinction near the transitions between them. What makes those transitions harmful is still open.
Reality
- Evidence58
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+12
- Incentives45
- Confidence55
Priscilla Martinez's team pulled the tooth from a marine deposit at El Morro in northern Chile. Freshwater fish, gavials and palm phytoliths from the same beds carry more of the argument than the tooth does.
Reality
- Evidence72
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+20
- Incentives30
- Confidence65
Salt crusts brighter than fresh snow deepen the freeze in a new Snowball Earth model
Aksel Samuelsberg's group at Tromso put precipitating sea salt into a simple climate model and watched the freeze settle into the colder of two Snowball states, on the strength of a reflectance value measured in a lab.
Reality
- Evidence48
- Adoption
- Not scored
- Hype gap+8
- Incentives24
- Confidence45