warmer

Kitten Season Is Out of Control. Are Warmer Winters to Blame?The summer “kitten season” is starting earlier and lasting longer, which is bad news for both animal shelters and wildlifeBy Sachi Mulkey & GristRescue kittens in an animal shelter. Credit: Mariia Zotova/Getty ImagesIt’s almost that magical time of year that the Humane Society of America likens to a “natural disaster.” Kitten season.“The level of emotions for months on end is so draining,” said Ann Dunn, director of Oakland Animal Services, a city-run…

Thanks to electric bikes, more people than ever before are discovering the joys of car-free living. Many others find that they can at least leave their car in the garage more often, using an e-bike instead for many of their around-the-town trips and errands. But when the weather is cold, e-bikes can sometimes feel less enticing. For anyone who had dreaded the rude awakening of cold air in your face, I think I might have found a trick that can help: swapping a typical bike helmet for an insulated ski helmet.…

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain Record-high ocean temperatures observed in 2023 could become the norm if the world moved into a climate that is 3°C warmer than pre-industrial levels, according to a new study. From March 2023, the North Atlantic began to show extremely warm temperatures far exceeding anything seen in the past 40 years. As of August…

Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) team on BIOS's research vessel Atlantic Explorer. Credit: BATS Decade-long ocean warming that impacts ocean circulation, a decrease in oxygen levels that contributes to changes in salinification and nutrient supply, and ocean acidification are just some of the challenges the world's oceans are facing. In 1988,…

We’ve all heard those stereotypes portraying people who speak Latin languages, whether that be Spanish, French, or Italian, as sounding more “passionate” or even “loud”.As it turns out, the stereotype may stem from some truth, as a new study published on Thursday (December 5) suggested that temperatures influence the way we talk.Dr. Søren Wichmann, a linguist at Kiel University in Germany, together with colleagues from China, demonstrated in the study that was published in the online journal PNAS Nexus that average…

Egyptian fruit bat. Credit: Tel Aviv University In a creative collaborative effort between zoologists and geographers from Tel Aviv University, a new study utilizing bats to map Urban Heat Islands in Gush Dan reveals that during the winter months, the air over the Ayalon Highway can be up to five degrees Celsius warmer than the air in Yarkon Park. …

The blanket of wildfire smoke that spread across large parts of the U.S. and Canada in 2023 was a wake-up call, showing what climate change could feel like in the near future for millions of people. Apocalyptic orange skies and air pollution levels that force people indoors only tell part of the story, though. As global temperatures rise, fires are also spreading farther north and into the Arctic. These fires…

Overall statically significant results from trend analysis to all 5 MEOW in the last 40 years. The results are presented to the following response variables: Daily maximum temperatures (Tmax); Daily minimum temperatures (Tmin); and Daily temperature range (DTR), with their respective extreme indexes that indicate intensity (Exceedances over the threshold series), frequency (both Time elapsed between consecutive extreme occurrences and events, as well as…

There was a time when Burnaby Mountain, and the areas around it along B.C.'s south coast, was a warmer, less mountainous region where palm trees grew, according to new research that identified plant fossils unearthed at the site more than 50 years ago. When Simon Fraser University was being built in the late 1960s, paleobotanist Rolf Mathewes was an undergraduate, and he helped gather dozens of plant fossils at a deposit exposed by the construction site. The fossils date back to around 40 million years ago.SFU then locked…

Engineers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst have developed a synthetic textile inspired by polar bear fur, which efficiently conducts light and traps warmth, making it effective in cold environments.A group of engineers from UMass Amherst has created a bilayered fabric that is 30% lighter than cotton yet provides greater warmth.Three engineers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst have successfully completed an 80-year endeavor to create a synthetic textile modeled on polar bear fur. The results of their…