One of the abandoned wells in Pennsylvania that the researchers tested for the study. (Princeton University) There are millions of abandoned oil and natural gas wells scattered across the United States, and they may be emitting huge amounts of methane, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas that contributes to global warming. That's the conclusion of a new study by researchers at Princeton University, who tested emissions from a series of abandoned wells in Pennsylvania in late 2013 and early 2014. Their results...

Earth's oceans offer up stunning sunsets, bizarre underwater sea creatures, monster catchesand apparently, trillions of pieces of plastic trash. According to a new study, an estimated 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic trash with a total weight of 269,000 tons now litters Earth's oceans. That figure is 10 times greater than previously thought, Live Science reports, and the scientists involved in the study say the figure is "highly conservative." The team of scientists traversed Earth's oceans on 24 separate missions over...

This year marks the fourth annual photo contest from DigitalGlobe, a provider of commercial high-resolution satellite photography, which has collected 25 of its most eye-popping photos of Earth's surface that have been taken throughout the year. The industries DigitalGlobe serves show up in this collection, as many feature mining, oil and gas and agricultural operations around the world, as well as scenes from the Netherlands' North Sea Protection Works, whose massive storm surge barriers make it possible for the small...

When award-winning wedding photographer Jonas Peterson traveled to Kenya to photograph a couple getting married there in late September, he knew their wedding ceremony would take place against a breathtaking backdrop. What he couldn't know was what conditions during the ceremony would be like in the east African nation's "famously unpredictable" weather. "There’s not really much you can do to prepare except keep an eye on the horizon and pray to the weather gods," Peterson told weather.com in an email...

Greenpeace activists ignited controversy in Peru after they reportedly damaged a more than 1,000-year-old sacred cultural site during a protest earlier this week. A dozen or so Greenpeace activists, shrouded in the darkness of night, hiked more than a mile through the Peruvian desert and into an off-limits area Monday to place large yellow letters that read "Time For Change! The Future is Renewable" (referencing renewable energy) next to the famed hummingbird geoglyph at the Nazca Lines. The Nazca Lines...

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres and COP20 President and Peruvian Minister of Environment Manuel Pulgar celebrate the approval of the proposed compromise in Lima on Dec. 14, 2014. U.N. members on Sunday adopted a format for national pledges to cut greenhouse gases, the heart of a planned pact to defeat climate change. (Cris Bouroncle/AFP/Getty Images) After two weeks of discussions and arguments over climate change, negotiators in Peru have finally reached a draft accord, called the Lima Call for Climate...

The Amazon rainforest has been drying up for the last 13 years, and with more drying predicted as global temperatures rise, that could spell long term disaster, not only for the world's largest rainforest, but also for the global climate, a new NASA study finds. NASA satellites utilized in the study analyzed 13 years of rainfall amounts and the "greenness" of vegetation inthe world's largest rainforest. That analysis found that rainfall amounts in the rainforest dropped by up to 25...

If the seas are rising, why not seek refuge below the surface? That's the basic premise behind Ocean Spiral, an audacious construction project "dreamed" up by the Japanese construction firm Shimizu Corporation that aims to shelter humans from natural disasters, extreme weather and climate change, by housing them beneath Earth's vast oceans. According to the plans, Ocean Spiral would consist of spherical structures, 1,600 feet in diameter, with long, spiraling extensions that dip miles beneath the ocean and down to...

The Largest Oil Spills in History Nuclear meltdowns. Anthropogenic climate change. Chemical spills. Solid waste. Of all the damaging blows humans have dealt on the environment perhaps no other incident resonates more than the oil spill. The imagery can be gut-wrenching and the environmental impact irreversible. Take the Exxon Valdez oil spill, for instance. When the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled its keep on more than 1,300 miles of Alaskan coast in 1989 the 11 million gallons of oil killed...

In this June 1, 2015 file photo, a discarded sofa litters the shore of Guanabara Bay in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The sailing regatta at the Rio de Janeiro Olympics will be both filthy and photogenic. The troubled waters of Guanabara Bay have made news for the wrong reasons, with an independent study by The Associated Press showing high levels of viruses and sometimes bacteria from human sewage. There have also been unsightly buildups of trash. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo, File)...

Floridians and residents of other coastal communities beware: There are changes afoot on one of Earth's largest ice sheets that could accelerate global sea level rise. Two new studies on Greenland's melting ice sheet are redefining previous scientific models and research on the topic, suggesting that the ice sheet, capable of raising sea levels by more than 20 feet if it melted entirely, could melt faster than previously thought. And as NASA says, if Greenland's ice sheet were to melt...

NASA scientists say it will take 11 trillion gallons of water to replenish two of California's drought-starved river basins and help reverse the state's drought. That figure comes courtesy of measurements taken from NASA GRACE satellites, recently released by a team of scientists, which discovered an 11 trillion gallon shortage of water in the Sacramento and San Joaquin river basins. Combined, the two basins account for about 51 percent of California's water supply, according to the California State Water Resources...

Talk about a speedy recovery. Three of the five Great Lakes recovered their water levels at record or near-record pace, with Lake Superior gaining 2.3 feet from January 2013 through November of this year, and Lakes Michigan and Huron increasing by 3.2 feet in that same period. That’s the fastest ever for Superior and the second fastest (after the 1950-51 season) for Huron and Michigan. “The levels of the Great Lakes go up and down all the time, that’s a...