A greenish alga called Didymo -- short for its scientific name Didymosphenia geminata -- is spreading like a virus in freshwater rivers, lakes and streams throughout the world, leaving river bottoms and rocks coated in thick, tangled mats of gooey slime. Largely unknown until the 1990s, the alga species also known as "rock snot" was discovered on western Canada's Vancouver Island in 1988. By the mid-2000s, it began appearing further south -- popping up in Tennessee in 2005 -- and...

California Gov. Jerry Brown signed the nation's first statewide ban on single-use plastic shopping bags, on Tuesday, following the lead of more than 100 California cities and counties. The plastic bag ban marks a major milestone for environmental activists who have successfully pushed plastic bag bans in cities across the U.S., including Chicago, Austin and Seattle. “This bill is a step in the right direction – it reduces the torrent of plastic polluting our beaches, parks and even the vast...

The donut of sea ice encircling Antarctica is hovering around its yearly winter maximum area, and there’s little question that it’s going to set a record high this year. “Antarctic sea ice in 2014 is going to set a record for sure,” said Ted Scambos, a senior scientist with the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. This end-of-season apex will have surpassed 20 million square kilometers (or 7.7 million square miles) “for the first time ever to...

British Airways' new super jumbo Airbus A380 lands at Washington Dulles International Airport October 2, 2014 in Dulles, Virginia. (Getty Images/Mark Wilson ) Eric Holthaus made national headlines and was branded a “sniveling beta male” by Fox News for a decision he made one year ago. Holthaus, a meteorologist and climate writer for Slate, is used to approaching data with an objective lens, but a 2013 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change - a "death warrant written in...

(NASA) In case the disappearing animals, towns running dry, sinking land and empty waterways didn't hammer home the severity of California's worst drought on record, NASA produced a series of images that show just how much water the state has lost in the last decade-plus. Theside-by-side satellite image comparison taken by satellites from NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) show total water loss across California over a 12 year period from June 2002 to June 2014. The color palette...

Sesena, Spain Sesena in the background behind an illegal tire dump site. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza) These disturbing photos may make you want to trade in your car for a pair of good walking shoes. On a scrubby hillside outside of Madrid in central Spain, an inky black mass blights the landscape. A closer look reveals millions of discarded tires — and an environmental nightmare waiting to happen, according to Phys.org. (MORE:Drastic Drop in California Pollution) Since the 1990s,...

South Beach is about to get a glimpse into its future. The annual "King Tide" is expected to arrive in South Florida this week, peaking around Thursday. When the tide rises to its highest point of the year, an extra foot of water will be brought ashore– enough to flood oceanside streets and cause widespread damage, according to Reuters. With future sea-level rise predicted by models and scientists alike, the water brought ashore by the King Tide could give residents...

Deep sea marine life, like the anemones shown above, are not yet feeling the heat from global climate change. While the top half of the ocean has warmed measurably over the past decade, the bottom half has not. (NERC) Deep below the ocean surface, there's a place global warming hasn't yet reached. According to a study published Oct. 5 in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) have found that the deepest part of...

Coastal American cities are sinking intosaturated new realities, new analysis has confirmed. Sea level rise has given a boost to high tides, which are regularly overtopping streets, floorboards and other low-lying areas that had long existed in relatively dehydrated harmony with nearby waterfronts.The trend is projected to worsen sharply in the coming years. Anew report, released by theUnion of Concerned Scientistslate on Tuesday, forecasts thatby 2030,at least 180 floods will strike during high tides every year in Annapolis, Md. In...

It’s official: Antarctic sea ice hit its annual winter maximum on Sept. 22, reaching a record area of 7.76 million square miles, the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) announced Tuesday. That maximum extent was 595,000 square miles above the 1981-2010 average extent, the NSIDC said in a statement, and broke the consecutive records set in 2012 and 2013. Therecord had been expectedand follows a trend over the last three years of anomalously high winter ice extents around the...

A tourist dives in Australia's Great Barrier Reef in September 2014. (WILLIAM WEST/AFP/Getty Images) Continuing to pump ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere could cost the world $1 trillion every year, a new United Nations report warns, thanks to the damage done to the oceans and the ecosystems that live below the surface. Published T hursday by the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity and titled "An Updated Synthesis of the Impacts of Ocean Acidification on Marine Diversity," the...

Fact 1: Half of All Animals Have Disappeared If you didn’t think that human beings had any part in our changing planet, a shocking new report released by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) is bound to open your eyes. The organization’s annual Living Planet Report reveals heartbreaking details about the state of the natural world. One of the most alarming? Fact 1: Since 1970, populations of many animals have dropped by more than half. You read that right: In the...

If you stare at the animation above long enough, you just might pick up on a pattern or two. The animation, created by stringing together weekly California drought observations from the United States Drought Monitor for more than 13 years, highlights the unprecedented nature of California's ongoing drought compared to other boom and bust precipitation cycles since 2001. Feast and Famine California is a land of precipitation extremes. For seven months out of the year the state experiences little snow...