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Thawing permafrost—the frozen layer of soil that has underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia—is upending the lives of people living in the Arctic and dramatically transforming the polar landscape. The vast amount of carbon stored in the permafrost is an overlooked and underestimated driver of climate crisis. Permafrost thaw needs to get more attention—fast.

If Earth heats up beyond 1.5 degrees C, the impacts don't get just slightly worse--scientists warn that abrupt changes could be triggered, with devastating impacts. As the 27th annual climate negotiations are underway in Egypt and the world is set to blow past that 1.5°C warming threshold, NPR asks climate scientists including Merritt Turetsky about three climate tipping points--points of no return that could cause big changes to the Earth's ecosystems.

Hybrids of two common North American songbirds, the black-capped and mountain chickadee, are more likely to be found in places where humans have altered the landscape, finds new research by a team including INSTAAR Scott Taylor. The study is the first to positively correlate hybridization in any species with human-caused landscape changes. It also contradicts a long-standing assumption that these two birds rarely hybridize.

Warren Sconiers—an Assistant Professor at the University of Colorado Boulder interested in plant-insect interactions, insect ecology, and climate change—shares his story as part of Black History Month.

An international group of 10 scientists, including Cassandra Brooks, is calling for protective limits on fishing in Antarctica's Southern Ocean. They report in the journal Science that current levels of fishing, combined with climate change, are taking a concerning toll on a diverse ecosystem of global importance.

As climate changes, previously frozen chemical runoff from farms and fields puts water quality at risk in over 40 states, research says. Keith Musselman part of team looking at winter nutrient pollution, a new problem caused by climate change.

For the past five years, a team of research assistants and volunteers have hiked up Niwot Ridge in late May to set the stage for a unique experiment in which they spread 5,000 pounds of black sand across portions of the remaining snowpack. Their goal is to simulate the near-future effects of a warming planet on alpine ecosystems.

Some effects of climate change are dramatic and visible, like wildfires and extreme weather, but a new study led by Chris Ray found that climate change can impact even hidden places and some of the state’s smallest residents: pikas.

CU Boulder's earth sciences and atmospheric science disciplines ranked No. 1 and No. 2 globally in the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy’s 2022 Global Ranking of Academic Subjects (GRAS). The annual ranking includes over 1,800 universities from 96 countries scored across 54 academic subject categories.

Grasslands’ biodiversity and resilience to disturbances such as fire, heat and drought is the result of a slow process over hundreds of years, like that of old growth forests, finds new CU research led by INSTAAR Katharine Suding that was published today in Science. An implication of the research is that it's important to conserve grasslands that are still intact.