Research on Arctic and North Atlantic ecosystems shows the recent warming trend counts as the most dramatic climate change since the onset of human civilization 5,000 years ago.

Global warming has become such an overriding emergency that some climate experts are willing to consider schemes for partly shielding the planet from the sun's rays. Critics warn that no such scheme is a magic bullet and emission reduction strategies will still have to go forward.

A growing number of ecologists worry that conservation-as-usual won't be able to keep up with the predicted pace of climate change. To some of them, assisted migration, or helping plant and animal species make the move to a more survivable climate,  is a more proactive tool for preserving nature's richness, and possibly the only hope for saving certain species.

Arctic scientists have discovered that massive deposits of sub-sea methane, a gas 20 times more damaging than carbon dioxide, are bubbling to the surface as the Arctic region becomes warmer and its ice retreats.

Six U.S. National Laboratories have launched a program to research abrupt climate change which could be caused by methane release from thawing permafrost, the collapse of ice sheets, or other positive feedback mechanisms.

If the 100 largest cities in the world replaced their dark roofs with white shingles and their asphalt-based roads with concrete or other light-colored material, it could offset 44 metric gigatons (billion tons) of greenhouse gases, a study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley shows.

It should be possible to counteract the global warming associated with a doubling of carbon dioxide levels by enhancing the reflectivity of low-lying clouds above the oceans, according to researchers in the US and UK. John Latham of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, US, and colleagues say that this can be done using a worldwide fleet of autonomous ships spraying salt water into the air.

Global warming is likely to have a series of destabilizing effects around the world, causing humanitarian crises as well as surges in ethnic violence and illegal immigration, according to an assessment released Wednesday by U.S. intelligence agencies.

An abrupt release of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, about 635 million years ago from ice sheets that then extended to Earth's low latitudes caused a dramatic shift in climate, triggering a series of events that resulted in global warming and effectively ended the last "snowball" ice age, a UC Riverside-led study reports.

A new NASA-led study says human-caused climate change has made an impact on a wide range of Earth's natural systems, including permafrost thawing, plants blooming earlier across Europe, and lakes declining in productivity in Africa.