With climate change forecasts calling for tough times in tropical climates, scientists in America’s tropical paradise of Hawaii are carefully monitoring nature for signs of change, and citizen scientists are helping them find those signs in the ocean’s coral reefs.

With frogs and other amphibians already dying in large numbers, a group of teenagers is joining other amateur scientists nationwide to gather information on the problem. They’re doing so even as new research shows climate change is likely to worsen the threat. This ScienCentral News video explains.

Depending on where you live, you may have genuine energy choice – but in most states, you probably don’t. And if that sounds like a mixed message, welcome to the wonderful world of alternative energy in a deregulated market with a loophole you could drive an SUV through.

If there’s one choice we make every day that has the greatest single impact on our carbon footprint, for most of us it’s how we move ourselves and our gear from Point A to Point B.

More than 150 years later, researchers are using Thoreau’s records to gather evidence of how the climate has warmed in the area of Walden Pond, in Concord , Massachusetts, a few miles from Boston.

It may be hard to believe, but while much of the eastern U.S. was digging out from a series of snowstorms, Earth as a whole was experiencing its ninth warmest February on record.

Image: 2007 US heat wave, courtesy: NASA

The Chesapeake Bay forms the largest estuary in the United States. As such, it provides critical habitats and breeding grounds for thousands of species of fish, birds, mammals, and other wildlife. The changing climate has created new challenges for the Chesapeake that threaten to alter the entire ecology of the Bay.

We know global warming is heating the planet, but how do we know if something is happening right in our own backyards due to climate change? This new blog series will look at the local impacts of a global phenomenon.
Image: Maryland Science Center, courtesy: Michael Eckrich-Neubauer http://www.panoramio.com/photo/12916605

We know global warming is heating the planet, but how do we know if something is happening right in our own backyards due to climate change? This new blog series will look at the local impacts of a global phenomenon.
Image: Sunset on Baltimore Harbor

The sounds of birds chirping and fluttering outside your bedroom window are a welcome sign of spring, but scientists have evidence that suggests birds are nesting earlier due to global warming. And the harmful consequences aren’t just for the birds, as this ScienCentral video explains.