Climate Change Exhibition

 Here’s a sneak look at some of the best images from the forthcoming exhibition A Climate for Life: Meeting the Global Challenge, which opens at the California Academy of Sciences on January 17th.

The forest floor of Barro Colorado Island in Panama provides a snapshot of the biodiversity of a tropical forest. Each year, some 13 million hectares (32 million acres) of tropical forest are destroyed, resulting in a serious loss of habitat for threatened plants and animals. © CHRISTIAN ZIEGLER

Pirapitanga fish school together in a clear-water stream in the Cerrado region of Brazil.The Cerrado, or Brazilian savanna, represents 23 percent of the land surface of the country. This important biome, however, has been subjected to rapid rates of land conversion to agriculture and pasture. This has important environmental consequences to local and regional climate change. © LUCIANO CANDISANI

A muriqui monkey and baby traverse the Atlantic rain forest in Brazil. Predictions for climate changes for the next few decades envisage an increase in the duration and intensity of periods of drought in the Atlantic Forest. If this trend persists, the protection of such surviving areas of Brazil's Atlantic forest will become essential for the conservation of this ecosystem. © LUCIANO CANDISANI

Residents could only watch as damaging winds from Hurricane Allen reached more than 160 kilometers per hour in Corpus Christi, Texas. Scientists predict that climate change will result in a higher frequency of hurricanes with greater intensity. © ANNIE GRIFFITHS BELT

Climate change is projected to increase marine species' extinction rates. Sea turtles already face serious threats from poaching and pollution and now they also have to contend with climate change. Sea turtles lay their eggs in beach sand, and many species return to the exact beaches that they were hatched to lay the eggs for the next generation. However, sea level rise threatens beach habitat and turtle reproduction will be severely impacted as nesting sites are covered in water. © MICHELE WESTMORLAND

The Kayapo— Indians of the Brazilian Amazon have a rich ritual life. Here, the men prepare for a hunt, lead by chief Pukatiri. The Kayapo— are stewards of a large tract of Amazonian rainforest. They have chosen to conserve this forest, which otherwise could be logged or burned, keeping millions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. © CRISTINA MITTERMEIER

North Atlantic Plankton, Meet Saharan Dust Storms

Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you knew each other!

Our sense of the interconnectedness of earth’s natural systems can always do with some reinforcing –and a research study released today from the University of Liverpool does just that:

Scientists from the University of Liverpool’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences have found evidence which suggests that life in the North Atlantic Ocean (particularly the phytoplankton populations) are being sustained by nutrients that Saharan dust storms leave behind.

Working aboard research vessels in the Atlantic, scientists mapped the distribution of nutrients including phosphorous and nitrogen. They also investigated how organisms such as phytoplankton are sustained in areas with low nutrient levels.

“We found that cyanobacteria – a type of ancient phytoplankton – are significant to the understanding of how ocean deserts can support plant growth,” says Professor George Wolff, from the University’s Department of Earth and Ocean Sciences.