Throughout Earth's history, the planet has been struck by multiple asteroids, some so large, like the Chicxulub Impactor, that Earth's climate was altered to the point of a mass extinction event.

A sudden climate jolt disrupted harvests and trade, setting in motion the grain routes that helped carry plague into Europe.

As Earth’s climate changes, one of the hardest things to figure out is exactly how the planet will change in response. And while we can’t know the future for sure, we can get a lot of good clues from ...

While the Earth has gone through some dramatic climate changes in its 4.6-billion-year history, natural processes like silicate weathering can help return things to a comfortable equilibrium. A new ...

Earth has never stood still. Over its 4.5 billion years of history, our planet has been reshaped by different cataclysms and climate shifts. The atmosphere went through several changes, oceans froze ...

Smithsonian researcher Ingrid Romero studies fossil pollen to reconstruct ancient climates and predict future changes Erin Wunderlich Researcher Ingrid Romero holds a case full of pollen slides at the ...

Climate change presents the gravest threat to life on Earth in all of human history. The planet is warming to a degree beyond what many species can handle, altering or eliminating habitat, reducing ...

"Such a transition to a glacial state in 10,000 years' time is very unlikely to happen, because human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere have already diverted the climate from its natural ...

Early Eocene forest, Wyoming, U.S. Illustration by Julius Csotonyi, Smithsonian Institution Pollinators play a vital role in fertilising flowers, which grow into seeds and fruits and underpin our ...

But that 43,000-square-foot space near Columbia University is home to the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, or GISS, a NASA research outfit, think tank, and pioneer in climate change research that ...