Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) questions a witness during a hearing this month. (T.J. Kirkpatrick/Bloomberg)

Nine Senate Democrats, led by Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, called Friday for an investigation into a questionnaire sent by the Trump transition team to the Energy Department, asking for names of “employees or contractors” who attended United Nations climate change meetings under President Obama...

Scientists at institutions in the United States and Australia on Friday published a set of unprecedented ocean observations near the largest glacier of the largest ice sheet in the world: Totten glacier, East Antarctica. And the result was a troubling confirmation of what scientists already feared — Totten is melting from below...

Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg is leading the charge for climate-proof investment (Pic: US Navy)

This week’s top climate politics and policy stories...

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump arrives to speak during a USA Thank You Tour event at Giant Center in Hershey, Pennsylvania, U.S., December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

Officials in 24 states have urged U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to kill the centerpiece of President Barack Obama's strategy to combat climate change and shut down coal-fired power plants...

Outgoing ExxonMobil chairman and CEO Rex Tillerson speaks at a press conference in Dallas, Texas. Photograph: Brian Harkin/Getty Images

One non-profit leader compared Donald Trump’s choice for secretary of state to choosing the CEO of a tobacco company for surgeon general...

It’s been clear that carbon dioxide is changing the climate. Now how it moves through the atmosphere is clearer than ever thanks to NASA scientists, satellites and supercomputers.

NASA released a mesmerizing new visualization of a year in the life of carbon dioxide this week. It shows how carbon dioxide twists and turns around the globe like a river (fun nerd fact: scientists model the atmosphere using similar techniques they use with fluid dynamics)...

Climate scientists worried that President-elect Donald Trump will slash their budgets and sideline their research are entering survival mode, trimming the words "climate change" from study proposals, emphasizing business applications of their work, and safeguarding data that shows global warming is real...

Climate change and other hurdles mean it will take more water — and potentially more taxpayer money — to save the Everglades, according to new scientific findings released Thursday...

FILE - In this Sept. 30, 2015 file photo, a hotel guest carries his shoes as he is escorted to his car along in Miami Beach, Fla. The street flooding was in part caused by high tides due to the lunar cycle, according to the National Weather Service. A new scientific report finds man-made climate change played some kind of role in two dozen extreme weather events around the world in 2015. But it also detected no global warming fingerprints in a handful of other weird weather instances. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A new scientific report finds man-made climate change played some role in two dozen extreme weather events last year but not in a few other weird weather instances around the world...

The election of Donald Trump has provided a remarkable reversal of fortune for climate change denialists, only a year after nearly 200 nations including the United States committed to a zero-carbon future and their days seemed numbered. Credit: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

On the brink of irrelevance just a year ago, the conservatives who out-and-out deny man-made global warming now have major roles in the Trump administration...

Scientists travelled aboard the research vessel Lance after it froze into Arctic sea ice. Monica Votvik/Norwegian Polar Institute

Rare winter expedition near northern Norway finds weak ice that is increasingly vulnerable to storms...

 Water from the king tide is seen along the sidewalk near Pier 14 as Steven Reel (right) takes a photograph, in San Francisco. Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle

As she stood at the edge of the Embarcadero on Tuesday, the bay waters surging high but rarely spilling toward her feet, Lori Lambertson stated the obvious.

“Tides are real tricky,” said Lambertson, a staff teacher at the Exploratorium science museum...

JOSH HANER

AGADEZ, Niger — The world dismisses them as economic migrants. The law treats them as criminals who show up at a nation’s borders uninvited. Prayers alone protect them on the journey across the merciless Sahara...

Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates. Photo by Michelle Andonian, courtesy of Flickr.

Bill Gates told President-elect Donald Trump last month that energy and climate change provide a "chance for American leadership."

Snowy Owl 03-03-14 by nebirdsplus | Flickr | CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Why are we not acting to save the world? Could it be that we simply don’t know how? Typically, we know the sorts of things that need to be done. What we don’t know is how to get humanity to act, even when we know that we must...

 The Trump transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking officials there to identify which department employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation's carbon output. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post)

A satellite image of Hurricane Otto approaching the coast of Central America on Nov. 24. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)

Alarmed that decades of crucial climate measurements could vanish under a hostile Trump administration, scientists have begun a feverish attempt to copy reams of government data onto independent servers in hopes of safeguarding it from any political interference...

Flash floods carried away everything except the clothes on their backs. People take emergency food in plastic bags in a coastal village in India’s eastern state Odisha. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

NEW DELHI, Dec 13 2016 (IPS) - Tasura Begum straightens up from picking a bushel of green chilis and looks at the mighty Padma River flowing by, wondering whose life it ruined today...

Speech of Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO Exxon Mobil during the World Gas Congres. Paris, in 2015. ROMUALD MEIGNEUX/SIPA

The nomination of ExxonMobil Corp. CEO Rex Tillerson to be secretary of state is being roundly pilloried by environmentalists, who see him as the human embodiment of a barrel of crude oil...

Secretary of State John Kerry, center, visited Norway this year, witnessing the impacts of a melting Arctic. Credit: Getty Images

Unprecedented warming has sent the Arctic into uncharted territory, says latest NOAA report, as its science faces potential hostility from the Trump administration...