When water accumulates on the surface of an ice sheet, more sunlight gets absorbed, which results in more melt, in a cycle that builds on itself. This year’s melt season began so early that many scientists couldn’t believe the data they were seeing. Photograph by Daniel Beltrá

The shrinking of the country’s ice sheet is triggering feedback loops that accelerate the global crisis. The floodgates may already be open...

Global average surface temperature anomalies for Sept. 2016. Image: NASA GISS

The planet's hot streak is crawling to a temporary end, but it's not over quite yet. September was the hottest such month on record, according to NASA, coming in at 0.91 degrees Celsius, or 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above average. This marks nearly a year straight of record heat, according to NASA, with 11 of the past 12 months ranking as the warmest on record...

The balsa wood man approves. (Shutterstock)

Global warming can sometimes feel like this big, hopelessly intractable problem that no one’s doing much about. But the first two weeks of October have seen a genuinely impressive barrage of climate action around the world...

Slumdwellers often tolerate flood risk in order to access jobs, schools and healthcare, the World Bank found (Flickr/Shabbir Siraj)

World Bank warns of human impact by 2030 if development doesn’t protect the most vulnerable from extreme weather...

Damage in the Rockaway neighborhood of Queens, New York, where the historic boardwalk was washed away during Hurricane Sandy, on Oct. 31, 2012. (Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Researchers predict that Sandy-like superstorms could hit the region 17 times more often by 2100...

Markell Williams, 11, has been hospitalized five times this year for seizures, which his mother believes are linked to a chemical spill near his hometown of Eight Mile, Ala. (Meggan Haller / For The Times)

When methane started leaking out of a well at the Aliso Canyon natural gas storage facility outside Los Angeles last October, noxious fumes blanketed the nearby Porter Ranch neighborhood for months. Residents complained of nausea, nosebleeds and vomiting; more than 8,000 families were forced out of their homes by the stench of the chemical odorant added to natural gas to help detect leaks...

Professor Craig Cary

With global models drawing an ever-clearer picture of unchecked warming, there has never been a more urgent time to answer the big questions about climate change's vast, frozen elephant in the room: Antarctica. As top Kiwi scientists fly south for New Zealand's 60th research season on the ice, science reporter Jamie Morton takes a look at some of the fascinating studies planned for this summer...