Climate skeptics have long raised doubts about the accuracy of computer models that predict global warming, but it turns out that most of the early climate models were spot-on, according to a look-back by climate scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NASA.

An international research team is calling on policymakers to focus not just on the threats of climate change, but on the increasing number of opportunities to drastically reduce greenhouse gases.

Scorching temperatures and parched earth are no match for the sorghum plant — this cereal crop, native to Africa and Australia, will remain green and productive, even under conditions that would render other plants brown, brittle and barren. A new study published this week in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences provides the first detailed look at how the plant exercises exquisite control over its genome — switching some genes on and some genes off at the first sign of water scarcity, and again when water returns — to survive when its surroundings turn harsh and arid.

In a new commentary published in Nature, three UC Berkeley researchers and their coauthors argue that without considerable government investment in four areas—family planning, girls’ education, agriculture, and security—Western Sahel countries’ political and economic systems could collapse. In a region with widespread hunger and malnutrition, rising food and economic insecurity could pave the way for famines, mass migration, and violent conflict. Only by investing heavily in forward-looking programs, the researchers argue, can governments avert serious disruptions down the line.

This week, the Pacific Gas and Electric Company took the unprecedented step of cutting power to nearly 750,000 Northern California customers, including much of the UC Berkeley campus, in an effort to mitigate the risk that active transmission lines could spark a wildfire during dry and windy conditions. Berkeley News spoke with Alexandra “Sascha” von Meier, Director in the California Institute for Energy and Environment’s Electric Grid program area, about the risks posed by the current energy grid and possible solutions moving forward.

Overfishing is a major problem for the world’s oceans, but a strategy adopted nearly 50 years ago has helped protect fisheries: giving nations exclusive rights to waters 200 miles offshore and letting them police their own fish stocks.

To save Earth’s stunning biodiversity, we need to set aside at least half the planet’s lands and oceans for conservation. That’s the argument made by naturalist and author E.O. Wilson in his 2016 book Half-Earth and also the inspiration behind the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s Half-Earth Day, an annual event that explores how conservationists of all stripes can make progress toward this lofty, but attainable, goal.

As temperatures rise, desert birds need more water to cool off at the same time as deserts are becoming drier, setting some species up for a severe crash, if not extinction, according to a new study from the University of California, Berkeley.

A team of collaborators including the citizen science project SOD Blitz have detected the first cases of the infectious tree-killing pathogen Phytophthora ramorum in California’s Del Norte county. The pathogen, a fungus-like water mold that causes sudden oak death, has ravaged millions of native oaks and tanoaks along California’s central and northern coasts since it was first introduced in the United States in the late-1980s.

UC Berkeley, in partnership with former California Gov. Edmund G. Brown Jr. and China’s top climate change official, Xie Zhenhua, today (Monday, Sept. 23) announced the launch of a new campus institute to bring together top researchers and policymakers from both sides of the Pacific to stop the rise of greenhouse gases.

From habitat loss to climate change, amphibians around the world face immense threats to their survival. One emerging and sinister threat is the chytrid fungus, a mysterious pathogen that kills amphibians by disrupting the delicate moisture balance maintained by their skin, and that is decimating frog populations around the world.

The New York Times makes a concerted effort to drive home the point that climate change is real, but it does a poor job of presenting the basic facts about climate change that could convince skeptics, according to a review of the paper’s coverage since 1980.

Coral reefs and the abundant life they support are increasingly threatened today, but a snapshot of a coral reef that flourished 150 million years ago shows that many animals were then at their peak of diversity, just offshore of the land ruled by dinosaurs.

Global climate change is likely to exacerbate the ongoing immigration crisis in the United States, according to field research being done this summer in Guatemala by a UC Berkeley Ph.D. student funded by the Center for Latin American Studies.

Some of the most successful plant communities in California — and probably in Mediterranean climates worldwide — that are characterized by wet winters and dry summers have taken a different approach. They’ve learned to thrive in areas with a below-ground water storage capacity barely large enough to hold the water that falls even in lean years.

Scientists are rightly focused on anticipating and preventing the major impacts that climate change will have on humans, plants and animals. But they shouldn’t forget the effect on Earth’s microbes, on which everything else depends, warns a group of 33 biologists from around the globe.

Every spring, tens of thousands of elk follow a wave of green growth up onto the high plateaus in and around Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, where they spend the summer calving and fattening on fresh grass. And every fall, the massive herds migrate back down into the surrounding valleys and plains, where lower elevations provide respite from harsh winters. These migratory elk rely primarily on environmental cues, including a retreating snowline and the greening grasses of spring, to decide when to make these yearly journeys, shows a new study led by University of California, Berkeley, researchers.

California regulators are overestimating the impact the state’s cap-and-trade system is having on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new policy brief from a researcher at UC Berkeley’s Center for Environmental Public Policy, part of the Goldman School of Public Policy.

India could make a major dent in air pollution by curbing emissions from dirty household fuels such as wood, dung, coal and kerosene, shows a new analysis led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the India Institute of Technology.

University of California scientists think they know why Earth’s generally warm and balmy climate over the past billion years has occasionally been interrupted by cold snaps that enshroud the poles with ice and occasionally turn the planet into a snowball. The key trigger, they say, is mountain formation in the tropics as continental land masses collide with volcanic island arcs, such as the Aleutian Islands chain in Alaska.

The Central Valley’s heavy wintertime tule fog – known for snarling traffic and closing schools — has been on the decline over the past 30 years, and falling levels of air pollution are the cause, says a new study by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley.

Climate change is fueling coral bleaching throughout the tropics, with potentially devastating consequences on coral reef ecosystems and on the people who depend on them for seafood, tourism and shoreline protection.

Heat trapped by greenhouse gases is raising ocean temperatures faster than previously thought; further evidence that earlier claims of a slowdown or “hiatus” in global warming over the past 15 years were unfounded.

Sixteen prominent climate scientists argue that there is more reason than ever for the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate greenhouse gases, at the same time some politicians are pushing the EPA to reverse its 2009 decision to do so.

A cheap and effective new catalyst developed by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, can generate hydrogen fuel from water just as efficiently as platinum, currently the best — but also most expensive — water-splitting catalyst out there.

Frequent, moderate-intensity burns in California forests don’t just reduce the risk of catastrophic fire. They also serve an ecological role by promoting biodiversity and the regeneration of fire-adapted native plants.

As the IPCC warns that we have only 12 years to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by nearly half or risk significantly greater impacts from climate change, UC Berkeley scientists are charting the best course to save California’s native plants from these human threats.

Retaining a bit of the wild in our working lands – including farmland, rangeland and forests – may be key to preserving biodiversity in the face of climate change.

Solar energy could be the key to providing low-cost, highly reliable energy to the roughly 600 million people in sub-Saharan Africa who currently live without power.

The 1972 Clean Water Act has driven significant improvements in U.S. water quality, according to the first comprehensive study of water pollution over the past several decades, by researchers at UC Berkeley and Iowa State University.

When fed gold nanoclusters, the bacterium Moorella thermoacetica is transformed into a hybrid artificial photosynthesis system that converts sunlight and carbon dioxide into useful chemicals for solar fuels.

Human-caused climate change has exposed U.S. national parks to conditions hotter and drier than the rest of the nation, says a study that quantifies for the first time the magnitude of climate change on all 417 parks in the system.

UC Berkeley engineers have created a new way to remove contaminants from storm water, potentially addressing the needs of water-stressed communities that are searching for ways to tap the abundant and yet underused source of fresh drinking water.

Low-tech ways of improving soil quality on farms and rangelands worldwide could pull significant amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere and slow the pace of climate change.

California today issued its latest assessment of the many challenges the state faces from climate change — including wildfires like those still raging throughout the state – and highlighted for the first time the regional impacts with nine deep-dive reports spearheaded by University of California scientists.

As temperatures in the Arctic rise in response to climate change, vegetation has invaded areas once too frigid to support plant life.

Bird communities in the Mojave Desert straddling the California/Nevada border have collapsed over the past 100 years, most likely because of lower rainfall due to climate change.

Suicide rates likely to increase as global temperatures rise

California residents not benefiting from improved air quality during first 3 years of cap-and-trade program, while other states show reductions in greenhouse gas.

Human disturbance is creating a more nocturnal natural world.

UC Berkeley scientist demonstrated that their device can collect drinkable water from the air each day/night cycle.

Shuttering coal- and oil-fired power plants lowers the rate of preterm births in neighboring communities and improves fertility, according to two new University of California, Berkeley, studies.

Hippopotamus are a major tourist draw to African watering holes, but their bountiful poop is increasingly fouling African rivers and lakes during the dry season, killing off fish and other aquatic life. And human activity is making it worse.

New research demonstrates that exposing sorghum plants to drought conditions can shift the balance between specific types of microorganisms found within their root systems.

Engineers have developed a thin-film system that can be applied to sources of waste heat like these to produce energy at levels unprecedented for this kind of technology.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has selected Patrick Gonzalez as a lead author for its next major report on climate change.

Now, a research team has opened the door to using other metals in lithium-based batteries, and have built cathodes with 50 percent more lithium-storage capacity than conventional materials.

More than 100 experts from 45 countries have published a three-year study of the Earth’s land degradation, calling the problem “critical”.

A new U.S. Department of Energy project to develop the first detector able to remotely monitor nuclear reactors will also help physicists test the next generation of neutrino observatories.

Businesses are more likely to be environmentally friendly if it’s easier for them to borrow money.