It's hard to think about things that aren't politics in the U.S. right now, but for a bit of good news distraction: polar bears in Svalbard are fatter than scientists expected, suggesting they're coping with dramatic sea ice loss — for now. www.sciencenews.org/article/pola...

A handful of intrepid cattle ranchers in Wyoming are testing out new tech that could help make ranches a little more conservation-friendly: virtual fences. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/c...

Read this investigation into CA's child labor: A "climate of fear has made families more reluctant than ever to complain about unsafe working conditions, concerned that employers will retaliate. Even so, young people continue to work to help their parents pay bills and put food on the table."

The ant queen is dead. Long live the queen! Some parasitic ant queens can sneak into other species' colonies and douse the true queen in an acid that compels the workers—her daughters—to turn against her. After the workers kill their queen, the usurper swoops in. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/17/s...

Today in fish news: After more than 100 years away, salmon are back in the headwaters of the Klamath River. At least 140 Chinook adults are spawning, and more are coming. But there's restoration work still to do. Some federal funding for it is delayed. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/10/29/c...

A new study argues that in the past, Cascadia quakes have triggered the San Andreas to go off, and that it could happen again. But other experts, while recognizing that may technically be possible, want more evidence. Read more at NatGeo: www.nationalgeographic.com/science/arti...

The @nytimes.com climate section is profiling federal scientists who have been terminated and their work. I spoke with tsunami expert Corina Allen, who worked to ensure tsunami alerts made it to the public. She was fired in February. Read her story and others': www.nytimes.com/2025/10/23/c...

This is one of my favorite stories I've gotten to write. And it's that time of year again, when the skies in northwestern Washington are painted with squiggly black Vs of snow geese looking for a snack bar to settle down at for the winter. Just don't get hit by poop when you're looking up at them!

Economy or environment? That's the question that plagues public land managers, and Washington's forests are not immune. 77,000 acres of ecologically important stands will be conserved, but some worry rural schools will lose out. For @highcountrynews.org: www.hcn.org/articles/was...

A wildfire has been burning in the Olympic Peninsula for a month, growing to more than 5,100 acres at just 3% containment. Washington state is working to raise awareness of fire risk in its wet, forested environs and developing a plan to best fight fires here. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/06/c...

Climate change is whipping up worse fire weather and more severe fire seasons. Longer hot dry spells mean drought-stricken soils and crispy vegetation, and when the winds shift and something sparks—wildfire. In 2023 and 2024, forests were hit hard, two studies show. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/21/c...

NOAA's network of climate monitoring stations and sample collectors is the backbone of tracking global climate change. Trump's proposed budget would shut it down. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/c...

Today NASA backtracked on its statement earlier this month that the National Climate Assessments would be hosted on their website. “NASA has no legal obligations to host globalchange.gov’s data,” a spokeswoman said today. “We never did and will not host the data.”www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/c...re

The Trump administration's proposed budget would slash NOAA's climate research funds. It still has to pass Congress, but it's already affecting scientists. A program supporting promising new climate scientists furloughed its current cohort and canceled 2025 awards. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/09/c...

The levees that protect New Orleans from storm surges are sinking. It's built into their design: they're big and heavy and basically built on mud. But in some spots, they're sinking faster than expected. A new study shows where and how fast it's happening. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/c...

Three DoD/NOAA satellites that help scientists track sea ice (and hurricanes) are slated to cease providing their data at the end of July due to "cybersecurity concerns." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/c...

The national climate assessment "shows how climate is changing in the places where we live, in ways that matter to people's lives," @katharinehayhoe.com told me. It explains those effects in "clear and unmistakable terms." The reports' website disappeared on Monday. NASA will now host them online.

The federal website for the national climate reports and other climate change information went dark Monday afternoon, the latest ripple of the shutdown of the legislatively mandated Global Change Research Program. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/01/c...

In a temporary pivot, the DoD will keep supplying satellite data important for forecasting hurricanes (and monitoring sea ice) until July 31. Today's announcement cited cybersecurity concerns as the reason for originally pulling the data. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/30/c...

Forecasters will imminently lose observations crucial for hurricane tracking and prediction, as data from three NOAA/DOD satellites will go unmonitored. The satellites aren't being decommissioned. The agencies will simply stop providing the satellites' data. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/c...

State geological agencies create maps that oil & gas, mining and energy industries use for exploration and development, supporting Trump's goals around energy and critical minerals. But delayed federal funds and a proposed budget cut threaten this key work. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/20/c...

Airplanes are designed to handle extreme heat and cold, strong winds and more. Climate change and weather extremes mean some planes are hitting their limits more often. But it's still safe to fly on hot days, experts said. Read on to learn why: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/13/c...

Temperatures are soaring, and there's a limit to what plants can handle. Scientists are figuring out how to engineer crops to take the heat so they can get into the kitchen. www.nytimes.com/2025/06/12/c...

The atmosphere is a needy sponge, demanding more and more water as it warms. This "atmospheric thirst" is largely responsible for the increase in drought severity and areal extent seen in the last 40 years, a new study finds. "A hotter world is a thirstier world." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/c...

The WH said the "gold standard of science" EO was to address "a crisis of trust between the scientific community and the American public," but according to Pew, "the American people trust scientists far more than the federal government." www.pewresearch.org/science/2024... Read Somini's piece:

The USGS ecosystems research program doesn't just study wildlife. Its researchers work on rangelands and forests, fisheries and aquaculture, and critically, wildfire. Trump's proposed budget eliminates this program entirely, allocating $0 for 2026. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/31/c...

The world's mountain glaciers have been shrinking and disappearing for decades. Then-and-now photos raise the alarm, as do floods and landslides from glacial collapses. But the biggest losses are yet to come, a new study finds. A lot of melt is already locked in. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/c...

All models are wrong, but some models are useful: it's true for AI-based weather forecasting, too. Google, Huawei and Nvidia rolled out their AI weather forecasting models in 23/24. Now, Microsoft formally joins the fray with Aurora, presented in a new Nature paper. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/c...

attn current or former #USGS folks in the ecosystems mission area, #NOAA folks at Sea Grants or estuary reserves or CAP projects, #NPS scientists, and others: my DMs are open. ping me there for signal info.

NOAA announced that will stop tracking "billion dollar disasters," which have been increasing since its record began in 1980. Without the database, researchers, insurers and government agencies will be "flying blind." And it's not easy to replace. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/c...

Photos and videos bring the depths of the sea to researchers and the public alike. They let biologists, geologists and others study the most inaccessible places on Earth. But we've only documented about 0.001% of the seafloor, a new study finds. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/c...

Two U.S. science societies, @agu.org and @ametsoc.org, announced today that they aim to publish the originally planned work of dismissed #NCA6 authors. With slashed funds and staff and no authors, the Congressionally mandated federal report is in limbo. @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2025/05/02/c...

On Earth Day, against a backdrop of federal layoffs, censored research and slashed science budgets, the White House posted: "We Finally Have A President Who Follows Science." The @nytimes.com fact-checked a (non-exhaustive) selection of the statements on that page: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The authors of the #NCA6, a congressionally mandated climate report, were all dismissed from their volunteer roles in what was a “gut-wrenching” and “disempowering” move. The report isn’t technically cancelled, but its future is highly uncertain. @nytimes.com: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/28/c...

okay but who drew the short straw to go into the asthenosphere and hold the screwdriver

For 30 years, coots have managed to live in Amsterdam's concrete canals. With little plant life around, they resorted to plastic to build their nests. Doing so built a record of humans, a plastic stratigraphy of the city. For NatGeo: www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/arti...

These trees are into getting shocked. Dipteryx oleifera towers above the rest of Panama’s rainforest — arboreal lightning rods. They’re more likely to survive ⚡ than their neighbors, giving them a competitive edge. Read more at: @nytscience.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2025/04/01/s...

Makes sense.

Washington's stats: $1.29 billion in funding, supporting nearly $3 billion in economic activity and more than 11,000 jobs. Check out your state too.

I'm excited to share that this story was selected as an Honorable Mention for the 2024 @nswa.bsky.social Journalism Award! Reporting this changed my view of ice-capped Cascades peaks; they're all responding to climate change differently and hold their own secrets underneath their white blankets.

Cactus poaching is on the rise in the Atacama Desert. New mining roads turn long treks into easy drives, increasing access to remote landscapes home to rare and sought-after—and vulnerable—cacti. This botanist wants to protect them. @sciencenews.bsky.social www.sciencenews.org/article/cact...

For @sciencenews.bsky.social: Trees and the fungi they depend on are being torn apart, a new study finds. As climates get warmer and drier, many trees should be migrating north—but some aren't. That could be because their fungal friends can't make the journey. www.sciencenews.org/article/clim...

As finances pinch farms, some farmers turn to agritourism (farm stands, insta-ready fields, event hosting, etc.) to make ends meet. But in western Washington, residents are divided over what's "real" agritourism and what goes too far. www.hcn.org/issues/56-11...

In a fun one for NYT Science, I get two paleontologists' takes on how they'd cook up a Cambrian shrimp-look-alike with a taco-shaped shell: nytimes.com/2024/07/23/s... (there is #science in it too) #TfossilTuesday

The glaciated summit of Rainier hosts a network of icy caves that could hold clues to volcanic activity and even life on other planets. They've persisted for decades without melting. A team has remapped the labyrinth—before climate change (maybe) gets it. www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/arti...

To deal with cold, we humans can hunker down inside, flee to warmer climes, or don insulating layers. Other animals may lack central heating and puffy jackets, but they have their own ways of surviving—including ripping off a limb when necessary. For NWF's winter issue: www.nwf.org/Home/Magazin...

Halfway through #AGU23 :

“If the commission does not put preserving wildlife first, there is not going to be wildlife left for people to hunt. That’s it.” My first story for High Country News; thanks to @nijhuism.bsky.social for excellent edits on this nuanced story. #conservation #wildlife www.hcn.org/articles/wil...

It's #MigratoryBirdDay and I'm here to shout about snow geese in Washington! Photographers, hunters, and birders delight in the flocks, but they can pose a real headache to farmers if they settle on fields for too long. (Many farmers love them all the same.) www.biographic.com/washingtons-...

Animals use all kinds of wild deterrents to rid themselves of ticks. My personal favorite is "anting," where birds/monkeys coax ants to crawl all over them. The ants' acid drives off ticks, but as one scientist said, "they look kind of insane when they do it." www.nwf.org/Home/Magazin...