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A recent study suggests that the arrival of primitive moss-like plants 470 million years ago could have triggered a series of mini ice ages on Earth. Researchers at the Universities of Exeter and Oxford tried to explain how the first land plants could affect the climate about 450 million years ago during the Ordovician Period. During the Ordovician Period, the planet witnessed a gradually cooling climate that led to a series of mini ice ages. Scientists believe that the global cooling was a result of a reduction in carbon levels in the atmosphere. The findings published in Nature Geoscience show...

State Temp Date AL 112 Sept. 5, 1925 AK 100 27-Jun-15 AZ 128 29-Jun-94 AR 120 Aug. 10, 1936 CA 134 10-Jul-13 CO 114 July 11, 1888 CT 106 15-Jul-95 DE 110 21-Jul-30 FL 109 29-Jun-31 GA 112 Aug. 20, 1983 HI 100 Apr. 27, 1931 ID 118 28-Jul-34 IL 117 14-Jul-54 IN 116 14-Jul-36 IA 118 20-Jul-34 KS 121 24-Jul-36 KY 114 28-Jul-30 LA 114 Aug. 10, 1936 ME 105 10-Jul-11 MD 109 10-Jul-36 MA 107 Aug. 2, 1975 MI 112 13-Jul-36 MN 114 6-Jul-36 MS 115 29-Jul-30 MO 118 14-Jul-54 MT 117 5-Jul-37 NE 118 24-Jul-36 NV 125...

From the Tropics north, warmer summers - and their almost certainly disastrous consequences - within the next few decades are close to being an irreversible consequence of global warming says a new study from Stanford University in the United States of America. The research is published in the new edition of the journal Climate Change and says warmer summers are on the way unless greenhouse gas concentrations stop increasing. The change will be felt first closest to the Equator, where, say the scientists there will be a "permanent emergence of unprecedented summer heat" within 20 years. The warming trend will...

[Note: The new study from the Danish National Space Center was conducted by Physicist Henrik Svensmark and Eigil Friis-Christensen. Svensmark previously published his finding on the influence that cosmic rays have on cloud production in the Proceedings of the Royal Society Journal in late 2006 and he has a new 2007 book entitled “The Chilling Stars: A New Theory of Climate Change.” This new study was released within the past week or so and it is a rebuttal to a July 2007 media hyped UK study alleging there has not been a solar-climate link in the past 20 years. ]...

Suggestive correlations between the brightness of Neptune, solar variability, and Earth's temperature H. B. Hammel Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colorado, USA G. W. Lockwood Lowell Observatory, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA Abstract Long-term photometric measurements of Neptune show variations of brightness over half a century. Seasonal change in Neptune's atmosphere may partially explain a general rise in the long-term light curve, but cannot explain its detailed variations. This leads us to consider the possibility of solar-driven changes, i.e., changes incurred by innate solar variability perhaps coupled with changing seasonal insolation. Although correlations between Neptune's brightness and Earth's temperature anomaly—and between Neptune and...