A new study by scientists and graduates at the University of Plymouth has investigated one aspect of how the future environmental conditions created by the changing global climate might affect earliest development within Christmas Island’s red crab population

Bacteria and other single-celled microorganisms in the seas around Antarctica are strongly influenced by water temperature and the amount of sea ice. This is shown by coordinated measurements taken off the coast of the west Antarctic Peninsula. "Even at two locations that are only 400 km apart on the peninsula – a very short distance on oceanographic scales – we found striking differences in the composition and relative abundances of microorganisms. These differences seem to be related to the differences in local climate", says NIOZ computational microbiologist Dr. Julia Engelmann. The results of this study by an international team of scientists led by NIOZ, are published in the journal Environmental Microbiome.

Researchers at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) have developed the world’s first kilowatt-scale elastocaloric cooling device. The device can stabilize indoor temperatures at a comfortable 21-22°C in just 15 minutes, even when outdoor temperatures reach between 30-31°C, marking a significant breakthrough toward the commercial application of elastocaloric solid-state cooling technology. The research findings have been published in the leading international science journal Nature, offering a promising solution to combat climate change and accelerate low-carbon transformation of the global cooling industry. 

As climate change and population growth increase pressure on global food production, regional-scale crop growth and associated process (CROP-AP) models have become essential tools for understanding and predicting agricultural productivity. A new review, published in Science China Earth Sciences, categorizes these models into four types—statistical models, crop growth models, hydrology-crop coupling models, and ecosystem models. The study explores their main functions from five aspects: crop yield prediction, crop water consumption, agricultural non-point source pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, and climate change impact and responses, and identifies key future research directions, including model validation and calibration, the ability to simulate the coupling of crop physiology and human activities, enhancing model scalability, multi-model ensembles, data and code sharing, and the integration of artificial intelligence.