An international expedition including University of Sydney researchers has pieced together the clearest picture yet of how the Great Barrier Reef responded to dramatic environmental change over the past 30,000 years. Multiple studies since the expedition more than 10 years ago traced the reef’s retreat, regrowth and repeated collapse from the last ice age to the dawn of the modern reef.

Atmospheric rivers are responsible for transporting moisture and play an important role in snowfall over the ice sheet. However, conventional two-dimensional detection methods have been unsuccessful at capturing these systems accurately. Now, researchers have developed a new 3D algorithm for the detection of atmospheric rivers. Their findings reveal that atmospheric rivers form vertically structured moisture plumes that exert strong control over Antarctic precipitation and its long-term variability.

Most research studies analyzing the effects of species loss on the health and productivity of grasslands do not reflect the conditions of mature or natural grasslands. In this study, a research team analyzed how changing the order of species removal in a grassland community changed the pathways linking species loss to community stability, which is more reflective of species loss scenarios in nature.

A new study led by the University of Plymouth has used more than six decades of data to show that plankton abundance is declining across vast swathes of the North East Atlantic – a region covering the Atlantic Ocean from Portugal to Norway, and the entirety of the North Sea.