The seeds of maritime pines remember the temperatures they experienced during early development. This memory persists in young trees for at least two years after germination. The above discovery was made by researchers at INRAE, CEA, FCBA, the University of Orléans, the University of Perpignan, and the University of Lisbon. The memory is epigenetic in nature, meaning that the seeds’ environmental experiences influenced the expression, but not the DNA sequences, of their genes. The researchers found that epigenetic marks were displayed by 10 genes involved in promoting tree development, protective responses, and adaptation. Published in Plant Physiology, their work suggests that trees could be conditioned very early on in development to handle shifts in temperature or other environmental factors, allowing them to better cope with changing conditions over their lifetimes.

A recent study found that dust from snow- and ice-free areas of the Arctic could be an important contributor to climate change in the region. Higher levels of dust help promote the formation of ice crystals in the clouds, which weakens the efficiency of clouds to contain more liquid droplets and fewer ice crystals by Arctic warming.

Osaka Metropolitan University researchers propose a new method to generate meteorological data that takes into account the interdependence of meteorological factors, such as temperature, humidity, and solar radiation.

Deforestation has remained a significant issue globally, with primary forests contributing to 16 per cent of the total tree cover loss in the last two decades, driven by climate change and intensive human activity. This threatens natural resources, biodiversity, and people’s quality of life. To protect forests, Lithuanian scientists, in collaboration with Swedish experts, have developed Forest 4.0, an intelligent forest data processing model integrating blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies. The system enables real-time monitoring of forest conditions, sustainable resource accounting, and a more transparent forest governance model.

A team of researchers led by the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, or KAUST, Saudi Arabia, are this year’s winner of the Association for Computing Machinery’s Gordon Bell Prize for Climate Modelling. The team developed an exascale climate emulator with radically enhanced resolution but without the computational expense and data storage requirements of state-of-the-art climate models.