Climate models

Carbon dioxide’s powerful heat-trapping effect has been traced to a quirk of its quantum structure. The finding may explain climate change better than any computer model.

A custom-built machine learning algorithm can predict when a complex system is about to switch to a wildly different mode of behavior.

Researchers say we’re on the cusp of “GoPro physics,” where a camera can point at an event and an algorithm can identify the underlying physics equation.

Syukuro Manabe and Klaus Hasselmann have been honored for their work that led to reliable predictions of the effects of climate change. They will share the Nobel with Giorgio Parisi, who has made pioneering studies of chaotic physical systems.

A centuries-old concept in soil science has recently been thrown out. Yet it remains a key ingredient in everything from climate models to advanced carbon-capture projects.

An overlooked but powerful driver of cloud formation could accelerate the loss of polar sea ice.

Summer sea ice could vanish later this decade, with disastrous consequences. It all depends on the physics of ice.

A state-of-the-art supercomputer simulation indicates that a feedback loop between global warming and cloud loss can push Earth’s climate past a disastrous tipping point in as little as a century.

New work at the intersection of atmospheric science and ecology is finding that forests can influence rainfall and climate from across a continent.