news 2026

Researchers have identified a 'tipping point' about 2.7 million years ago when global climate conditions switched from being relatively warm and stable to cold and chaotic, as continental ice sheets expanded in the northern hemisphere. Following this transition, Earth's climate began swinging back and forth between warm interglacial periods and frigid ice ages, linked to slow, cyclic changes in Earth's orbit.

New research may have solved an American mystery which has baffled geologists for a century and a half: how did a river carve a path through a mountain in one of the country's most iconic landscapes? Scientists have long sought an answer to the question of how the Green River, the largest tributary of the Colorado River, managed to create a 700-metre-deep canyon through Utah's 4km-high Uinta Mountains instead of simply flowing around them.

Air-polluting microplastics have been found in rural areas in greater quantities than in cities, researchers say. The study, led by the University of Leeds, detected up to 500 microscopic particles of plastic per square metre per day in an area of woodland during the three-month study - almost twice as much as in a sample collected in a city centre.

The natural sands of beaches along the Firth of Forth are being mixed with significant amounts of human-made materials like bricks, concrete, glass and industrial waste, new research has revealed. A detailed survey of six beaches led by a team from the University of Glasgow has found that these mineral-based materials, known as anthropogenic geomaterials, now make up far more of the beach surface than previously realised.