Climate

New research shows that when predator species like California sheephead thrive, they keep hungry sea urchins and other grazers from devouring kelp forests struggling to recover from marine heat waves. Scientists estimate kelp forests’ annual exposure to once-rare heat will more than quintuple by 2100. 

The latest awards from Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator support wide-ranging efforts to help communities and nature withstand climate-related extreme events and advance the measurement of planetary systems.

Entrepreneurs and investors agreed that collaboration will be crucial for enabling the greenhouse gas removal industry to scale up “faster than basically any industry on Earth.”

During a recent Sustainability Accelerator event, venture capitalists urged researchers working to scale greenhouse gas removal technologies to focus on cost and seek common ground with a wide range of prospective partners. 

Stanford’s Sustainability Accelerator convened more than 300 researchers, investors, entrepreneurs, and alumni on campus to learn about greenhouse gas removal and how 18 teams are seeking to enable it on a large scale. Explore highlights from the event.

Researchers presented their work on greenhouse gas removal, learned from experts about scalability and finance, and connected with potential investors and partners.

Stanford researchers found increased meltwater and rain explain 60% of a decades-long mismatch between predicted and observed temperatures in the ocean around Antarctica.

Climate scientist Rob Jackson and philosopher Leif Wenar discussed challenges, ambitions, and moral implications of restoring the atmosphere in a recent Dean’s Lecture Series event.

Brooke Weigel studies ecosystem interactions that are invisible to the naked eye. Scientists in her lab examine kelp’s microscopic forms, their role in carbon sequestration, and how climate change will impact the future of these vast underwater forests.

Researchers found widespread deployment of technologies that pull carbon dioxide from industrial flues and ambient air would be much more expensive and damaging than a hypothetical worldwide switch to electricity and heat from renewable sources – if energy costs, emissions, and health impacts are all taken into account.

New research shows grain yields critical to India’s food security are dragged down 10% or more in many parts of the country by nitrogen dioxide pollution from power stations that run on coal. Economic losses from crop damages exceed $800 million per year.

Between 1997 and 2024, endangered North Pacific loggerhead sea turtles shifted their foraging northward at a rate six times faster than the average for most marine species. The turtles face risks as they adapt to ocean warming caused by climate change.

Stanford researchers find resistance to climate action has become a global movement that strengthens after governments implement climate-related policies. 

Stanford scientists discuss the social and environmental costs of mining sand from the ocean and sand’s role in climate adaptation.

Our list includes a mix of favorites, high-impact stories, and some of our most-read research coverage from the past year.

Stanford scientists have discovered multiple forms of a ubiquitous enzyme in microbes that thrive in low-oxygen zones off the coasts of Central and South America. The results may open new possibilities for growing crops with fewer resources and understanding ocean carbon storage. 

Rainy days are becoming less frequent but more intense across much of the planet because of climate change. Even in years with similar rainfall totals, plants fare differently when rain falls in fewer, bigger bursts, a new study shows.