University of Sydney researchers studied how simple, low-cost cooling strategies can protect garment workers from extreme heat stress, threatening their health and productivity amid rising global temperatures. Their findings highlight practical alternatives to air conditioning that can be scaled in garment factories to safeguard workers and support industry sustainability.

Scientists from Trinity College Dublin have unearthed a “universal thermal performance curve” (UTPC) that seemingly applies to all species and dictates their responses to temperature change. This UTPC essentially “shackles evolution” as no species seem to have broken free from the constraints it imposes on  how temperature affects performance.

All living things are affected by temperature, but the newly discovered UTPC unifies tens of thousands of seemingly different curves that explain how well “species work” at different temperatures. And not only does the UTPC seem to apply to all species, but also to all measures of their performance with regard to temperature variation – whether you are measuring lizards running on a treadmill, sharks swimming in the ocean, or recording cell division rates in bacteria.

Depending on where you live in the United States, the meat you eat each year could be responsible for a level of greenhouse gas emissions that's similar to what's emitted to power your house. That's according to new research from the University of Michigan and the University of Minnesota published in the journal Nature Climate Change.

Despite evidence grasslands and shrublands can adapt to periods of moderate drought, they can’t withstand prolonged periods of extreme dryness. An international collaboration, including researchers from Murdoch University, has found even native systems capable of acclimatising to moderate drought are no match for more extreme conditions.

Climate models suggest that climate change could reduce the Southern Ocean’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide (CO₂). However, observational data actually shows that this ability has seen no significant decline in recent decades. In a recent study, researchers from the Alfred Wegener Institute have discovered what may be causing this. Low-salinity water in the upper ocean has typically helped to trap carbon in the deep ocean, which in turn has slowed its release into the atmosphere – until now, that is, because climate change is increasingly altering the Southern Ocean and its function as a carbon sink. The study is published in the journal Nature Climate Change.