Just before World Water Day, the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) announces it will lead the new MountAInWater project, an ambitious endeavor funded by Schmidt Sciences with a grant of USD 9.5 million. Scientists will carry out the first-ever global reanalysis of mountain water resources using high-resolution models, assessing the effects of climate change on these critical water supplies, and identifying potential tipping points in mountain environments. To achieve this, the team from six countries will make use of a unique combination of field work, physically-based modeling and AI—and also engage with affected regions and communities. Their results will be a crucial resource in managing future water security challenges.

JMIR Publications today released a critical analysis in its News and Perspectives section regarding the global resurgence of cholera and the vital role of digital surveillance in fragile settings.

The City College of New York's Professor Kaveh Madani and Director of the UN's Think Tank on Water, has been named the 2026 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate in recognition of his groundbreaking work linking water science, policy, diplomacy, and public outreach, including his influential “water bankruptcy” concept and fundamental contributions to integrating game theory into water resource modeling. Known as the ‘Nobel Prize of Water’, the Stockholm Water Prize is the world’s most prestigious water award.

As climate change reshapes Arctic food webs, ringed seals will swim into risky polar bear territory if the menu is varied enough. 

That’s the central finding of a new study published in Ecology Letters. UBC researchers tracked 26 ringed seals and 39 polar bears in eastern Hudson Bay, using GPS and dive information to analyze how the animals found, and avoided becoming, food. 

Researchers led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM) have created the first global atlas of the influence of tides on coastal rivers. The regions surrounding these coastal rivers are particularly susceptible to flooding, especially with advancing climate change. The freely accessible world map shows the effects at a glance.

New analyses of ancient ice from Antarctica and the air contained inside it are extending the history of Earth’s climate records and expanding researchers’ understanding of how the planet has changed over the last 3 million years.

s human-caused climate change continues to raise temperatures across the globe, understanding how birds regulate their temperature is vital for their conservation. But how much heat birds emit—an invisible spectrum of radiation known as mid-infrared—has never been studied, until now. Published in the journal Integrative Organismal Biology, a groundbreaking collaboration between material engineers and museum biologists explored the impact of mid-infrared on birds for the first time in history, reflecting the hidden prism of light, heat, and color in bird feathers.  

It’s long been known that habitat plays a role in bird coloration, a phenomenon described by biologists through things like Gloger’s rule, which predicts that animals like birds living in hot, humid areas will be visibly darker than those in dry, cool areas. Color is part of the electromagnetic spectrum, a visible wavelength that humans can see part of (the visible spectrum), and birds can see even more of (the ultraviolet spectrum), but heat, or infrared, exists outside the bounds of what either humans or birds can see. Infrared is broken down into the heat animals absorb (near-infrared) but not the heat they emit (mid-infrared). The interdisciplinary team of scientists measured both in the new study.

Sea ice around Antarctica expanded for several decades until a dramatic decline in 2015. The reasons behind this are revealed by research from the University of Gothenburg.

A severe and prolonged U.S. drought in the late 1980s played a central role in one of the largest fisheries declines ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.