A unique experiment led by a UC Berkeley biologist enlisted researchers from Europe, the Middle East and U.S. to plant 12 plots of Arabidopsis at 30 sites representing different climates and leave them for five years to adapt or die. A genome analysis of yearly flower clippings from the 360 plots showed how allele frequency changed as the plant populations evolved. Populations at the warmest sites were least likely to find a genetic path to survival.

Global warming has severe impacts on plant growth and development, and XBAT31 controls the protein level of the thermosensor ELF3 to promote hypocotyl growth under warm temperature conditions. In the current study, researchers unveil MIEL1 as a stabilizer of XBAT31, suppressing its auto-ubiquitination independent of MIEL1’s canonical RING-domain activity, and act cooperatively to modulate hypocotyl elongation in response to warm temperature. This hierarchical interaction between two E3 ligases expands the paradigm of ubiquitin-mediated signaling in environmental adaptation.

Ghost forests serve as powerful, visible warnings of climate change. Encroaching ocean waters are poisoning salt-intolerant trees, leaving behind eerie skeletal remains. Researchers from the University of Delaware are wading through these surreal landscapes along the mid-Atlantic coastline to determine the environmental impact of this climate-driven phenomenon. The researchers will present their results at ACS Spring 2026.

Researchers at the University of Graz unveil that carbon dioxide removal capacities must be shared fairly between countries, just like emissions budgets, if the world is to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target in the long term. Their study warns that weak climate policy and limited CO₂ removal capacity will create major injustices between countries. Julia Danzer and Gottfried Kirchengast estimate that the sustainable long-term capacity for annual CO₂ removal is less than 10% of today’s annual greenhouse gas emissions, making removal a scarce resource. They have developed a "computer game model" to explore different scenarios of fair and unfair allocation of removal rights across countries, finding that unfair control of some countries over CO₂ removal would exacerbate global inequalities. 

Rivers do not just move water; they act as nature's hard drives, saving a permanent record of what happens on the surface. When toxic chemicals settle into the mud at the riverbed, they create a chronological diary of human activity. Recently, a detailed investigation published in Carbon Research has opened up one of these geological diaries in Mongolia’s Orkhon River Basin, revealing exactly how economic booms and traffic jams translate into chemical fallout.

The detective work was spearheaded by corresponding author Jing Chen from Beijing Normal University. Drawing on the analytical power of the State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control and the Center for Atmospheric Environmental Studies, Chen's team extracted sediment cores to trace the history of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)—a notoriously stubborn class of toxic pollutants created by burning fuel and organic matter.