Democratic countries tend to be rated “greener”, or more environmentally friendly, compared to other countries—but this may be because they more often outsource the environmental impacts of their consumption to other nations, according to a study published May 14, 2025, in the open-access journal PLOS Climate by Thomas Bernauer and Ella Henninger from ETH Zurich, Switzerland and Tobias Böhmelt from the University of Essex.

When researchers from The University of Texas at Austin went searching for microplastics in sediments pulled from the bottom of Matagorda Bay and its surrounding inlets, they didn’t find much. Most of their samples contained only tens to hundreds of microplastic particles for each kilogram of sediment. This is hundreds to thousands of times less than other bayside environments around the world.

Traditional methods of assessing damage after a disaster can take weeks or even months, delaying emergency response, insurance claims and long-term rebuilding efforts. New research from Texas A&M University might change that. Led by Dr. Maria Koliou, associate professor and Zachry Career Development Professor II in the Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Texas A&M, researchers have developed a new method that combines remote sensing, deep learning and restoration models to speed up building damage assessments and predict recovery times after a tornado. Once post-event images are available, the model can produce damage assessments and recovery forecasts in less than an hour.

The origin of reptiles on Earth has been shown to be up to 40 million years earlier than previously thought – thanks to evidence discovered at an Australian fossil site that represents a critical time period.

Flinders University Professor John Long and colleagues have identified fossilised tracks of an amniote with clawed feet – most probably a reptile – from the Carboniferous period, about 350 million years ago.

A recent study published in Nature has explored how the South Asian Summer Monsoon (SASM) responds to warming under six climate scenarios, spanning from the past to the future. Led by researchers from the Institute of Atmospheric Physics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the study develops a unified framework based on thermodynamic (moisture-driven) and dynamic (wind-driven) processes that govern changes in the SASM, suggesting that insights from past warm climates can inform our understanding of the future SASM.