The Arctic and northern subpolar regions are critical for climate change. Ice-albedo feedback amplifies warming in the Arctic, and fluctuations of regional fresh water inflow to the Arctic Ocean modulate the deep ocean circulation and thus exert a strong global influence. By comparing observations to simulations from 22 coupled climate models, the researchers find influence from anthropogenic greenhouse gases and sulfate aerosols in the space-time pattern of precipitation change over high latitude land areas during the second half of the 20th century.

Once, plant breeders dreamed of plumper tomatoes, heartier soybeans and juicier corn kernels. These days, visions of squat poplars and earless corn stalks are dancing in their heads. They are hoping these new fangled crops will make cost-effective biofuels.

Despite technological, economic and social issues, companies are plowing ahead, making drugs and other compounds in plants.

Ocean acidification in response to rising atmospheric CO2 partial pressures is widely expected to reduce calcification by marine organisms. From the mid-Mesozoic, coccolithophores have been major calcium carbonate producers in the world's oceans, today accounting for about a third of the total marine CaCO3 production. Here, the researchers present laboratory evidence that calcification and net primary production in the coccolithophore species Emiliania huxleyi are significantly increased by high CO2 partial pressures.

Mercury is a persistent contaminant that biomagnifies up the food web, causing mortality, reproductive failure, and other health effects in predatory wildlife and humans. From 1930 to 1950, industrial mercuric sulfate entered the South River, a tributary of the Shenandoah River in Virginia (United States). To determine whether this mercury concentration had moved into the adjacent terrestrial food web, the researchers anlayzed total mercury concentrations in blood from adults of 13 terrestrial feeding bird species breeding within 50 m of the river.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD) brought together governments, internatonal organizations and private sector and civil society organizations to address the challenges of food security, food supply, food prices. The task was to assess the current state and future potential of formal and informal knowledge, as well as science and technology, (i) to reduce hunger and poverty, (ii) to improve rural livelihoods, and (iii) to facilitate equitabble, sustainable development.

A few U.S. energy companies have drawn up plans for synfuels plants that would produce millions of barrels of the alternative fuel annually. The technology is gaining support from a a group of climate scientists who believe that, barrel for barrel, synfuels can emit less carbon dioxide (CO2) than oil and, at some point, even reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

A recent spike in wholesale and market prices for rice, wheat and maize has touched off food riots and prompted countries with surpluses to impose restrictions on grain exports. In response, U.S. President George W. Bush ordered up $200 million in emergency food aid. Behind the scenes, however, researchers charge that the U.S. government is moving to slash funding for international agricultural research.

Almost 6 years ago, a paper in Science warned of an unheralded environmental peril. Melted snow and ice seemed to be reaching the base of the great Greenland ice sheet, lubricating it and accelerating the sheet's slide toward oblivion in the sea, where it was raising sea level worldwide (12 July 2002, p. 218). Now a two-pronged study-both broader and more focused than the one that sounded the alarm-has confirmed that meltwater reaches the ice sheet's base and does indeed speed the ice's seaward flow. The good news is that the process is more leisurely than many climate scientists had feared.

The international team of climate change scientists that produced an influential series of reports last year will be doing things a little differently in the future. Government delegates to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), meeting in Budapest, Hungary, approved a plan for the 20-year, 100-nation enterprise that would generate more precise and relevant information on climate change-without taking any longer than the current 6-year gap between reports.