Last year, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize along with Albert Gore Jr., sending a strong message about the importance of the world's future climate. Indeed, for two decades, international scientists and policy-makers contributing to the IPCC process have provided assessments of climate change science, impacts and mitigation, addressing one of the most far-reaching and complex challenges that society has ever faced. Yet this is no time for IPCC to rest on its laurels.

Dinosaurs might have known a surprising amount about what we think of as a quintessentially modern problem: global warming.

High-resolution speleothem records from China have provided insights into the factors that control the strength of the East Asian monsoon.

Deposits in a Chinese cave tell the story of the region 's climate stretching back more than 200,000 years, well past the last interglacial warm period

We should not wait to cut back on burning fossil fuels until we have developed greener technology to supply our energy needs, despite what many economists are advising their respective governments. Such a waiting game may have deadly consequences. Feb 27, 2008

One of the biggest challenges in climate research is to arrive at reliable future projections.

One million tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide are dissolved into the oceans every hour, a process that helps maintain the Earth's delicate carbon balance. But CO2 also makes seawater more acidic, and too much of it can wreak havoc on a marine species.

Judging the effect of climate change on ocean currents could take longer than we thought. The circulation of warm water in the North Atlantic is suspected to be slowing, and the worry is that global warming is to blame.