Climate: July 2021

The runaway greenhouse represents the ultimate climate catastrophe for rocky, Earth-like worlds: when the incoming stellar flux cannot be balanced by radiation to space, the oceans evaporate and exacerbate heating, turning the planet into a hot wasteland with a steam atmosphere overlying a possibly molten magma surface.

The arrival of plants on land about 400 million years ago may have changed the way the Earth naturally regulates its own climate, according to a new study led by researchers at UCL and Yale.