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Climate change is driving tropical fish northward, with species used to relatively sparse coral reefs suddenly finding an appetite for the more abundant vegetation of northern kelp and sea grass beds. That could lead to radical changes in northern aquatic ecosystems, researchers say. "The faunas are mixing, and nobody can see what the outcome will be," says marine scientist Ken Heck.

Kenya-based Wildlife Works Carbon employs "wildlife rangers" on about 500,000 acres in and around two national parks to protect elephants from poachers. The company sells carbon credits to raise the funds needed to pay the rangers. The cash raised also goes to compensate landowners for leaving land and resources in their natural condition, and to fund educational and community projects. It's the country's pilot project as part of its belonging to the United Nations' Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation program.

Norway is pioneering the use of captured carbon emissions to grow an algal soup that can be used as food for farmed fish, helping to reduce overfishing of the wild krill upon which fish farms more typically rely.

Kudzu, the invasive plant spreading across the southern U.S. at a rate of more than 120,000 acres a year, is drawing huge amounts of carbon out of the soil as it grows, researchers say. Kudzu-infested forests give up as much as a third of their soil-sequestered carbon, totaling up to 4.8 million tons of carbon a year

California could ditch fossil fuels altogether by midcentury at a cost of $1.1 trillion, and would earn back most or all of that price tag through climate benefits and fuel savings, a new report suggests. Going 100% renewable would also save 10,000 lives and $100 billion in health care costs due to reduced pollution, the report found

A new Google-powered tool called Google Earth Engine is helping environmental groups and researchers to keep tabs on problems including Amazonian deforestation, overfishing, sea-ice melt and the spread of diseases. The tool's real-time data trove and mapping features make it easier to stay on top of the wealth of data now available, researchers say. "When you visualize it, you can get it at the gut level. ... You can see it happening," says Randy Sargent of Carnegie Mellon University.

Adding relatively small amounts of compost to ranchland can have a dramatic and lasting impact on the soil's ability to absorb carbon, according to research from bio-geochemist Whendee Silver. Spreading compost over just 5% of California's pastures would effectively cancel out a year's worth of statewide emissions from the farm and forestry industries, Silver found. "It's inexpensive, it's low technology, it's good land use, it solves multiple problems," she says.

Naturally occurring climate change lowered oxygen levels in the deep ocean, decimating a broad spectrum of seafloor life that took some 1,000 years to recover, according to a study that offers a potential window into the effects of modern warming.

2015 was Earth's hottest year on record, according to new data released Wednesday by NOAA and NASA. For the last 12 months the  average surface temperature across the globe was 58.47 Fahrenheit, a 0.23-degree increase from 2014's record-breaking average temperature of 58.24, the two agencies reported.

Chile has created a vast marine park around the Desventuradas Islands, a few hundred miles off its coast, to protect many species that can be found nowhere else in the world. "For many years, Chile has been one of the most important fishing countries in the world," said campaigner Alex Munoz. With the marine park's creation, he added, "we're also becoming a leader in marine conservation." 

ExxonMobil and other major oil companies, as well as several multinational firms in other sectors, are set to announce support for a tax on carbon emissions as a practical tool for fighting global warming. The firms argue that if energy produced from fossil fuels costs more, it will accelerate the market-driven transition to renewable energy and other sources that produce low carbon emissions.

Swiss company Climeworks has opened the world's first commercial carbon capture plant in Switzerland. The plant will capture around 900 tons of CO2 from the air annually.

Live Zero is part of a growing movement of "zero-waste" supermarkets that aim to end packaging waste by doing away with packaging altogether. The concept began in Europe more than a decade ago, and has since spread globally. There are now zero waste supermarkets from Brooklyn to Sicily to Malaysia to South Africa.

Potent, climate-warming gases are being emitted into the atmosphere but are not being recorded in official inventories, a BBC investigation has found. Air monitors in Switzerland have detected large quantities of one gas coming from a location in Italy. However, the Italian submission to the UN records just a tiny amount of the substance being emitted. Levels of some emissions from India and China are so uncertain that experts say their records are plus or minus 100%.

An organic activist group and a subsequent article in The New York Times said testing has shown small amounts of the weed killer glyphosate in some Ben & Jerry's ice cream samples. Traces of the widely used pesticide can be found in many food products, and the company says it is working to determine how amounts from 0 to 1.74 parts per billion got into its supply chain.

Researchers from the Environmental Defense Fund, Harvard University and Princeton University have proposed that scientists use different and more precise measurements when predicting global warming trends, particularly by measuring carbon emissions on both 20- and 100-year scales. The researchers believe this dual-measurement system would help organizations and governments see both the short- and long-term benefits of different energy projects.