At 443.4 square miles and growing, the Mendocino Complex fire is already larger than New York and approaching the size of Los Angeles. The fire recently surpassed the size of last summer’s Thomas fire, which makes it the biggest recorded fire in California history. 

A new study warns that the Paris commitment to cap warming at 2 degrees Celsius may not be enough to prevent melting ice, warming seas, shifting currents, and dying forests caused by climate change from sending the earth into a permanent “hothouse” state. 

A high-level discussion about moving to Mars, cohosted by SpaceX and the University of Colorado, Boulder, happened this week behind closed doors. Participants were asked not to talk about the workshop or their attendance. 

Coincidentally, a recent study published in Nature Astronomy found there is not enough CO2 on Mars—frozen or in the ground—to terraform the planet. Elon Musk disputed those results on Twitter.  

A study finds that coral species near the Moku o Lo‘e Reef in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, are better at acclimatizing and adapting to increased ocean temperatures than they were in 1970, offering hope that some corals will be able to adapt to climate change. 

Women are more likely to die from heart attacks when they're treated by male doctors—a.k.a. “a glass ceiling on life.”

Ice cores drilled in Greenland and Antarctica show that CO2 levels are higher than they’ve ever been in the last 800,000 years.  

Scientists in India are racing to complete a 3D map of the Ganges River before monsoon season.  

New research suggests that the number of bird species in the Mojave Desert has nearly halved, and climate change is the likely culprit.  

Nearly a year after Hurricane Maria, the Puerto Rican government acknowledged that the death toll from the storm is much higher than its official count—more than 1,400 deaths, or a 20-fold increase from the former count of 64.

A federal court ordered the EPA to ban the use of the heavily used farm chemical chlorpyrifos and reprimanded the agency for not doing so sooner. 

Recently ousted Yellowstone National Park superintendent Dan Wenk said that the only source of disagreement he ever had with Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was over the number of bison in the park. 

In the Australian city of Townsville, about 7,000 volunteer families raised 4 million mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia, causing dengue fever rates across the city to plunge. World Mosquito Program Director Scott O'Neill described the city-wide experiment as “a bit like a ‘sea monkeys’ kit.” 

The EPA is now legally allowing asbestos to be used in U.S. manufacturing. Uralasbest, a Russian mining company that also happens to be the world’s largest supplier of asbestos, has been using President Trump’s face as a seal on its shipping pallets.