"The unrelenting drought gripping key farming states in the U.S. Plains shows no signs of abating, and it will take a deluge of snow or rain to restore critical moisture to farmland before spring planting of new crops, a climate expert said on Thursday."

"Changes in the climate are happening much faster than animals are able to respond."

"It's a lake, yes. But it's also a bomb. Those pale blue blobs, stacked like floating pancakes down at the bottom of this photograph? They're astonishingly beautiful, yes, but they can be dangerous."

"Butterflies from the southern US that used to be rare in the northeast are now appearing there on a regular basis. The trend correlates to a warming climate report the authors of a paper in Nature Climate Change."

Climate change is already creating refugees along the coastal lowlands of Bangladesh.

"When President Obama during his inauguration speech made a case for tackling human-driven climate change, it felt like deja vu for many in the environmental community -- including members of religious groups who have long looked to him for action."

"No part of the U.S. will escape the harsh consequences of climate change, which has already begun to cause trouble from Alaska to Florida, and from Maine to Hawaii, and which will worsen as the century goes on. But according to a report released January 28, the nation’s coastlines -- Atlantic, Gulf, Pacific and Great Lakes -- are likely to get the worst of it."

"Microbes are known to be able to thrive in extreme environments, from inside fiery volcanoes to down on the bottom of the ocean. Now scientists have found a surprising number of them living in storm clouds tens of thousands of feet above the Earth. And those airborne microbes could play a role in global climate."

"When Groundhog Day arrives Saturday, don't waste much time expecting to see your local groundhog. It's too early. Normal emergence in the Washington area is late February or early March — but a steadily warming world might change that."