Carolyn Gramling

Earth & Climate Writer, Science News

Carolyn is the Earth & Climate writer at Science News. Previously she worked at Science magazine for six years, both as a reporter covering paleontology and polar science and as the editor of the news in brief section. Before that she was a reporter and editor at EARTH magazine. She has bachelor’s degrees in Geology and European History and a Ph.D. in marine geochemistry from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. She’s also a former Science News intern.

All Stories by Carolyn Gramling

  1. Science & Society

    CO2 emissions have nosedived as COVID-19 keeps people home

    The COVID-19 pandemic restricted travel that can pollute the air. By April, travel-related daily emissions of greenhouse gases was back to 2006 levels.

  2. Earth

    A rainforest once grew near the South Pole

    A forest flourished within 1,000 kilometers of the South Pole. That was a while ago, as in millions of years ago.

  3. Climate

    Climate change drove Australian wildfires to extremes

    Australia’s devastating 2019–2020 wildfires were at least 30 percent more likely because of human-caused climate change.

  4. Fossils

    This dinosaur was no bigger than a hummingbird

    The skull of one of these ancient birds — the tiniest yet known — was discovered encased in a chunk of amber originally found in Myanmar.

  5. Earth

    Study appears to rule out volcanic burps as causing dino die-offs

    New data on when massive volcanic eruptions happened do not match when the dinosaur mass extinction took place.

  6. Animals

    Blood vessels in their heads kept big dinos from overheating

    Giant dinosaurs evolved several ways to cool their blood and avoid heatstroke.

  7. Earth

    Powerful storms may be causing ‘stormquakes’ offshore

    A perfect-storm mixture of hurricane, ocean and seafloor structures can create distinct seismic signals that have now been named ‘stormquakes.’

  8. Oceans

    Cool Job: This ecologist is studying an ocean of changes

    A young marine ecologist is studying how warming is changing the oceans and what people can do to minimize the harm.

  9. Climate

    Record heat is burning the Arctic and melting Greenland’s ice

    High temperatures are melting Greenland’s ice. They’re also fueling Arctic wildfires that are pumping record amounts of carbon dioxide into the air.

  10. Climate

    Today’s global warming is unlike the last 2,000 years of climate shifts

    Temperatures at the end of the 20th century were hotter almost everywhere on the planet than in the previous two millennia. And it’s only gotten hotter.

  11. Climate

    Slow hurricanes, like Dorian, become dangerous and hard to predict

    The warming seas associated with climate change may be fueling powerful but sluggish hurricanes, the type that 2019’s Dorian exemplifies. A climate scientist explains why.

  12. Fossils

    A flexible bone that aids mammals in chewing arose during the Jurassic

    A flexible bony structure that helps with chewing may have helped give rise to the Age of Mammals, a new fossil suggests.