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Extreme heatwaves are on the rise. When do they become critical for forest trees? In the hot summer of 2023, a research team led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) investigated this in Switzerland, southern France and Spain.

Catastrophic volcanic eruptions that warmed the planet millions of years ago shed new light on how plants evolve and regulate climate. Researchers reveal the long-term climate effects of disturbed natural ecosystems - its implications both in geological history and for today. Scientists often seek answers to humanity's most pressing challenges in nature.

An international study led by researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI has used a new method to identify the various sources of aerosols that create smog in Beijing. A number of studies have estimated that air pollution is responsible for several million deaths worldwide every year. In order to take appropriate measures to keep the air clean, it is important to know where the pollutants come from.

A team of scientists from EPFL and other research institutes have identified just how an Alpine flower is surviving by adapting its genes to local habitats. This discovery has important implications for the protection of ecosystems under threat. In the Alps, adventurous hikers aren't the only ones to regularly climb to new heights.

Extreme heatwaves are on the rise. When do they become critical for forest trees? In the hot summer of 2023, a research team led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) investigated this in Switzerland, southern France and Spain.

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have used one of the most advanced energy system models in Europe to calculate the impact of digitalisation on energy consumption. Many people now work partly or permanently from home. This saves petrol because they no longer have to drive to the office - which is good for the energy transition.

Researchers at Eawag and the Swiss Data Science Center have trained AI algorithms with a comprehensive ecotoxicological dataset. Now their machine learning models can predict how toxic chemicals are to fish. Chemicals play an important role in our everyday lives, for example in the production of food, medicines and various everyday goods.

Developed at EPFL, Heriot-Watt University, and ETH Zurich, PrISMa is a new platform that uses advanced simulations and machine learning to streamline carbon capture technologies, by taking into account the perspectives of diverse stakeholders early in the research process. Mitigating the effects of climate change has become a major focus worldwide, with countries and international organizations developing various strategies to address the problem.

When the Earth's ice masses melt, the way the planet rotates also changes. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now been able to show how climate change is altering the Earth's axis of rotation and the length of the day. The speed of rotation, which was hitherto mainly influenced by the moon, will now also depend much more on the climate.

Researchers discovered that deepwater renewal in Lake Geneva in wintertime is not only due to vertical mixing. Instead, strong currents coming from the lake's Petit Lac basin and nearshore zones of the Grand Lac play a vital role. In temperate lakes, deep vertical mixing, known as turnover, happens during winter.

Cichlids living in groups tend to turn a blind eye to their relatives shirking their duty to help as desired in various tasks in the group, such as caring for the brood. Animals that are not related to them don't seem to be offered the same lenient treatment. Researchers at the University of Bern have now been able to prove the existence of this form of "nepotism" in fish for the first time in experiments.

An international research team led by Silvia Spezzaferri from the University of Freiburg has discovered why the Antarctic polar ice cap is melting faster on the western side of the continent than on the eastern side. New drillings and sophisticated modeling have shown that this phenomenon can be traced back to the original formation of the ice sheet 34 million years ago .

Researchers are developing a process inspired by nature that efficiently recovers europium from old fluorescent lamps. The approach could lead to the long-awaited recycling of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not as rare as their name suggests. However, they are indispensable for the modern economy.

As part of the GreenFjord project, prof. Samuel Jaccard from the University of Lausanne and five other scientists board the sailing vessel Forel to carry out a sampling and analysis campaign in SW Greenland.

Whether sustainably produced hydrogen needs to be 100 percent green is currently under debate. Using the production of ammonia and artificial fertiliser as examples, researchers have calculated that "nearly sustainable" hydrogen would be better in the end. There's a role for sustainably produced hydrogen in the energy transition, and not only as an energy storage medium or as fuel for lorries.

By analysing 56-million-year-old sediments, a team from the University of Geneva has measured the increase in soil erosion caused by global warming, synonymous with major flooding. 56 million years ago, the Earth experienced a major and rapid climate warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, probably due to volcanic eruptions.

Scientists at EPFL have developed advanced atom-thin graphene membranes with pyridinic-nitrogen at pore edges, showing unprecedented performance in CO2 capture. It marks a significant stride toward more efficient carbon capture technologies. As the world battles climate change, the need for efficient and cost-effective carbon capture technologies is more urgent than ever.

Researchers are using radar to scan the snow and ice on the Jungfraujoch. Sometimes, scaling an icy peak is the only way for scientists to fully understand satellite data. Glacier melt is just one of the topics the researchers are here to study. They are also developing new radar methods to directly measure the thickness of the snow cover.

In a recently launched project, the aquatic research institute Eawag is investigating how the use of borehole thermal energy storage (BTES) affects the surrounding soil, the groundwater and the microorganisms living in it. In collaboration with Empa and its Demonstrator Energy Hub (ehub), a project is being developed in a unique setting on the campus in Dübendorf.

Researchers from ETH Zurich and the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences have developed a novel solution for heat pumps. Using this new approach, companies can generate carbon-free process heat at temperatures of up to 200 degrees Celsius while also drastically reducing the number of different heat pumps required.