The advanced South Asian monsoon onset accelerates lake expansion over the Tibetan Plateau

Cenozoic Plate TectonicsThe Earth's surface is always changing. The Cenozoic Era, which began about 66 million years ago and continues today, has been a time of major changes in Earth's land and oceans. Large pieces of Earth's crust, called tectonic plates, have moved to form mountains, shifting continents and opening new ocean basins. These movements have shaped the world as we know it.During the Cenozoic, the continents moved into their current positions. Mountain ranges like the Himalayas...

Water plays a significant role in the life cycle of plants. However, insufficient or excess of water can be detrimental and pose a serious threat to plants.

Continent-Continent Convergent Plate BoundariesThe Earth's surface is made up of large, moving sections called tectonic plates. Sometimes, two continental plates push toward each other. When this happens, neither plate sinks because both are made of thick, low-density rock. Instead, the edges of the plates crumple and fold, creating high mountain ranges. One of the best examples of this is the Himalayas, where the Indian plate and the Eurasian plate continue to collide. This movement creates...

Mesozoic Plate TectonicsImagine Earth’s land as one giant puzzle piece. A long time ago, during the Mesozoic Era, all the land on Earth was connected to one big supercontinent called Pangaea. Over millions of years, the pieces of this giant puzzle slowly drifted apart, forming the continents we see today. This movement happened because of plate tectonics, the slow shifting of vast sections of Earth’s crust. As these plates moved, they caused earthquakes, created mountains, and even changed...

Throughout its ~4.5 billion year history, the Earth has experienced periods of warming and cooling. However, the current drastic increase in global temperatures is well outside of the Earth’s cyclic norms, and evidence for human-caused global climate change is compelling. Paleoclimatology, the study of ancient climate conditions, provides ample evidence for human-caused global climate change by comparing recent conditions with those in the past.

The expansion of alcohol in a thermometer is one of many commonly encountered examples of thermal expansion, which is the change in size or volume of a given system as its temperature changes. The most visible example is the expansion of hot air. When air is heated, it expands and becomes less dense than the surrounding air, which then exerts an upward force on the hot air to, for example, make steam and smoke rise, and hot air balloons float. The same behavior happens in all liquids and gases,...