At just an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, the sand hoppers skipping across California's Isla Vista Beach at dawn don't exactly look like a force of nature. But a new study reveals that these shrimp-like creatures might be doing more to shape the landscape in which they live than any other animal on Earth.

At just an inch (2.5 centimeters) long, the sand hoppers skipping across California's Isla Vista Beach at dawn don't exactly look like a force of nature. But a new study reveals that these shrimp-like creatures might be doing more to shape the landscape in which they live than any other animal on Earth.

Across its basins and thousands of meters down, the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and saltier. Now, a new study finds it is also doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. The speedup is largest in the central and eastern Mediterranean and strongest of all in the Adriatic, where it reaches all the way to the sea floor.

Across its basins and thousands of meters down, the Mediterranean Sea is getting warmer and saltier. Now, a new study finds it is also doing so at an increasingly rapid pace. The speedup is largest in the central and eastern Mediterranean and strongest of all in the Adriatic, where it reaches all the way to the sea floor.

"Sediment and fossil records are a major pillar of our understanding of how the climate works—but climate scientists have gotten something wrong about Australia's ice age," says Dr. Alex F. Wall, lead author of a new research paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

"Sediment and fossil records are a major pillar of our understanding of how the climate works—but climate scientists have gotten something wrong about Australia's ice age," says Dr. Alex F. Wall, lead author of a new research paper published in Quaternary Science Reviews.

The longest satellite record ever assembled shows that Greenland and Antarctica have lost 11.3 trillion metric tons of ice since the 1970s, raising global sea level by more than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches)—and that most of the loss has come from glaciers flowing faster into the ocean, not from melting at the surface.

The longest satellite record ever assembled shows that Greenland and Antarctica have lost 11.3 trillion metric tons of ice since the 1970s, raising global sea level by more than 3 centimeters (1.2 inches)—and that most of the loss has come from glaciers flowing faster into the ocean, not from melting at the surface.

The same amount of rain falling on the same landscape at different times can send very different amounts of water into its rivers, according to a new study in Nature Water. The research offers a global picture of how catchments behave—not where rivers are or how much water they carry, but how consistently landscapes turn rainfall into river flow.