Sarah Zielinski

Sarah Zielinski

 

Sarah Zielinski is an award-winning science writer and editor. She is a contributing writer in science for Smithsonian.com and blogs at Wild Things, which appears on Science News.

An astronaut snapped this picture of Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest tropical cyclones ever recorded, in November 2013.

Warmer Waters Are Making Pacific Typhoons Stronger

Decades of storm data show that tropical cyclones in the Pacific are getting more intense as ocean temperatures rise

Not a movie still: Fire rages on a flooded street following the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California.

What Will Really Happen When San Andreas Unleashes the Big One?

A major earthquake will cause plenty of destruction along the West Coast, but it won’t look like it does in the movies

Scientists Discover Sudden Melting in the Antarctic

Warmer waters are eating away at protective ice shelves, letting glaciers flow into the sea

Data from satellites and sensors show the Pacific Ocean conditions in March 2015, including an increase in warm waters (shown in red). The warming has strengthened since then, prompting agencies to declare 2015 an El Niño year.

El Niño Is Here, But It Can’t Help Parched California (For Now)

Three national agencies have confirmed that the natural phenomenon has arrived, but not in time to bring much-needed rains in the West

Lightning crackles across the sky over Canyonlands National Park in Utah.

Rockets and Microphones Reveal the First Images of Thunder

The acoustic visuals could help us better understand the physical processes that drive lightning strikes

The marbled salamander is increasing its distribution and range in response to warming winter temperatures.

Climate Change Will Accelerate Earth's Sixth Mass Extinction

The pace at which species disappear is picking up as temperatures rise, and things are looking especially troubling in the tropics

The Grand Prismatic Spring is one of the most indelible hydrothermal features in Yellowstone National Park.

Giant New Magma Reservoir Found Beneath Yellowstone

While an eruption is still unlikely, the find improves our understanding of the supervolcano underneath the national park

A worker rescues a severely oiled brown pelican along the Louisiana shore in June 2010.

The Gulf Oil Spill Isn't Really Over, Even Five Years Later

Two Louisiana scientists reflect on the event and how its lingering effects are continuing to change the Gulf Coast

The 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia left a huge crater, along with a sometimes unexpected legacy.

200 Years After Tambora, Some Unusual Effects Linger

Frankenstein, famine poetry, polar exploration—the "year without a summer" was just the beginning

Scientists looked for the black-and-white colubus monkey in protected areas across the Ivory Coast but only found one population of the animals still living in a sacred grove.

Illegal Cocoa Farms Are Driving Out Primates In Ivory Coast

Thirteen national parks and reserves have lost all their primates as people move in to protected regions to farm cacao

A type of coral trout called the leopard trout (Plectropomus leopardus) swims on the Great Barrier Reef.

Fishing Bans Create a Glimmer of Hope on the Great Barrier Reef

No-take reserves have helped commercially important species bounce back, but the reef still faces some serious threats

Electric vehicles, such as the ones sold by Tesla, could help to reduce city temperatures.

Electric Cars Can Make Cities Cooler

It's not just the flash and style, either—electric engines emit less heat than gas ones and could combat the urban heat island effect

At the Batadomba-lena rock shelter in Sri Lanka, scientists found evidence that humans were living off rainforest resources as early as 20,000 years ago.

Humans Relied on Rainforest Riches 12,000 Years Earlier Than Thought

Fossil remains suggest that prehistoric people in Sri Lanka may have eaten monkeys and other forest species

Dog sled racing is a classic bit of fun in Alaska. But as that state warms, organizers are having to move or cancel races.

While the U.S. East Shivers, Unusual Heat Stirs Trouble Across the Globe

Cancelled dog-sled races and restless grizzly bears serve as reminders that global warming is still at work

The Black Death is immortalized by the plague masks of Venice, like this stylized version used in a Carnival costume.

Plague Pandemic May Have Been Driven by Climate, Not Rats

The bacteria responsible for the Black Death were reintroduced to Europe multiple times, possibly due to the changing climate

The Cliff Palace in Mesa Verde National Park in Colorado was abandoned hundreds of years ago, probably because of a severe drought. Scientists now predict that the region could experience an even worse megadrought in the latter half of the 21st century.

The Western U.S. Could Soon Face the Worst Megadrought in a Millennium

Climate models predict that the region will be drier than the droughts that likely caused ancient Native Americans to abandon their pueblo cities

The abandoned city of Machu Picchu is one legacy of the Spanish conquest of the Incas. Traces of air pollution in a Peruvian ice cap are another.

Spanish Conquest of the Incas Caused Air Pollution to Spike

A sample of Peruvian ice has revealed a surge in pollution linked to mining that wasn't exceeded until the Industrial Revolution

An aerial view of the New Zealand coast shows marine terraces lifted up by an earthquake.

Scientists Have Imaged the Base of a Tectonic Plate

The discovery of a slippery layer off the coast of New Zealand could help explain plate movement

A satellite image shows the huge snowstorm that blanketed the northeastern United States this week. The blizzard was an example of how storms are getting less common but more intense.

Climate Change Is Altering the Global Heat Engine

Thermodynamics help explain why storms will become fewer in number but stronger in intensity as the planet warms

The western tarsier, a rare primate species, has lost large amounts of its Borneo habitat to logging. More of that habitat is likely to disappear because of climate change.

Borneo's Mammals Face a Deadly Mix of Logging and Climate Change

But adding small amounts of land to already protected areas could help save the island's biodiversity

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