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(NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio) We know human activity is inflating the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at record rates, restricting the radiation of heat into space and contributing to the overall warming of the planet. Invisible as they are, the ebb and flow of carbon emissions can be hard to wrap our heads around – but not so with new visualizations released by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio. These jaw-dropping videos demonstrate precisely where the majority of this critical greenhouse gas is being released, and how that changes over the course of a single year. There are three videos...

The art in question is part of a series discovered at the Amarna site on the east bank of the Nile, in modern day Minya. Excavations conducted in 1924 revealed a palace featuring several lavishly decorated rooms that include numerous plaster panels illustrated with natural scenes in stunning detail...Here the team looked at artwork in what's known as the Green Room, a place most likely used for rest and relaxation, if not occasional socializing and music playing.Some birds, including the pigeons and kingfishers, had already been identified, but the researchers were able to expand on the catalogue of known animals...

Locally sourced grapes and imported tar pitches may have been the norms for winemakers along the coast of Italy during the Roman period, according to jars recovered from the ocean near the harbor of San Felice Circeo. Three different wine jars, or amphorae, were recovered and analyzed, giving researchers a useful insight into the practices for producing wine in this particular region in 1–2 century BCE, part of the late Greco-Italic period. What makes the research particularly notable is that it combines some of the latest chemical analysis techniques with other approaches used in archaeobotany to discover more about these...

Scientists studying ice cores packing in some 60,000 years of history have found signs of thousands of volcanic eruptions across that time, stretching back to the last Ice Age – with 25 of the eruptions larger than anything Earth has seen in the last 2,500 years. Researchers excavated the cores near both poles: in Antarctica (where 737 eruptions were logged) and Greenland (where 1,113 eruptions were found). A total of 85 eruptions were large enough to leave evidence behind at both poles. That evidence takes the form of sulfuric acid deposits left behind by the eruptions. It gives researchers clues...