It has often been said that individual weather events cannot be attributed to global climate change, but recent advances in the science of attribution are challenging that notion. A recent report from 18 different research teams that analyzed 12 extreme weather events in 2012 suggests that climate change was a contributing factor in about half of them.

Climate is arguably the most influential factor and it produces the most identifiable differences among wines. So how is climate change affecting wines globally? And how do other factors, such as the bedrock below the vineyard and the soil, produce subtle expressions in wine? Climatologist and viticulturalist Greg Jones discusses the complexity of nature's effects on wine and the latest scientific research in the January issue of EARTH Magazine.

One geoscientist's trek to Antarctica, on a geological excursion.

Norwegian citizens living along fjord coastlines were perplexed as rare waves sloshed along local docks and seawalls. Scientists identified and described the rare phenomenon: seismically generated water waves called seiches, which had been set in motion by the massive Tohoku earthquake half a world away.