Reuters Science News Summary

Following is a summary of current science news briefs. 'Indiana Jones' scientists collect seeds in wild for climate change fight

Braving perils from blood-sucking leeches to tigers and using transport as basic as elephants, scientists have journeyed like "Indiana Jones" to remote locations to collect wild cousins of crop seeds in a project to help tackle climate change. A report released on Tuesday presented the results of a six-year quest to collect thousands of wild seeds that could play an important role in feeding a rising global population at a time when global warming is jeopardizing crop production. Bye-bye, birdie: Study finds North American birds getting smaller

Since 1978, researchers have scooped up and measured tens of thousands of birds that died after crashing into buildings in Chicago during spring and fall migrations. Their work has documented what might be called the incredible shrinking bird. A study published on Wednesday involving 70,716 birds killed from 1978 through 2016 in such collisions in the third-largest U.S. city found that their average body sizes steadily declined over that time, though their wingspans increased. Earth's temperature likely marks hottest decade on record: report

The past decade is almost certain to be the hottest on record, weather experts warned on Tuesday, painting a bleak picture of vanishing sea ice, devastating heatwaves and encroaching seas in a report launched at a climate summit in Spain. An annual assessment of the Earth's climate by the Geneva-based World Meteorological Organization (WMO) underscored the stakes at two weeks of talks aimed at shoring up the 2015 Paris Agreement to avert catastrophic global warming. NASA's probe soaring near sun reveals surprises about solar wind

Troves of new data from a NASA probe's close encounters with the sun are giving scientists unique insight about the solar wind and space weather more generally as the spacecraft zooms through the outermost part of the star's atmosphere. Researchers on Wednesday described the first published findings from the Parker Solar Probe, a spacecraft launched in 2018 to journey closer to the sun than any other human-made object. The findings, offering fresh details about how the sun spawns space weather, are reshaping astronomers' understanding of violent solar wind that can hamper satellites and electronics on Earth.