Sascha Pare

Sascha Pare reports on how a warming, rapidly changing planet reshapes water, ice and life on Earth, with a focus on translating new scientific studies into clear, concrete consequences. She is a staff writer at Live Science covering the latest science news across environment, Earth systems and related fields.

Climate change, food systems and Arctic change

A central strand in Pare’s reporting is the way large-scale climate processes cascade into everyday risks, especially for food production and polar environments. In one recent piece, she covers research showing that if a key Atlantic current system weakens significantly, average global food prices could climb by 17% to 40%, spelling a sharp rise in food insecurity in many regions. She sets out the model’s assumptions, the physical mechanism linking ocean circulation to crop yields, and the limits of the projections, while keeping the focus on how climate dynamics translate into supermarket prices and political pressure.

Her coverage of the Arctic often pairs physical science with human-driven change.

In the article on the first experiment to thicken Arctic sea ice using pumped seawater, she follows scientists as they test a geoengineering-style intervention, detailing both the promise of thicker, more resilient winter ice and the practical, environmental and governance obstacles that come with actively manipulating polar systems. She treats the technique as one tool amid wider climate mitigation and adaptation, not a silver bullet.

Elsewhere, she reports on how China’s aggressive efforts to cut air pollution led to an unexpected climate side effect in the Arctic, showing that regional clean‑air policies can alter long‑range atmospheric and radiative patterns over the polar cap.

Pare also returns to freshwater as a lens on climate stress. She covers a high‑resolution global map that tracks where humans are adding and removing freshwater between 2002 and 2025, highlighting the regions where withdrawals, dam operations and climate‑driven shifts have made conditions “very dire” for rivers, lakes and aquifers.

Her writing keeps the technical satellite and modeling work in view, but she foregrounds the places on the map where water stress is already biting, reinforcing a through‑line: climate change is about specific basins, food systems and communities, not abstract temperature curves.

Water, ice and hidden reservoirs

Pare’s beat frequently returns to water - in ice sheets, aquifers and salt lakes - and how scientific records reveal both vulnerability and new options. She reports on ancient groundwater records from the last ice age that show aquifers in the U.S. Southwest are more sensitive to global warming than those in the Pacific Northwest, using the comparison to explain why some water supplies may be much harder to stabilize as temperatures rise.

In this format, she walks readers through proxy data and paleoclimate methods, then lands on the present‑day implications for pumping, recharge and long‑term planning.

In another article, she covers the discovery of a potentially large freshwater reservoir hidden beneath the Great Salt Lake, describing how geophysical surveys and chemical analyses point to subsurface water that could reshape understanding of the lake’s hydrology. She balances the intrigue of a “hidden” resource with clear caveats about its accessibility, ecological role and the pressure already bearing down on the lake from drought and diversions.

Across these pieces, she uses specific basins - from the Great Salt Lake to regional aquifers - to illustrate broader patterns of water scarcity and the importance of long‑term records.

Her work on Arctic ice and engineered interventions fits this water‑centric thread. The seawater‑pumping experiment to thicken sea ice sits alongside coverage of where human changes to air composition, circulation and land use are reshaping polar energy budgets and sea‑ice trends, reinforcing her focus on physical processes that can be quantified and tested rather than speculative fixes.

Methane, pollution and industrial impacts on the planet

Pare often reports on research into pollution and greenhouse gases, especially where relatively simple interventions could yield large climate benefits. In one article, she explains how covering manure lagoons with tarps and using digesters to capture methane can cut emissions from dairy farms by up to 80%, turning a potent greenhouse gas into usable fuel.

The piece shows her preference for studies that move quickly from measurements and models to operational changes on farms and industrial sites.

Another story describes how industrial waste products are turning into a new type of rock at “unprecedented” speed on slag cliffs in England, challenging assumptions about how fast rocks form and underscoring the geological imprint of modern industry. Pare uses the example to show how pollution and waste do not just sit in the environment; they can rapidly become part of Earth’s crust, reinforcing Anthropocene themes through specific field sites rather than broad generalizations.

Her reporting on China’s large push to reduce air pollution, and the unintended climate consequences of those efforts in the Arctic, connects local policy choices to global atmospheric dynamics. Across these stories, she returns to the idea that industrial and agricultural systems are now central drivers of geophysical change, and that studies quantifying those links can point toward practical mitigation steps.

Broader Earth and life science reporting

Although environment and Earth systems run through her work, Pare’s bylines span wider science coverage, often using striking case studies. She has reported on volcanic activity, including eruptions of Indonesia’s Lewotobi Laki‑laki volcano that sent ash plumes six miles high and showered nearby villages with debris, combining eruption parameters with local impacts. She writes on rare geological configurations such as the nested islands and lake structure at Taal Lake in the Philippines, using individual sites to explain volcanic crater formation and lake evolution.

Her pieces also reach into evolutionary biology and paleontology. She covers a landmark genetic study that rewrites the bat family tree and shows Earth’s first bats evolved in a different region than previously thought, using genome data and fossil evidence to untangle the animals’ origins. In other work, she reports on the discovery of an “immaculate” mastodon molar unearthed in California and a long‑lost ice‑age ecosystem in a Texas “water cave” that preserved fossils of giant ground sloths and armadillo‑like mammals, emphasizing how isolated finds can illuminate whole vanished environments.

Beyond Earth and climate, Pare writes on topics such as a newly discovered “Achilles’ heel” in dangerous superbugs and a once‑in‑a‑billion‑year cellular event involving a swallowed microbe, as well as a major AI tool from Google DeepMind poised to transform genetics research. She also occasionally handles general science and culture assignments, such as coverage related to documentary streaming offers, but these sit alongside her core focus on research‑driven environment, Earth and life science stories.

Her work has appeared outside Live Science at outlets including The Guardian and the health website Zoe, extending this explanatory, study‑based style to broader audiences.