Articles on or after 4/16/2024: PHYS.ORG - Earth
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'Green muscle memory' and climate education promote behavior change: Report - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · A new report, released in time for global attention for Earth Day on April 22, highlights the impact of climate education on promoting behavior change in the next generation.
Despite people's deep connection to their local environment—whether it's blackouts in Toronto caused by raccoons, communities gearing up for a total solar eclipse lasting only minutes, chasing northern lights or hundreds of Manitoba kids excited about ice fishing—there remains inertia in climate action.
Sparking global momentum and energy in young people can go a long way to addressing climate change now and in the near future, says Bryce Coon, author of the report and Earth Day's ... Read more ...
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'Human-induced' climate change behind deadly Sahel heat wave: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · The West African nations of Mali and Burkina Faso experienced an exceptional heat wave from April 1 until April 5, with soaring temperatures above 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) triggering many deaths.
Observations and climate models used by researchers at the WWA showed that "heat waves with the magnitude observed in March and April 2024 in the region would have been impossible to occur without the global warming of 1.2C to date", which scientists attribute to human-induced climate change.
While periods of high temperatures are common in the Sahel at this time of year, the report said that the April heat wave would have been 1.4C cooler "if humans had not ... Read more ...
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'So hot you can't breathe': Extreme heat hits the Philippines - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Extreme heat scorched the Philippines on Wednesday, forcing schools in some areas to suspend in-person classes and prompting warnings for people to limit the amount of time spent outdoors.
The months of March, April and May are typically the hottest and driest in the archipelago nation, but conditions this year have been exacerbated by the El Niño weather phenomenon.
"It's so hot you can't breathe," said Erlin Tumaron, 60, who works at a seaside resort in Cavite province, south of Manila, where the heat index reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) on Tuesday.
"It's surprising our pools are still empty. You would expect people to come and take a swim, ... Read more ...
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'Sunny day flooding' increases fecal contamination of coastal waters - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · "Historically we see the highest levels of fecal bacteria contamination in coastal waterways after it rains, because the rain washes contaminants into the waterways," says Natalie Nelson, corresponding author of a paper on the study and an associate professor of biological and agricultural engineering at North Carolina State University.
"Due to sea level rise, we're seeing an increase in flooding in coastal areas at high tide—even when there isn't any rainfall. We wanted to see whether sunny day floods were associated with increases in fecal bacteria contamination in waterways."
For the study, researchers collected water samples every day for two summer months at ... Read more ...
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A better way to predict Arctic riverbank erosion - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · But there's a caveat to this concern: Existing models have predicted a more dramatic rate of Arctic riverbank erosion than has actually been observed. In a new study published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, Madison Douglas and Michael Lamb set out to determine why.
To do this, the team created a model that couples the movement of sediment, such as sand and mud, with permafrost thaw to determine riverbank erosion. The model better reproduces erosion observations on parts of the Yukon River in Alaska. This is because in real-world scenarios, the rate of erosion is slowed by an insulating layer of thawed sediment. Rather than the warmer river water ... Read more ...
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A comprehensive monitoring and evaluation of disaster risk due to linkage of residual coal pillars and rock strata - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · In extreme cases, such instability can trigger disasters like mine earthquakes and widespread collapse of goaf areas, potentially leading to casualties. Therefore, it is necessary to carry out monitoring and evaluation research on the risk of instability and disaster caused by the linkage of residual coal pillars and rock strata.
The challenge of instability linkage between residual coal pillars and rock strata is complex, as it not only involves the interaction between these pillars and strata but also engenders a cascade of linkage disasters. Present research efforts mostly lack a holistic assessment of the instability and disaster risks arising from the interaction between ... Read more ...
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A hydrocarbon molecule as supplier and energy storage solution for solar energy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · This could pave the way for entirely new organic solar modules. The fundamentals for conversion and storage using the molecule have now been published in the journal Nature Chemistry.
Hopes remain high that solar energy will be a major driver of the energy transformation. However, as sunlight is a highly volatile source of energy, a solution must be found for storing energy efficiently.
"Until now, we have transferred electricity from solar modules that is not consumed immediately into a battery, where it can be used as and when required," explains Prof. Dr. Julien Bachmann, Chair of Chemistry of Thin Film Materials (CTFM) at FAU. "By repeatedly changing between chemical ... Read more ...
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A new electrochemical approach could reduce ocean acidity and remove carbon in the process - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Only 45 percent of carbon dioxide emissions remain in the atmosphere; the remainder is absorbed through two cycles: 1) the biological carbon cycle stores CO2 in plant matter and soils, and 2) the aqueous carbon cycle absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere into the oceans. Each of these cycles accounts for 25 percent and 30 percent of emitted CO2, respectively.
CO2 that dissolves in the oceans reacts to form chemicals that increase the acidity of the oceans. The dissolution of minerals from rocks along coastlines act to counterbalance this acidity, in a process called geological weathering, but the extreme increase in the rate and volume of CO2 emissions, especially over the last 60 ... Read more ...
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A shade closer to more efficient organic photovoltaics - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Semitransparent photovoltaics are able to convert sunlight into electricity without blocking visible light. This makes them attractive for building integrated applications, such as windows, facades and greenhouses.
Unlike traditional silicon-based cells, organic photovoltaics can be flexible and can also be tailored to be transparent. Yet the more transparent the solar cell, the less light it captures for producing electricity.
Organic solar cells typically rely on an active layer called a bulk heterojunction—comprised of electron donor and acceptor materials—to capture and convert sunlight. Upon contact, sunlight can excite electrons to higher energy states ... Read more ...
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A solar neighborhood census, thanks to NASA citizen science - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Looking to understand more about our neighbors and how they came to be, scientists collaborate with citizen scientists and volunteers from around the world. They have helped professional scientists create a new census of more than 4,000 cosmic objects through the Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 citizen science project.
A new study in The Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series shows the results of that census within 65 light-years of the sun. Researchers found that there are four times more stars than brown dwarfs in this area but that low-mass objects are more common than high-mass objects. The average mass of an object in this area is 40% of the mass of the sun.
"There is ... Read more ...
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A third of China's urban population at risk of city sinking, new satellite data shows - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Land subsidence is overlooked as a hazard in cities, according to scientists from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and Virginia Tech. Writing in the journal Science, Prof Robert Nicholls of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research at UEA and Prof Manoochehr Shirzaei of Virginia Tech and United Nations University for Water, Environment and Health, Ontario, highlight the importance of a new research paper analyzing satellite data that accurately and consistently maps land movement across China.
While they say in their comment article that consistently measuring subsidence is a great achievement, they argue it is only the start of finding solutions. Predicting future ... Read more ...
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Accelerated marine carbon cycling forced by tectonic degassing over the Miocene Climate Optimum - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · In a recent publication in Science Bulletin, a multidisciplinary team of authors from Tongji University, the Second Institute of Oceanography (Ministry of Natural Resources), the Institute of Earth Environment (Chinese Academy of Sciences), and Utrecht University reports for the first time that massive carbon inputs from volcanism and seafloor spreading have impacted the orbital phase relationships between carbon cycle and climate change.
Past changes in climate and carbon cycle have been documented by the stable isotope composition of benthic foraminiferal oxygen and carbon, as they are proxies for climate-cryosphere and carbon transfers between the ocean and other ... Read more ...
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Africa's megacities threatened by heat, floods, disease - action needed to start greening, adapt to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · African megacities like Lagos, Nigeria (with 21 million residents) and Cairo, Egypt (with 10 million residents) are experiencing significant temperature increases due to the urban heat island effect and climate change.
Meelan Thondoo is a medical anthropologist and environmental epidemiologist who researches the health impacts of climate change in cities of fast-developing countries. She explains what cities in Africa are doing to mitigate climate change, and what further steps they need to take to protect their populations.
What health effects of climate change do African cities experience?
Currently, 3.3 billion to 3.6 billion people globally live in cities that ... Read more ...
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AI for Earth: How NASA's artificial intelligence and open science efforts combat climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · In 2023, NASA teamed up with IBM Research to create an AI geospatial foundation model. Trained on vast amounts of NASA's widely used Harmonized Landsat and Sentinel-2 (HLS) data, the model provides a base for a variety of AI-powered studies to tackle environmental challenges. In keeping with open science principles, the model is freely available for anyone to access.
Foundation models serve as a baseline from which scientists can develop a diverse set of applications, enabling powerful and efficient solutions. "Foundation models only know what things are represented in the data," explained Manil Maskey, the data science lead at NASA's Office of the Chief Science Data Officer ... Read more ...
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AI weather forecasts can capture destructive path of major storms, new study shows - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Professor Andrew Charlton-Perez, who led the study, said, "AI is transforming weather forecasting before our eyes. Two years ago, modern machine learning techniques were rarely being applied to make weather forecasts. Now we have multiple models that can produce 10-day global forecasts in minutes.
"There is a great deal we can learn about AI weather forecasts by stress-testing them on extreme events like Storm Ciarán. We can identify their strengths and weaknesses and guide the development of even better AI forecasting technology to help protect people and property. This is an exciting and important time for weather forecasting."
Promise and pitfalls
To ... Read more ...
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Airborne interferometric radar altimeter shows potential for submesoscale sea surface height anomaly measurements - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Their study was published in Remote Sensing on April 12.
To date, humanity has not been able to observe two-dimensional (2D) oceanic processes at the 0.1–10 km submesoscale in the spatial domain using remote sensing. The SSHA signal at this scale is small and exceeds the resolution limits of the satellite altimeters used to date.
However, oceanic processes at this scale play a critical role in the study of ocean energy transfer, cascading, and dissipation, and are crucial for research on ocean energy balance, nutrient transport, and global climate change studies.
In this study, the researchers provided a detailed analysis of the SSHA and its wavenumber ... Read more ...
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Airborne observations of Asian monsoon sees ozone-depleting substances lofting into the stratosphere - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · The study, led by the U.S. National Science Foundation National Center for Atmospheric Research (NSF NCAR) and NASA, found that the East Asian Monsoon delivers more than twice the concentration of very short-lived ozone-depleting substances into the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere than previously reported.
"It was a real surprise to fly through a plume with all those very short-lived ozone-depleting substances," said NSF NCAR scientist Laura Pan, the lead author of the study. "These chemicals may have a significant impact on what will happen with the ozone layer, and it's critical to quantify them."
The study was published in the Proceedings of the National ... Read more ...
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Airborne single-photon lidar system achieves high-resolution 3D imaging - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Single-photon lidar uses single-photon detection techniques to measure the time it takes laser pulses to travel to objects and back. It is particularly useful for airborne applications because it enables highly accurate 3D mapping of terrain and objects even in challenging environments such as dense vegetation or urban areas.
"Using single-photon lidar technology on resource-limited drones or satellites requires shrinking the entire system and reducing its energy consumption," said research team member Feihu Xu from University of Science and Technology of China.
"We were able to incorporate recent technology developments into a system that, in comparison to other ... Read more ...
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Amazonia's fire crises: Emergency fire bans insufficient, strategic action needed before next burning season - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Dr. Manoela Machado, a postdoctoral researcher at the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and also at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, and the lead author of the study, said, "Emergency fire bans are not a standalone solution for the fire crises; they can be effective when strategically implemented and rigorously enforced during critical periods to prevent ignitions, but to solve the crises, we need measures that address the motivations behind different types of fires and, most crucially, focus on stopping deforestation."
The Amazon plays an essential role in regulating global climate patterns, supporting biodiversity, and sustaining local and ... Read more ...
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Animals deserve to be included in global carbon cycle models as well, say researchers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · A new theoretical framework, published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences by Matteo Rizzuto and colleagues, offers a road map for including animals in carbon cycle models. Their work shows that adding both herbivores and predators to such models significantly alters both the amount and the dynamics of carbon cycling.
Future modeling of carbon dynamics, important for understanding climate change and designing nature-based carbon sequestration projects, should take animals into consideration as well, researchers argue.
Animals affect carbon cycling directly by eating plants or by eating other animals that eat plants. By producing waste, respiring, and ... Read more ...
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Anthropocene activities dramatically alter deep underground fluid flux, researchers find - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Mining, oil and gas production, water wells, and other human activities involve extracting various fluids from or injecting them into the ground. Much attention has been paid to the toll these processes take on shallow groundwater and the water cycle. But less is known about how these activities affect the deep subsurface (500 meters to several kilometers deep), much of which was previously isolated for very long periods of geologic time.
In a new study in Earth's Future, Ferguson and colleagues illustrate how deep subsurface fluid flow rates associated with human activities such as oil and gas production most likely already exceed natural fluxes at these depths on a global ... Read more ...
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Artificial intelligence helps scientists engineer plants to fight climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · To design these climate-saving plants, scientists in Salk's Harnessing Plants Initiative are using a sophisticated new research tool called SLEAP—an easy-to-use artificial intelligence (AI) software that tracks multiple features of root growth. Created by Salk Fellow Talmo Pereira, SLEAP was initially designed to track animal movement in the lab. Now, Pereira has teamed up with plant scientist and Salk colleague Professor Wolfgang Busch to apply SLEAP to plants.
In a study published in Plant Phenomics, Busch and Pereira debut a new protocol for using SLEAP to analyze plant root phenotypes—how deep and wide they grow, how massive their root systems become, and other ... Read more ...
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Astronomers discover the most metal-poor extreme helium star - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Using the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), astronomers have performed high-resolution observations of a recently detected extreme helium star designated EC 19529–4430. It turned out that EC 19529–4430 is the most metal deficient among the population of known extreme helium stars. The finding was reported in a research paper published April 5 on the pre-print server arXiv.
Extreme helium (EHe) stars are supergiants much larger and hotter than the sun, but less massive. They are almost devoid of hydrogen, which is unusual, as hydrogen is the most abundant chemical element in the universe.
EHes are characterized by relatively sharp and strong lines of ... Read more ...
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Australia's Great Barrier Reef struggles to survive - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 20) |
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Apr 20 · Australia's famed Great Barrier Reef is suffering one of the most severe coral bleaching events on record, leaving scientists fearful for its survival as the impact of climate change worsens.
For 33 years marine biologist Anne Hoggett has lived and worked on Lizard Island, a small slice of tropical paradise off Australia's northeast tip.
She affectionately dubs it "Blizzard Island". The only relief from the wind and teeming showers is in the powder blue waters, where sea turtles and tiger sharks rove along the Great Barrier Reef.
As Hoggett snorkels, schools of fish swim gracefully, feeding on the coral or darting between it. Some are as small as her little finger, ... Read more ...
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Baby white sharks prefer being closer to shore, scientists find - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Now, marine scientists have shown for the first time that juvenile great white sharks select warm and shallow waters to aggregate within one kilometer from the shore. These results, published in Frontiers in Marine Science, are important for conservation of great white sharks—especially as ocean temperatures increase due to climate change—and for protecting the public from negative shark encounters.
Baby great white sharks ("pups") don't receive any maternal care after birth. In the studied population off Padaro Beach near Santa Barbara in central California, pups and juveniles gather in "nurseries," unaccompanied by adults.
"This is one of the largest and ... Read more ...
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Balancing AI and physics: Toward a learnable climate model - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Previous studies have demonstrated that Pangu-Weather can accurately replicate certain climate patterns like tropical Gill responses and extra-tropical teleconnections through qualitative analysis. However, quantitative investigations have revealed significant differences in wind components, such as divergent winds and ageostrophic winds, within current AI weather models. Despite these findings, there are still concerns that the importance of physics in climate science is sometimes overlooked.
"The qualitative assessment finds AI models could understand and learn spatial patterns in weather and climate data. On the other hand, the quantitative approach highlights a limitation: ... Read more ...
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Beyond higher temperatures: Preparing for national security risks posed by climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · But also at stake is the security of the United States and other nations. What if people become desperate for food? What if long-dormant microbes come to life due to thawing permafrost? What if water and electricity become scarce?
These are the sorts of questions that researchers at the Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are asking as they take part in a series of national forums. Scientists have raised these questions and more at recent gatherings of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Meteorological Society, and the U.S. military.
This week, as the world celebrates Earth Day, more than a dozen PNNL scientists and others ... Read more ...
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Biden administration set to deny 200-mile Ambler mining road through Alaska wilderness - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The U.S. Department of the Interior is expected to issue an environmental report that recommends denying a permit needed to build a 200-mile access road to the Ambler mining district, according to national news reports on April 16.
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority applied for the permit to develop the road to access the mining district in Northwest Alaska. The Trump administration had approved the right-of-way permit in 2020.
Conservation groups and Alaska tribal entities, including the Tanana Chiefs Conference, sued to overturn the decision. The Biden administration also said it identified legal flaws in the process related to subsistence impacts ... Read more ...
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Biden targets fossil fuel power sector with tough new carbon rules - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · The United States on Thursday announced sweeping new rules requiring coal-fired plants to eliminate nearly all their carbon emissions or commit to shutting down altogether, a keystone of President Joe Biden's agenda to confront the climate crisis.
Hailed by environmental groups as a "gamechanger," the regulations take effect from 2032 and will also mandate that new, high capacity gas-fired plants slash their carbon dioxide output by the same amount - 90 percent - a target that would require the use of carbon capture technology.
It comes as Democratic incumbent Biden faces a tough election rematch against Republican Donald Trump in November, with climate action seen as ... Read more ...
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Can climate change accelerate transmission of malaria? New research sheds light on impacts of temperature - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · In tropical and subtropical regions where malaria is prevalent, scientists are concerned that climate warming might increase the risk of malaria transmission in certain areas and contribute to further spread. However, there is still much to learn about the relationship between temperature and the mosquito and parasite traits that influence malaria transmission.
In "Estimating the effects of temperature on transmission of the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium falciparum," a study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers at the University of Florida, Pennsylvania State University and Imperial College, combined novel experimental data within an innovative ... Read more ...
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Chemists invent a more efficient way to extract lithium from mining sites, oil fields, used batteries - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · "It's a low-cost, high-lithium-uptake process," said Parans Paranthaman, an ORNL Corporate Fellow and National Academy of Inventors Fellow with 58 issued patents. He led the proof-of-concept experiment with Jayanthi Kumar, an ORNL materials chemist with expertise in the design, synthesis, and characterization of layered materials.
"The key advantage is that it works in a wider pH range of 5 to 11 compared to other direct lithium extraction methods," Paranthaman said. The acid-free extraction process takes place at 140 degrees Celsius, compared to traditional methods that roast mined minerals at 250 degrees Celsius with acid or 800 to 1000 degrees Celsius without ... Read more ...
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Climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by mid-century, analysis suggests - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Global biodiversity has declined between 2% and 11% during the 20th century due to land-use change alone, according to a large multi-model study published in Science. Projections show climate change could become the main driver of biodiversity decline by the mid-21st century.
The analysis was led by the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv) and the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) and is the largest modeling study of its kind to date. The researchers compared thirteen models for assessing the impact of land-use change and climate change on four distinct biodiversity metrics, as well as on nine ecosystem services.
Land-use change is ... Read more ...
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Climate change expected to increase wildfire danger - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · There is likely to be a significant increase in the danger of wildfires through the 21st century. Indeed, the expectation is that by 2100 the danger will be high even in regions where it is very low today. Those are the findings of a study by Julia Miller, a Ph.D. student in the SLF's Hydrology & Climate Impacts in Mountain Regions research group, published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences.
Forecasts show that the potential danger will continue to increase, but from 2040 onwards it will exceed the natural range of climate fluctuations and so will be attributed to climate change from then on. Taking the example of the Bavarian Alpine Foreland, this means that the ... Read more ...
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Climate change supercharged a heat dome, intensifying 2021 fire season, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · A new study has revealed the extent to which human-caused climate change intensified the extraordinary event, with researchers theorizing the heat dome was 34% larger and lasted nearly 60% longer than it would have in the absence of global warming. The heat dome, in turn, was associated with up to a third of the area burned in North America that year, according to the study, published in Communications Earth & Environment.
"What happens is you get a stagnated weather pattern—it's very hot and very dry," said study author Piyush Jain, research scientist with Natural Resources Canada. "And it dries out all the vegetation and makes whatever is on the ground extremely ... Read more ...
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Climate impacts set to cut 2050 global GDP by nearly a fifth - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 20) |
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Apr 20 · Climate change caused by CO2 emissions already in the atmosphere will shrink global GDP in 2050 by about $38 trillion, or almost a fifth, no matter how aggressively humanity cuts carbon pollution, researchers said Wednesday.
But slashing greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible remains crucial to avoid even more devastating economic impacts after mid-century, they reported in the journal Nature.
Economic fallout from climate change, the study shows, could increase tens of trillions of dollars per year by 2100 if the planet were to warm significantly beyond two degrees Celsius above mid-19th century levels.
Earth's average surface temperature has already ... Read more ...
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CO₂ worsens wildfires by helping plants grow, model experiments show - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The worldwide surge in wildfires over the past decade is often attributed to the hotter, drier conditions of climate change. However, the study found that the effect of increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) on plants may be a bigger factor.
"It's not because it's hotter that things are burning, it's because there's more fuel, in the form of plants," said UCR doctoral student in Earth and planetary sciences and study author James Gomez.
This conclusion, and a description of the eight model experiments that produced it, have been published in Communications Earth & Environment.
To convert light into food in a process called photosynthesis, plants require CO2. ... Read more ...
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Coal train pollution increases health risks and disparities, research warns - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · The study, published in the journal Environmental Research, focuses on the San Francisco Bay Area and is the first health impact assessment of coal train pollution in the world.
It found that coal train pollution has significant health effects that disproportionately impact communities of color and people who are young, old, or have low incomes.
While centered on East Bay neighborhoods, the study carries implications for communities worldwide living alongside passing coal trains. At least 80 countries use coal power, which generates about 40% of the world's electricity.
"These trains run all over the world, exposing the poorest populations who often live close to ... Read more ...
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Cosmic rays streamed through Earth's atmosphere 41,000 years ago: New findings on the Laschamps excursion - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Earth's magnetic field protects us from the dangerous radiation of space, but it is not as permanent as we might believe. Scientists at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly present new information about an 'excursion' 41,000 years ago where our planet's magnetic field waned, and harmful space rays bombarded the planet.
Earth's magnetic field cocoons our planet from the onslaught of cosmic radiation streaming through space while also shielding us from charged particles hurled outward by the sun. But the geomagnetic field is not stationary. Not only does magnetic north wobble, straying from true north (a geographically defined location), but occasionally, it flips. ... Read more ...
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Czechs 3D-print Eiffel Tower from ocean waste for Olympics - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · A Czech company is 3D-printing a giant Eiffel Tower model for a local Olympics event, using recycled ocean waste as the primary material.
The 14-meter-high (46-foot) model will be installed at an Olympic festival in the north of the Czech Republic, where the public can try different Olympic sports during the Paris Games in July and August.
Jan Hrebabecky, the owner of the 3DDen printing farm, uses printing filament made from ocean waste.
"The material for the Eiffel Tower comes from the shores of Thailand," he told AFP.
"It has excellent mechanic and chemical qualities, great UV resistance, and it is practically immortal."
Collected by Thai fishermen, ... Read more ...
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Data-driven music: Converting climate measurements into music - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · A geo-environmental scientist from Japan has composed a string quartet using sonified climate data. The 6-minute-long composition - titled "String Quartet No. 1 "Polar Energy Budget" - is based on over 30 years of satellite-collected climate data from the Arctic and Antarctic and aims to garner attention on how climate is driven by the input and output of energy at the poles.
The backstory about how the composition was put together is published April 18 in the journal iScience as part of a collection "Exploring the Art-Science Connection."
"I strongly hope that this manuscript marks a significant turning point, transitioning from an era where only scientists handle data ... Read more ...
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Dating the solar system's giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Space scientists led by the University of Leicester have combined evidence from simulations, observations and analysis of meteorites to recreate the orbital instability caused as the giant planets of our solar system moved into their current locations, known for 20 years as the Nice model.
The findings are published in the journal Science and presented at the European Geological Union General Assembly in Vienna.
At the beginning of the solar system, the giant planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—had more circular and more compact orbits than they do today. Previous research has established that orbital instability in the solar system changed that ... Read more ...
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Deer are expanding north, and that's not good for caribou: Scientists evaluate the reasons why - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Over the past century, white-tailed deer have greatly expanded their range in North America, explains Melanie Dickie, a doctoral student with UBC Okanagan's Wildlife Restoration Ecology Lab.
In the boreal forest of Western Canada, researchers have considered that both changing climate and increased habitat alteration have enabled deer to push farther north. Climate change can create milder winters, while habitat alteration from forestry and energy exploration creates new food sources for deer.
As they conclude their study, researchers caution that what is good for the deer isn't necessarily suitable for other species, such as the threatened woodland ... Read more ...
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Did climate chaos cultivate or constrain 2023's greenery? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · In a recent publication in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, a research team led by Academician Piao Shilong from the College of Urban and Environmental Sciences at Peking University delved into the topic. The paper, titled "Vegetation Greenness in 2023," offers a detailed analysis of the interplay between vegetation greening and climate change.
The greening of vegetation is one of the most significant features of changes in the Earth's biosphere during the modern period of climate warming. Increased atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration, warming climate, and land use changes are the main drivers affecting global vegetation greening.
Under the long-term warming ... Read more ...
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Diversity and productivity go branch-in-branch: Scientists share which forests can adapt to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Now, a study by an international group, including Kyoto University, found that forests with higher trait diversity not only adapt better to climate change but may also thrive. The work is published in the journal Science Advances.
The study, conducted by researchers from Lakehead University, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, and Zhejiang Agriculture and Forestry University, unveiled how tree functional trait diversity—a key aspect of biodiversity—plays a pivotal role in mitigating climate warming.
"In the face of environmental stress, these diverse trees have been shown to maintain higher productivity levels, in contrast to monoculture ... Read more ...
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Dubai airport diverts flights as 'exceptional weather' hits Gulf - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Dubai's major international airport diverted scores of incoming flights on Tuesday as heavy rains lashed the United Arab Emirates, causing widespread flooding around the desert country.
The world's busiest air hub for international passengers confirmed a halt to arrivals at 7:26 pm (1526 GMT) before announcing a "gradual resumption" more than two hours later.
Earlier the airport, which had been expecting more than 100 flight arrivals on Tuesday evening, took the equally unusual step of briefly halting its operations in the chaos caused by the storm.
Dubai, the Middle East's financial center, has been paralyzed by the torrential rain that caused floods across the ... Read more ...
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Dubai reels from floods chaos after record rains - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Dubai's giant highways were clogged by flooding and airport passengers were urged to stay away on Wednesday as the glitzy financial center reeled from record rains.
Huge tailbacks snaked along six-lane expressways after up to 254 millimeters of rain - about two years' worth - fell on the desert United Arab Emirates on Tuesday.
At least one person was killed after a 70-year-old man was swept away in his car in Ras Al-Khaimah, one of the country's seven emirates, police said.
Passengers were warned not to come to Dubai airport, the world's busiest by international traffic, "unless absolutely necessary", an official said.
"Flights continue to be delayed and ... Read more ...
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Earth Day 2024: Four effective strategies to reduce household food waste - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · 1.3 billion tons of food is enough to feed more than 3 billion people.
Food waste contributes to nearly 8% to 10% of all greenhouse gas emissions. That level of emissions is on the scale of what a large country would produce—just under total emission estimates of the United States and China—posing serious contributions to climate change.
The greatest contributors to food waste are high-income countries, where the average consumer wastes between 95–115 kilograms of food per year. In Canada, approximately 60% of food produced is lost or wasted per year, costing an estimated $49.5 billion. This figure constitutes about half the annual food purchase costs ... Read more ...
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Earth Day: How a senator's idea more than 50 years ago got people fighting for their planet - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Here are answers to some common questions about Earth Day and how it came to be:
WHY DO WE CELEBRATE EARTH DAY?
Earth Day has its roots in growing concern over pollution in the 1960s, when author Rachel Carson's 1962 book "Silent Spring," about the pesticide DDT and its damaging effects on the food chain, hit bestseller lists and raised awareness about nature's delicate balance.
But it was a senator from Wisconsin, Democrat Gaylord Nelson, who had the idea that would become Earth Day. Nelson had long been concerned about the environment when a massive offshore oil spill sent millions of gallons onto the southern California coast in 1969. Nelson, after touring the ... Read more ...
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East coast mussel shells are becoming more porous in warming waters - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · "Mussels are important on so many levels: They provide habitats on reefs, they filter water, they protect coasts during storms, and they are important commercially as well - I love mussels and I know many other people do, too," said Leanne Melbourne, a Kathryn W. Davis postdoctoral fellow in the Museum's Master of Arts in Teaching program and the lead author on the study. "Human-caused environmental changes are threatening the ability of mussels and other mollusks to form their shells, and we need to better understand what risks will come from this in the future."
Previous studies on the blue (common) mussel (Mytilus edulis) have used lab experiments to investigate how ocean ... Read more ...
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Ecosystems are deeply interconnected - environmental research, policy and management should be too - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · We have a lot to learn still, but as we show in our research, using current ecological knowledge more effectively could deliver substantial environmental gains.
Our work focuses on improving links between research and ecosystem management to identify key trigger points for action in a framework that joins land, freshwater and sea ecosystems.
Specifically, we investigate solutions to environmental and societal problems that stem from the disparities between scientific research, policy and management responses to environmental issues.
We need managers and policy makers to consider ecological tipping points and how they can cascade though ecosystems from land into ... Read more ...
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El Nino not climate change driving southern Africa drought: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · A drought that pushed millions of people into hunger across southern Africa has been driven mostly by the El Niño weather pattern - not climate change, scientists said on Thursday.
Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi have declared a national disaster over the severe dry spell that started in January and has devastated the agricultural sector, decimating crops and pastures.
Appealing for almost $900 million in aid this week, Zambia's President Hakainde Hichilema linked the lack of rains to climate change.
But scientists at the World Weather Attribution (WWA) research group found global warming had little to do with it.
"Over the past year, attribution studies have ... Read more ...
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Emperor penguins perish as ice melts to new lows: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Colonies of emperor penguin chicks were wiped out last year as global warming eroded their icy homes, a study published Thursday found, despite the birds' attempts to adapt to the shrinking landscape.
The study by the British Antarctic Survey found that record-low sea ice levels in 2023 contributed to the second-worst year for emperor penguin chick mortality since observations began in 2018.
It follows a "catastrophic breeding failure" in 2022, signaling long-term implications for the population, the study's author Peter Fretwell told AFP.
Emperor penguins breed on sea-ice platforms, with chicks hatching in the winter between late July and mid-August.
The ... Read more ...
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Estimating emissions potential of decommissioned gas wells from shale samples - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · The findings, published in the journal Science of the Total Environment, revealed that methane begins diffusing from the shale formation after a well is decommissioned and that this represents a notable source of methane emissions—comparable to the most significant emissions during drilling and operation of the well.
"Natural gas is an important energy resource that has helped the U.S. lower its carbon dioxide emissions, but we also understand methane can be a potential hazard," said Shimin Liu, professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State and a co-author of the study. "What this work does is give us a proactive way to understand what's going on in the ... Read more ...
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EU lawmakers agree to exit energy treaty over climate fears - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · The European Parliament on Wednesday backed the EU's withdrawal from an international energy treaty over concerns it offers too much protection to fossil fuel companies.
The Energy Charter Treaty was signed in 1994, after the end of the Cold War, to offer guarantees to investors in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.
But the European Commission, the EU's executive arm, said in July it was necessary to withdraw from the treaty in a coordinated manner since it is "no longer compatible" with the bloc's "enhanced climate ambition".
During a parliament vote in Strasbourg, 560 lawmakers gave the green light for a withdrawal, while 43 voted against and 27 ... Read more ...
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Europe suffered record number of 'extreme heat stress' days in 2023: Monitors - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Europe endured a record number of "extreme heat stress" days in 2023, two leading climate monitors said Monday, underscoring the threat of increasingly deadly summers across the continent.
In a year of contrasting extremes, Europe witnessed scorching heat waves but also catastrophic flooding, withering droughts, violent storms and its largest wildfire.
These disasters inflicted billions of dollars in damages and impacted more than two million people, the EU's Copernicus Climate Change Service and the UN's World Meteorological Organization (WMO) said in a new joint report.
The consequences for health were particularly acute, with heat singled out by these agencies ... Read more ...
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Extreme heat scorches Southeast Asia, bringing school closures and warnings - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Extreme heat scorched parts of South and Southeast Asia Wednesday, prompting schools across the Philippines to suspend classes, heat warnings in the Thai capital and worshippers in Bangladesh to pray for rain.
The high temperatures were recorded just a day after the United Nations said Asia was the region that suffered the most disasters from climate and weather hazards in 2023, with floods and storms the chief causes of casualties and economic losses.
Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
"It's so hot you can't breathe," said Erlin Tumaron, 60, who works at a Philippine ... Read more ...
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Feedback loop that is melting ice shelves in West Antarctica revealed - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · The study, titled "Antarctic Slope Undercurrent and onshore heat transport driven by ice shelf melting" and published in Science Advances, sheds new light on the mechanisms driving the melting of ice shelves beneath the surface of the ocean, which have been unclear until now.
The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been losing mass in recent decades, contributing to global sea level rise. If it were to melt entirely, global sea levels would rise by around five meters.
It's known that Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW), a water mass that is up to 4°C above local freezing temperatures, is flowing beneath the ice shelves in West Antarctica and melting them from below. Since so much ... Read more ...
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Field-margin wetlands alone can't fix the Gulf of Mexico's dead zone, say researchers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Shan Zuidema and colleagues took a whole-system approach to modeling the potential for wetlands to ameliorate the flow of nitrate to the Gulf. The paper is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.
The authors found that wetland restoration through existing federal programs could not, in isolation, reduce nitrate by the 45%–60% needed to prevent the formation of the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico. Even if fully utilized, these programs could, at most, reduce nitrate export to the Gulf by 30%.
One reason for the gap is that many croplands are not suitable for wetland restoration, and the runoff from these croplands enters deeper flow-paths that cannot be intercepted by ... Read more ...
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From the coast to the deep sea, changing oxygen levels affect marine life in different ways - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Marine species respond to ocean deoxygenation (the decrease of oxygen levels in seawater) differently depending on where they live. With seas under threat from climate change and pollution, both of which contribute to deoxygenation, some marine species are at greater risk than others.
As a marine ecologist, I research how changes in oxygen availability affect marine animals' resistance to climate change. My studies show that coastal marine species exposed to the daily variability of oxygen are more resistant to spikes in deoxygenation than creatures living in the deep that are adapted to consistent oxygen levels.
By the coast
For coastal creatures like cuttlefish, ... Read more ...
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Future hurricanes could compromise New England forests' ability to store and sequester carbon - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Nature-based climate solutions can help mitigate climate change, especially in forested regions capable of storing and sequestering vast amounts of carbon. New research published in Global Change Biology indicates that a single hurricane in New England, one of the most heavily forested regions in the United States, can down 4.6–9.4% of the total above-ground forest carbon, an amount much greater than the carbon sequestered annually by New England's forests.
The work revealed that emissions from hurricanes are not instantaneous - it takes approximately 19 years for downed carbon to become a net emission, and 100 years for 90% of the downed carbon to be emitted.
Models ... Read more ...
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Ghost particle on the scales: Research offers more precise determination of neutrino mass - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · What is the mass of a neutrino at rest? This is one of the big unanswered questions in physics. Neutrinos play a central role in nature. A team led by Klaus Blaum, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, has now made an important contribution in "weighing" neutrinos as part of the international ECHo collaboration. Their findings are published in Nature Physics.
Using a Penning trap, it has measured the change in mass of a holmium-163 isotope with extreme precision when its nucleus captures an electron and turns into dysprosium-163. From this, it was able to determine the Q value 50 times more accurately than before. Using a more precise Q-value, ... Read more ...
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Global ocean summit nets $10 bn in pledges: Greek PM - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · An international summit on saving the oceans netted $10 billion in pledges, the prime minister of host country Greece said on Tuesday.
The "Our Oceans" summit was launched in 2014 as the first international event of its kind to address all issues related to oceans, with some 122.3 billion euros pledged since then to protect them.
This year's three-day conference began Monday with delegates from around 120 countries.
"We're heartened by the commitments that have been made during this gathering - over 400 pledges exceeding $10 billion in value," Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said on Tuesday.
"Our ocean is literally sending us distress signals. Of ... Read more ...
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Heatstroke kills 30 in Thailand this year as kingdom bakes - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Thailand issued fresh warnings about scorching hot weather on Thursday as the government said heatstroke has already killed at least 30 people this year.
City authorities in Bangkok gave an extreme heat warning as the heat index was expected to rise above 52 degrees Celsius (125 degrees Fahrenheit).
Temperatures in the concrete sprawl of the Thai capital hit 40.1 C on Wednesday and similar levels were forecast for Thursday.
A wave of exceptionally hot weather has blasted parts of South and Southeast Asia this week, prompting schools across the Philippines to suspend classes and worshippers in Bangladesh to pray for rain.
The heat index - a measure of what the ... Read more ...
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Here's why experts don't think cloud seeding played a role in Dubai's downpour - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Cloud seeding, although decades old, is still controversial in the weather community, mostly because it has been hard to prove that it does very much. No one reports the type of flooding that on Tuesday doused the UAE, which often deploys the technology in an attempt to squeeze every drop of moisture from a sky that usually gives less than 4 or 5 inches (10 to 13 centimeters) of rain a year.
"It's most certainly not cloud seeding," said private meteorologist Ryan Maue, former chief scientist at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "If that occurred with cloud seeding, they'd have water all the time. You can't create rain out of thin air per se and get 6 ... Read more ...
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High air pollution in Denmark may impact children's academic performance - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Pollution from traffic, farming and wood stoves may have a negative effect on children's cognitive development, according to a new study published in Environment International on Danish students' performance in the lower secondary school leaving examination.
You probably don't think about it, but in most parts of the country the air we breathe is anything but clean.
In most parts of Denmark air pollution is double the recommended WHO level, with the highest levels found in heavily trafficked cities and southern Denmark, which is affected by polluted air blowing in from the south.
And polluted air can affect our health, previous research has shown. In fact, air ... Read more ...
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Highest-level rainstorm warning issued in south China's Guangdong - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · More than 100,000 people have been evacuated due to heavy rain and fatal floods in southern China, with the government issuing its highest-level rainstorm warning for the affected area on Tuesday.
Torrential rains have lashed Guangdong in recent days, swelling rivers and raising fears of severe flooding that state media said could be of the sort only "seen around once a century".
On Tuesday, the megacity of Shenzhen was among the areas listed as experiencing "heavy to very heavy downpours", the city's meteorological observatory said, adding the risk of flash floods was "very high".
Images from Qingyuan - a city in northern Guangdong that is part of the low-lying ... Read more ...
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How creating less-gassy cows could help fight climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · The food system, including grazing animals such as cows, generates major sources of methane mainly due to cattle digestion, manure decomposition and land use for grazing.
To look for solutions, researchers from the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute analyzed 27 academic publications and identified dozens of potential strategies to reduce methane emissions from Australia's beef and dairy sectors. "Meta-Analysis and Ranking of the Most Effective Methane Reduction Strategies for Australia's Beef and Dairy Sector" was published in Climate.
Study lead Merideth Kelliher said the fastest way to lower methane emissions would be to convert farmland into wetlands ... Read more ...
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How light can vaporize water without the need for heat - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · And yet, it turns out, we've been missing a major part of the picture all along.
In a series of painstakingly precise experiments, a team of researchers at MIT has demonstrated that heat isn't alone in causing water to evaporate. Light, striking the water's surface where air and water meet, can break water molecules away and float them into the air, causing evaporation in the absence of any source of heat.
The astonishing new discovery could have a wide range of significant implications. It could help explain mysterious measurements over the years of how sunlight affects clouds, and therefore affect calculations of the effects of climate change on cloud cover and ... Read more ...
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How marketing classes can rescue 'ugly produce' from becoming food waste - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Indeed, some estimates suggest that approximately 40 percent of fruits and vegetables never even leave farms. Much of it gets rejected by wholesalers and retailers based on irregularities in weight, size or shape.
This desire for cosmetically appealing food also extends to consumers, as we often prefer picture-perfect produce. Unsurprisingly, this wanton waste takes a significant environmental toll, with an estimated eight to 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions tied to unconsumed food.
Showing ugly produce some love
Some companies have taken strides to counter food waste. A prominent example in the United States is Misfits Market, which launched in ... Read more ...
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How spicy does mustard get depending on the soil? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Can microbes in the soil also contribute to taste?
In a recent study published in New Phytologist, former Ph.D. student Corrine Walsh at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the University of Colorado Boulder and CIRES Fellow Noah Fierer have run one of the first experiments to determine whether soil microorganisms like bacteria and fungi influence the flavor of a crop. Their target: the spiciness of mustard seeds.
"I thought that was an interesting question," Walsh said. "We know microbes and plants communicate via chemicals—could those chemicals impact plant flavor?"
Previous research has confirmed that soil properties ... Read more ...
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Ice age climate analysis reduces worst-case warming expected from rising CO2 - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The open-access study was published April 17 in Science Advances.
"The main contribution from our study is narrowing the estimate of climate sensitivity, improving our ability to make future warming projections," said lead author Vince Cooper, a UW doctoral student in atmospheric sciences. "By looking at how much colder Earth was in the ancient past with lower levels of greenhouse gases, we can estimate how much warmer the current climate will get with higher levels of greenhouse gases."
The new paper doesn't change the best-case warming scenario from doubling CO2—about 2 degrees Celsius average temperature increase worldwide—or the most likely estimate, ... Read more ...
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In Ecuadoran Amazon, butterflies provide a gauge of climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Biologists on a trail in the Ecuadoran Amazon hold their breath as they distribute a foul-smelling delicacy to lure butterflies, critical pollinators increasingly threatened by climate change.
A team has hung 32 traps made of green nets, each baited with rotting fish and fermented bananas. They are meant to blend in with the forest canopy. Their pungent odor clearly does not.
Since last August, a team of biologists and park rangers has been monitoring butterfly numbers in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, a park famed for its abundant flora and fauna.
They catch and document the colorful insects, releasing most with an identifying mark on their wings. Some of them, ... Read more ...
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In south China, silkworm farmers reel from deadly floods - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Hose in hand, 40-year-old Zhu Huangyi cleans a small concrete room once home to his silkworms, two thirds of which were lost in deadly floods hitting southern China this week.
Just two hours from the economic powerhouse and megacity of Guangzhou, surrounded by lush subtropical vegetation, lies the village of Sancun, one of the worst hit by the recent bad weather.
Around a quarter of households in the village make their living from raising silkworms, insects that secrete precious fibers essential to the textile industry.
Although the water levels had dropped by the time AFP arrived, it reached two meters in some areas - with devastating consequences for residents ... Read more ...
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Indian nuclear facilities found to have radioactive influence on Southern Tibetan Plateau - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · A study published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters has shed light on the long-range transboundary transport of radioactive iodine-129 (129I) from the Indian nuclear fuel reprocessing plants (NFRPs) to the Southern Tibetan Plateau (STP).
This study, conducted by researchers from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), provides a new understanding of the transport of airborne radioactive pollutants from low to high altitudes, and may have implications for environmental protection on the Tibetan Plateau.
The Tibetan Plateau, known as the "Third Pole of the Earth" and the "Roof of the World," is a remote, isolated, and ... Read more ...
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Investigating the porosity of sedimentary rock with neutrons - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · At the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Research Neutron Source (FRM II) at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), the networks of micropores were characterized using small and very small angle neutron scattering.
Dense, dark, compact—at first glance, the sedimentary rock samples that Dr. Amirsaman Rezaeyan has on his lab desk are only slightly different. Pores are not visible to the naked eye.
Nevertheless, it is precisely the pores that give the mudrocks their special properties: The pores, ranging from a few micrometers to sub-nanometers in size, are formed during sedimentation and compacted over time, determining the permeability. These pores are the decisive factor for ... Read more ...
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It never rains but it pours: Intense rain and flash floods have increased inland in eastern Australia - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · But that's changing. Now we get flash floods much further inland, such as Broken Hill in 2012 and 2022 and Cobar, Bourke and Nyngan in 2022. Flash floods are those beginning between one and six hours after rainfall, while riverine floods take longer to build.
Why? Global warming is amplifying the climate drivers affecting where flash floods occur and how often. All around the world, we're seeing intense dumps of rain in a short period, triggering flooding—just as we saw in Dubai this week.
This means these systems, which usually bring most of the east coast's rain during cooler months, are now dumping more rain out at sea. Instead, we're seeing warm, moist air ... Read more ...
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James Webb Space Telescope data pinpoint possible aurorae on a cold brown dwarf - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · More massive than planets but lighter than stars, brown dwarfs are ubiquitous in our solar neighborhood, with thousands identified. Last year, Jackie Faherty, a senior research scientist and senior education manager at the American Museum of Natural History, led a team of researchers who were awarded time on JWST to investigate 12 brown dwarfs.
Among those was CWISEP J193518.59–154620.3 (or W1935 for short)—a cold brown dwarf 47 light years away that was co-discovered by Backyard Worlds: Planet 9, citizen science volunteer Dan Caselden and the NASA CatWISE team. W1935 is a cold brown dwarf with a surface temperature of about 400° Fahrenheit. The mass for W1935 ... Read more ...
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Japan's moon lander wasn't built to survive a weekslong lunar night. It's still going after 3 - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Japan's first moon lander has survived a third freezing lunar night, Japan's space agency said Wednesday after receiving an image from the device three months after it landed on the moon.
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency said the lunar probe responded to a signal from the earth Tuesday night, confirming it has survived another weekslong lunar night.
Temperatures can fall to minus 170 degrees Celsius (minus 274 degrees Fahrenheit) during a lunar night, and rise to around 100 Celsius (212 Fahrenheit) during a lunar day.
The probe, Smart Lander for Investing Moon, or SLIM, reached the lunar surface on Jan. 20, making Japan the fifth country to successfully place ... Read more ...
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LA's water supplies are in good shape: But is the city ready for the next drought? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · California's second wet winter in a row has left L.A's water supplies in good shape for at least another year, but the inevitable return to dry conditions could once again put the city's residents in a precarious position.
After the state's final snow survey of the season, officials with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power announced that Eastern Sierra snowpack is measuring 103% of normal, "providing ample supplies through the city's most cost-efficient water supply from the Los Angeles Aqueduct."
The aqueduct - two pipelines that deliver water from the Mono Basin and Owens Valley hundreds of miles away - is the backbone of L.A.'s water system. The recent rain ... Read more ...
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Lakes worldwide are facing a slew of health issues that may become chronic - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · In a new study, published in Earth's Future, researchers suggest using human health terminology and approaches to assess and treat the world's lake system issues. For example, lakes with multiple health problems could be characterized as having "multimorbidity," and regular screenings similar to human checkups could help detect issues in lakes early. These anthropomorphic analogies, the researchers report, may help people better connect with and protect nature.
Some high-income countries have methods to assess lake health, but the team introduced a global classification system modeled after the World Health Organization's human health classification system.
They used ... Read more ...
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Laser-treated cork absorbs oil for carbon-neutral ocean cleanup - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Oil spills are deadly disasters for ocean ecosystems. They can have lasting impacts on fish and marine mammals for decades and wreak havoc on coastal forests, coral reefs, and the surrounding land. Chemical dispersants are often used to break down oil, but they often increase toxicity in the process.
In Applied Physics Letters, researchers from Central South University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Ben-Gurion University of the Negev used laser treatments to transform ordinary cork into a powerful tool for treating oil spills.
They wanted to create a nontoxic, effective oil cleanup solution using materials with a low carbon footprint, but their ... Read more ...
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Lightning, downpours kill 65 in Pakistan, as April rain doubles historical average - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · At least 65 people have died in storm-related incidents including lightning in Pakistan, officials said, with rain so far in April falling at nearly twice the historical average rate.
Heavy downpours between Friday and Monday unleashed flash floods and caused houses to collapse, while lightning killed at least 28 people.
The largest death toll was in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where 32 people have died, including 15 children, and more than 1,300 homes have been damaged.
"All the casualties resulted from the collapse of walls and roofs," Anwar Khan, spokesman for the province's disaster management authority, told AFP on Wednesday.
Villagers whose homes ... Read more ...
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Long-term research shows herring arrive earlier in the Wadden Sea due to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 26) |
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Apr 26 · Due to the changing climate, young herring arrive in the Wadden Sea earlier and earlier in spring. That is shown in a new publication by NIOZ ecologists Mark Rademaker, Myron Peck, and Anieke van Leeuwen in Global Change Biology.
"The fact that we were able to demonstrate this was only due to very consistently - for more than 60 years - and continuously sampling the fish every spring and every fall with exactly the same fyke [net] every time," Rademaker says. "Recognizing this kind of change requires extreme precision and endurance."
Since 1960, NIOZ, Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, has been measuring the number and species of fish that swim in the ... Read more ...
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Look to deadly Venus to find life in the universe, new paper argues - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · "We often assume that Earth is the model of habitability, but if you consider this planet in isolation, we don't know where the boundaries and limitations are," said UC Riverside astrophysicist and paper first author Stephen Kane. "Venus gives us that."
Though it also features a pressure cooker-like atmosphere that would instantly flatten a human, Earth, and Venus share some similarities. They have roughly the same mass and radius. Given the proximity to that planet, it's natural to wonder why Earth turned out so differently.
Many scientists assume that insolation flux, the amount of energy Venus receives from the sun, caused a runaway greenhouse situation that ruined ... Read more ...
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Malians struggle to cope after deadly heat wave - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · In Mali's capital Bamako, Aboubacar Pamateck runs a scarf under a trickle of water and wraps it around his head to cope with the West African nation's soaring heat.
Africa's Sahel region experienced a deadly heat wave in early April, exceptional both in terms of duration and intensity.
"I drink a lot of water and wear my turban, which I often get wet," Pamateck said. "I even avoid wearing nylon boubous. I prefer to wear small cotton boubous to avoid the heat."
From April 1 to April 5, temperatures in Mali exceeded 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit) and peaked at a record 48.5C in the western city of Kayes.
A few days later, the thermometer fell back ... Read more ...
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Mangrove blue carbon at higher risk of microplastic pollution - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Microplastic pollution (particles <5 mm diameter) is one such issue affecting mangroves in particular. These tiny fragments can be of primary origin, such as microbeads used in personal care products like face washes and even toothpaste, or secondary from the decomposition of larger plastic pieces, such as water bottles and plastic bags.
Previous research has estimated that up to 12.7 million tons of plastic pollution entered the oceans in 2010, which is expected to have doubled by 2025 without appropriate intervention, and is carried globally via wind and currents.
Associate Professor Peng Zhang, of Guangdong Ocean University, China, and colleagues investigated the ... Read more ...
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Mapping plant functional diversity from space: Ecosystem monitoring with novel field-satellite integration - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · An international team of researchers, led by Professor Jin Wu from the School of Biological Sciences at The University of Hong Kong (HKU), has made a promising advancement in mapping plant functional traits from space using time-series satellite data. The study, published in Remote Sensing of Environment, showcases the innovative combination of the Sentinel-2 satellite mission and its dynamic time-series capabilities.
This innovative approach not only unlocks a deeper understanding of essential foliar traits, providing crucial insights into the functional diversity and ecosystem functioning of terrestrial ecosystems, but it also equips us with powerful tools to address ... Read more ...
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Merging nuclear physics experiments and astronomical observations to advance equation-of-state research - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · "In nuclear physics, we are often confined to studying small systems, but we know exactly what particles are in our nuclear systems. Stars provide us an unbelievable opportunity, because they are large systems where nuclear physics plays a vital role, but we do not know for sure what particles are in their interiors," said Lynch, professor of nuclear physics at FRIB and in the Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Physics and Astronomy.
"They are interesting because the density varies greatly within such large systems. Nuclear forces play a dominant role within them, yet we know comparatively little about that role."
When a star with a mass that is 20–30 ... Read more ...
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Modeling broader effects of wildfires in Siberia - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · The global effects of increasing wildfires in Siberia have been modeled by researchers at Hokkaido University and colleagues at the University of Tokyo and Kyushu University. The results, published in the journal Earth's Future, suggest significant and widespread effects on air quality, climate, health, and economics under the most extreme wildfire scenarios.
The authors performed global numerical simulation experiments to evaluate how the increased intensity of wildfires in Siberia would affect air quality, premature mortality, and economy through increased atmospheric aerosols (air pollution particles) under the present climate and near-future global warming ... Read more ...
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More climate-warming methane leaks into the atmosphere than ever gets reported - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The good news is that many of those leaks can be fixed—if they're spotted quickly.
Riley Duren, a research scientist at the University of Arizona and former NASA engineer and scientist, leads Carbon Mapper, a nonprofit that is planning a constellation of methane-monitoring satellites. Its first satellite, a partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Earth-imaging company Planet Labs, launches in 2024.
Duren explained how new satellites are changing companies' and governments' ability to find and stop methane leaks and avoid wasting a valuable product.
Why are methane emissions such a concern?
Methane is the second-most common ... Read more ...
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Most countries are struggling to meet climate pledges from 2009, emissions tracking study shows - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Nineteen out of 34 countries surveyed failed to fully meet their 2020 climate commitments set 15 years ago in Copenhagen, according to a new study led by UCL researchers.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, compared the actual net carbon emissions of more than 30 nations to their 2009 pledged emission reduction targets set during the Copenhagen Climate Summit.
The paper led by researchers at UCL and Tsinghua University is the first effort to comprehensively gauge how well countries were able to meet their Nationally Determined Contribution reduction pledges from COP15.
Of the 34 nations analyzed in the study, 15 successfully met their goals while 12 ... Read more ...
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NASA chief warns of Chinese military presence in space - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · China is bolstering its space capabilities and is using its civilian program to mask its military objectives, the head of the US space agency NASA said Wednesday, warning that Washington must remain vigilant.
"China has made extraordinary strides especially in the last 10 years, but they are very, very secretive," NASA administrator Bill Nelson told lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
"We believe that a lot of their so-called civilian space program is a military program. And I think, in effect, we are in a race," Nelson added.
He said he hoped Beijing would "come to its senses and understand that civilian space is for peaceful uses," but added, "We have not seen that ... Read more ...
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NASA confirms mystery object that crashed through roof of Florida home came from space station - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The cylindrical object that tore through the home in Naples on March 8 was subsequently taken to the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for analysis.
The space agency said it was a metal support used to mount old batteries on a cargo pallet for disposal. The pallet was jettisoned from the space station in 2021, and the load was expected to eventually fully burn up on entry into Earth's atmosphere, but one piece survived.
The chunk of metal weighed 1.6 pounds (0.7 kilograms) and was 4 inches (10 centimeters) tall and roughly 1 1/2 inches (4 centimeters) wide.
Homeowner Alejandro Otero told television station WINK at the time that he was on vacation when his son ... Read more ...
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NASA is seeking a faster, cheaper way to bring Mars samples to Earth - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · NASA's plan to bring samples from Mars back to Earth is on hold until there's a faster, cheaper way, space agency officials said Monday.
Retrieving Mars soil and rocks has been on NASA's to-do list for decades, but the date kept moving forward, as costs ballooned. A recent independent review put the total cost at $8 billion to $11 billion, with an arrival date of 2040, about a decade later than advertised.
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said that's too much and too late. He's asking private industry and the space agency's centers to come up with other options to revamp the project. With NASA facing across-the-board budget cuts, he wants to avoid gutting other science ... Read more ...
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NASA's CloudSat ends mission peering into the heart of clouds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · CloudSat, a NASA mission that peered into hurricanes, tallied global snowfall rates, and achieved other weather and climate firsts, has ended its operations. Originally proposed as a 22-month mission, the spacecraft was recently decommissioned after almost 18 years observing the vertical structure and ice/water content of clouds.
As planned, the spacecraft - having reached the end of its lifespan and no longer able to make regular observations - was lowered into an orbit last month that will result in its eventual disintegration in the atmosphere.
When launched in 2006, the mission's Cloud Profiling Radar was the first-ever 94 GHz wavelength (W-band) radar to fly in ... Read more ...
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NASA's Fermi mission sees no gamma rays from nearby supernova - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · On May 18, 2023, a supernova erupted in the nearby Pinwheel galaxy (Messier 101), located about 22 million light-years away in the constellation Ursa Major. The event, named SN 2023ixf, is the most luminous nearby supernova discovered since Fermi launched in 2008.
"Astrophysicists previously estimated that supernovae convert about 10% of their total energy into cosmic ray acceleration," said Guillem Martí-Devesa, a researcher at the University of Trieste in Italy.
"But we have never observed this process directly. With the new observations of SN 2023ixf, our calculations result in energy conversion as low as 1% within a few days after the explosion. This doesn't ... Read more ...
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NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter team says goodbye - for now - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The final downlink shift by the Ingenuity team was a time to reflect on a highly successful mission - and to prepare the first aircraft on another world for its new role.
Engineers working on NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter assembled for one last time in a control room at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California on Tuesday, April 16, to monitor a transmission from the history-making helicopter.
While the mission ended Jan. 25, the rotorcraft has remained in communication with the agency's Perseverance Mars rover, which serves as a base station for Ingenuity. This transmission, received through the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network, marked the ... Read more ...
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NASA's Juno gives aerial views of mountain and lava lake on Io - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Scientists on NASA's Juno mission to Jupiter have transformed data collected during two recent flybys of Io into animations that highlight two of the Jovian moon's most dramatic features: a mountain and an almost glass-smooth lake of cooling lava. Other recent science results from the solar-powered spacecraft include updates on Jupiter's polar cyclones and water abundance.
The new findings were announced Wednesday, April 16, by Juno's principal investigator Scott Bolton during a news conference at the European Geophysical Union General Assembly in Vienna.
Juno made extremely close flybys of Io in December 2023 and February 2024, getting within about 930 miles (1,500 ... Read more ...
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NASA's Voyager 1 resumes sending engineering updates to Earth - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · For the first time since November, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).
Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed ... Read more ...
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New dataset sheds light on relationship of far-red sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence to canopy-level photosynthesis - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · One promising method for assessing photosynthetic activity is through the measurement of sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence, a byproduct of photosynthesis that can be detected from ground-based sensors as well as from satellites in space.
A study led by Genghong Wu, a Ph.D. student advised by Agroecosystem Sustainability Center (ASC) director Kaiyu Guan, and colleagues has utilized ground-based instruments to measure far-red sun-induced chlorophyll fluorescence (SIF) and various vegetation indices (VIs) that reflect plant health and activity. It compiled 15 site-years of SIF and VIs data from various crops (corn, soybean, and miscanthus) over a span of six years (2016-2021) ... Read more ...
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New geological map reveals secrets of Greenland's icy interior - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · This comprehensive synthesis, published in Geophysical Research Letters, promises to advance our understanding of this critical component of the global climate system.
The new subglacial geology map provides an invaluable modernized framework for interpreting the solid Earth properties that shape the Greenland Ice Sheet's past, present, and future behavior.
Using a wealth of geophysical data, including seismic, gravity, magnetic, and topographic surveys, the researchers have meticulously delineated the boundaries of geological provinces across the island and, crucially, beneath the ice.
Revealing a complex and heterogeneous landscape
This updated map ... Read more ...
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New research could enable more - and more efficient - synthesis of metastable materials - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · In a paper published in Nature Materials, a team of UChicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering researchers shed new light on this mystery. In researching lithium cathode materials for battery storage, a team from the Liu Lab has shown that there is a general pathway for lithium and sodium ion exchange in layered oxide cathode materials.
"We systematically explored the ion exchange process in lithium and sodium," said first author Yu Han, a Ph.D. candidate at PME. "The ion exchange pathway we revealed is new."
By helping explain how the ion exchange process works, this paper opens the doors for researchers working with metastable materials, meaning materials that ... Read more ...
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New research predicts peak groundwater extraction for key basins around the globe - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Scientists at Pacific Northwest and Oak Ridge national laboratories examined water, energy and food systems for 235 basins under 900 scenarios to analyze patterns in nonrenewable groundwater usage over the 21st century, as detailed in an article published in Nature Sustainability.
"The world's not running out of water, but how and where we source it looks likely to shift in the coming decades as major groundwater sources become unviable," said Sean Turner, a water resources analyst at ORNL.
Regions with the greatest current rates of depletion, including some in the United States, are more likely to face higher groundwater and food production costs by mid-century. The ... Read more ...
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New study shows how quickly surface water moves to groundwater reservoirs across Australia - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Groundwater recharge is the rate at which groundwater resources are replenished by rainfall in millimeters per year (mm/y).
The recharge rates estimated for the Darwin area typically ranged between 150 and 420 mm/y, compared to values typically less than 2 mm/y around Alice Springs. In both cases, these values are only a fraction of the total annual rainfall.
The recharge rates estimated for the Beetaloo Sub-basin typically ranged between 1 and 50 mm/y, with an average of 16.5 mm/y.
CDU Ph.D. candidate and lead author Stephen Lee said the study used recently developed approaches to estimate recharge, and several existing datasets, aiming to aid water resource ... Read more ...
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Novel material supercharges innovation in electrostatic energy storage - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Sang-Hoon Bae, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, has addressed this long-standing challenge in deploying ferroelectric materials for energy storage applications.
In a study published April 18 in Science, Bae and his collaborators, including Rohan Mishra, associate professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, and Chuan Wang, associate professor of electrical & systems engineering, both at WashU, and Frances Ross, the TDK Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at MIT, introduced an approach to control the relaxation time—an internal material ... Read more ...
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Philippine settlement submerged by dam reappears due to drought - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 26) |
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Apr 26 · A centuries-old settlement submerged by the construction of a dam in the northern Philippines in the 1970s has reappeared as water levels drop due to a drought affecting swathes of the country.
The ruins in the middle of Pantabangan Dam in Nueva Ecija province are a tourist draw, even as the region swelters in extreme heat.
Parts of a church, municipal hall marker and tombstones began to resurface in March after several months of "almost no rain", said Marlon Paladin, a supervising engineer for the National Irrigation Administration.
It is the sixth time the nearly 300-year-old settlement has resurfaced since the reservoir was created to provide irrigation water ... Read more ...
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Planet sees 10 straight months of record-breaking heat - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · Californians have had weekend after weekend of cool, stormy weather and the Sierra Nevada has been blessed with a healthy snowpack. But the reality is that even the last few months have been more than 2 degrees hotter than average.
The planet is experiencing a horrifying streak of record-breaking heat, with March marking the 10th month in a row that the average global temperature has been the highest ever recorded.
It would be shocking if it wasn't so predictable. Despite everything we know about the effects of burning fossil fuels, humanity is still going in the wrong direction with self-destructive abandon. Last year greenhouse gas pollution climbed to a new high, a ... Read more ...
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Planting trees in grasslands won't save the planet - instead, protect and restore forests - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · They include agroforestry initiatives such as the Great Green Wall in the Sahel, or commercial timber plantations that double as carbon offset projects. These target millions of hectares in countries like Mozambique, Madagascar and Rwanda.
I am part of a team of ecologists and social scientists who are working to highlight the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists in 2026. Our goal is to protect and promote rangelands that combat desertification and support economic growth, resilient livelihoods and the sustainable development of pastoralism. In pursuit of this goal, we reviewed all the scientific studies we could find on the effects of planting trees in ... Read more ...
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Plumbing problem at Glen Canyon Dam brings new threat to Colorado River system - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Plumbing problems at the dam holding back the second-largest reservoir in the U.S. are spurring concerns about future water delivery issues to Southwestern states supplied by the Colorado River.
Federal officials recently reported damage to four tubes known as "river outlet works" at Glen Canyon Dam on the Utah-Arizona border. The dam is responsible for generating hydropower and releasing water stored in Lake Powell downstream to California, Arizona, Nevada and eventually Mexico.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which operates the major dams in the Colorado River system, is evaluating issues related to Glen Canyon Dam when Lake Powell reaches low levels. Those issues ... Read more ...
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Q&A: B.C.'s 2024 wildfire season has started - here's what to know - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 21) |
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Apr 21 · Dr. Daniels is the Koerner Chair in the Center for Wildfire Coexistence at UBC, focusing on proactive management to increase ecosystem and community resilience to climate change and wildfires. Dr. Bourbonnais is a former wildland firefighter and now assistant professor at UBC Okanagan who employs advanced technologies to study wildfire risk and behavior.
Drs. Daniels and Bourbonnais answer questions on the outlook for wildfire season, and how communities can prepare for a challenging year.
What should we expect in terms of wildfire magnitude and severity this year?
LD: Predicting the fire season is challenging, but we are hoping for spring rains after the dry ... Read more ...
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Q&A: Why are we drowning in single-use plastics, and what can we do about it? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Plastic is ubiquitous. It's in the clothes we wear, wrapped around the food we eat and in the toothpaste we use. It floats in the oceans and litters the snow on Mount Everest.
Every year, the world produces nearly 400 million tons of plastic, a 19,000% increase from 1950. The amount is forecast to double by 2050 and 90% is never recycled. Over half of the plastics produced are used only once, for things like packaging, utensils and straws.
"A lot of people have a hard time imagining that," said Phaedra Pezzullo, associate professor in the Department of Communication at CU Boulder. "But we produce an astronomical amount of plastics every day. Most plastic bags are used ... Read more ...
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Queen bumblebees surprise scientists by surviving underwater - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Bumblebees can surprisingly withstand days underwater, according to a study published Wednesday, suggesting they could withstand increased floods brought on by climate change that threaten their winter hibernation burrows.
The survival of these pollinators that are crucial to ecosystems is "encouraging" amid worrying global trends of their declining populations, the study's lead author Sabrina Rondeau told AFP.
With global warming prompting more frequent and extreme floods in regions around the world, it poses "an unpredictable challenge for soil-dwelling species, particularly bees nesting or overwintering underground", co-author Nigel Raine of the University of Guelph ... Read more ...
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Record electron temperatures for a small-scale, sheared-flow-stabilized Z-pinch fusion device achieved - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Due to the electrons' ability to rapidly cool a plasma, this feat is a key hurdle for fusion systems and FuZE is the simplest, smallest and lowest cost device to have achieved it. Zap's technology offers the potential for a much shorter and more practical path to a commercial product capable of producing abundant, on-demand, carbon-free energy to the globe.
"These are meticulous, unequivocal measurements, yet made on a device of incredibly modest scale by traditional fusion standards," describes Ben Levitt, VP of R&D at Zap. "We've still got a lot of work ahead of us, but our performance to date has advanced to a point that we can now stand shoulder to shoulder with some of ... Read more ...
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Research group runs simulations capable of describing South America's climate with unprecedented accuracy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The work was presented at a panel discussion on climate on April 10, during FAPESP Week Illinois, in Chicago (United States).
"We're now beginning to be able to correctly represent the hydroclimate of South America at the scales needed," said Francina Dominguez, a researcher at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign and coordinator of the project.
According to Dominguez, the climate in South America, like in all regions of the world, is changing. Increased droughts have been recorded in the southern Amazon, the Cerrado region, northern Brazil, and Chile. This scenario has affected agricultural yields, water ... Read more ...
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Research showcases Indigenous stewardship's role in forest ecosystem resilience - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Western scientists and land managers have become increasingly cognizant of cultural burning, but its extent and purpose are generally absent from fire modeling research, said Skye Greenler, who led the partnership when she was a graduate research fellow in the OSU College of Forestry.
"We developed this project in collaboration with the Karuk Tribe to explore the impact of cultural burning at a landscape scale in a completely new way," she said. "The information that went into this model is not new at all—it's been held by Karuk Tribal members for millennia—but we developed new methods to bring the knowledge together and display it in a way that showcases the ... Read more ...
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Research suggests that part of India will become a climate hotspot - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · This is the conclusion of a study conducted by researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology and the University of Augsburg, which has been published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology.
The study investigated what are referred to as compound extreme events, which experts define as various extreme weather conditions that occur simultaneously or in direct succession. An example is a drought that is accompanied by a heat wave. Conversely, extremely high temperatures may be followed by day or weeklong heavy rainfall.
"The damage caused by the combination of such weather phenomena are usually especially severe," explains Prof. Dr. Harald Kunstmann from the Center of ... Read more ...
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Researcher studies worst western US megadrought in 1,200 years - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Drylands in the western United States are currently in the grips of a 23-year "megadrought," and one West Virginia University researcher is working to gain a better understanding of this extreme climate event.
Steve Kannenberg, assistant professor of biology at the WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, is using observations from existing networks of scientific instrument stations across the region to inch toward that goal.
The megadrought is an ongoing climate crisis for natural ecosystems, agricultural systems and human water resources, but researchers have a limited understanding of the phenomenon.
Kannenberg is seeking to identify where this drought has been ... Read more ...
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Researchers develop forest extent map for Mexico - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · One of the challenges facing researchers when it comes to evaluating the accuracy of forest extent, however, is that models use different remote sensing products that may have different definitions for what determines forest extent. In addition, on the ground surveys may sometimes come into conflict with what remote, satellite-based products are describing as forests.
To help quantify this problem, a group of researchers from the University of Delaware teamed up with an international group of collaborators. Together, they looked at forest extent estimates from seven regional and global land or tree cover remote sensing products across Mexico, using two independent forest ... Read more ...
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Researchers find oldest undisputed evidence of Earth's magnetic field - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · A new study, led by the University of Oxford and MIT, has recovered a 3.7-billion-year-old record of Earth's magnetic field, and found that it appears remarkably similar to the field surrounding Earth today. The findings have been published in the Journal of Geophysical Research.
Without its magnetic field, life on Earth would not be possible since this shields us from harmful cosmic radiation and charged particles emitted by the sun (the 'solar wind'). But up to now, there has been no reliable date for when the modern magnetic field was first established.
In the study, the researchers examined an ancient sequence of iron-containing rocks from Isua, Greenland. Iron ... Read more ...
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Researchers realize hydrogen formation by contact electrification of water microdroplets and its regulation - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Water microdroplets have been shown to possess a high electric field at the interface of microdroplets, which is sufficient to ionize OH- to produce free electrons spontaneously. Subsequent charge transfer can lead to a variety of essential hydrogenation reactions.
In this study, the researchers found marked charge separation between oil-water microdroplets of different sizes through atomization. Compared with pure water microdroplets, the charge separation of oily aqueous microdroplets was improved due to the oil-mediated extraction of electrons from sprayed microdroplets, thus promoting the generation of hydrogen species. The hydrogen formation was proposed to proceed by ... Read more ...
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Researchers reveal oceanic black carbon sink effect driven by seawater microdroplets - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The chemical signature of black carbon in the oceans differs from pyrogenic carbon in rivers. Specifically, unknown degradations that account for the losses of pyrogenic carbon or carbon-13 enrichment of pyrogenic carbon should exist as terrigenous refractory pyrogenic carbon transits coastal waters. Unveiling this enigma is helpful in verifying the role of oceanic pyrogenic carbon in buffering climate change, but it still needs to be clarified.
In a study published in Journal of the American Chemical Society, Prof. Wang Feng's group from the Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics (DICP) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the collaborators have identified a degradation ... Read more ...
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Researchers reveal sources of black carbon in southeastern Qinghai-Tibet plateau - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · The Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is China's most developed cryosphere region, where glaciers are shrinking rapidly due to light-absorbing impurities such as BC. Both modeling and geochemical evidence indicate that BC emitted from this region can be transported across the Himalayas and reach the interior of the QTP, contributing over 60% of its BC.
This mainly affects the southern and central regions of the QTP. However, there is a lack of sufficient online monitoring of BC in the glacier area of the QTP, which requires stronger integration with model simulations.
Prof. Kang Shichang's research team from the Northwest Institute of Eco-Environment and Resources of the ... Read more ...
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Researchers shine light on rapid changes in Arctic and boreal ecosystems - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · In a study published in Global Change Biology, a team led by Earth system science Ph.D. candidate Jinhyuk Kim from the lab of James Randerson, professor of Earth system science, reveals how wildfires are increasing rates of photosynthesis in Canada and Alaska.
They find that increasing wildfires are wiping out black spruce forests that grow relatively slowly and contribute to the organic layer of the underlying soils. In many areas, deciduous shrubs and trees, like willow and aspen, are moving in after a fire. These plants have a much higher metabolism, meaning they can establish themselves faster than spruce.
In 2023, Canada saw its most devastating wildfire season, ... Read more ...
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Researchers uncover human DNA repair by nuclear metamorphosis - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The study, published in the journal Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, also sheds light on the mechanism of action of some existing chemotherapy drugs.
"We think this research solves the mystery of how DNA double-strand breaks and the nuclear envelope connect for repair in human cells," said Professor Karim Mekhail, co-principal investigator on the study and a professor of laboratory medicine and pathobiology at U of T's Temerty Faculty of Medicine.
"It also makes many previously published discoveries in other organisms applicable in the context of human DNA repair, which should help science move even faster."
DNA double-strand breaks arise when cells are ... Read more ...
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Researchers uncover kinky metal alloy that won't crack at extreme temperatures at the atomic level - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · In this context, strength is defined as how much force a material can withstand before it is permanently deformed from its original shape, and toughness is its resistance to fracturing (cracking). The alloy's resilience to bending and fracture across an enormous range of conditions could open the door for a novel class of materials for next-generation engines that can operate at higher efficiencies.
The team, led by Robert Ritchie at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and UC Berkeley, in collaboration with the groups led by professors Diran Apelian at UC Irvine and Enrique Lavernia at Texas A&M University, discovered the alloy's surprising properties and then ... Read more ...
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Scientists combine a spatially distributed sediment delivery model and biogeochemical model to estimate fluxes by water - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · However, due to an insufficient transfer of knowledge regarding soil erosion and carbon dynamics from smaller to larger scales, existing models at a large temporal and spatial scale present conflicting views on whether the net impact of erosion on carbon cycling acts as a carbon source or sink.
In a study published in Science China Earth Sciences, researchers led by Prof. Li Zhongwu from the School of Geographic Science, Hunan Normal University, together with collaborators, have introduced an approach that combined a spatially distributed sediment delivery model and biogeochemical model to simulate erosion-induced soil organic carbon dynamic, confirming water erosion acts as a ... Read more ...
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Scientists demonstrate high-resolution lidar sees birth zone of cloud droplets, a first-ever remote observation - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · "We are interested in this 'droplet activation zone,' where most cloud droplets are initially formed at the cloud base, because the number of droplets formed there will affect the later stages and properties of the cloud—including how much sunlight a cloud reflects and the likelihood of precipitation," said Brookhaven atmospheric scientist Fan Yang, the first author on the paper.
"If there are more aerosols in the atmosphere, clouds tend to have more droplets, but the droplets will each be smaller, which means they can reflect more sunlight," Yang said. "This might help to cool our warming Earth," he noted.
But to accurately predict the impacts of these ... Read more ...
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Scientists develop framework to measure plastic emissions and bolster U.N. efforts to reduce pollution - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · The framework arrives ahead of international discussions in Ottawa from April 23 to 29 led by the United Nations' Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution towards a legally binding global agreement on plastic pollution.
Using Toronto as a model, the researchers developed the first-of-its-kind framework and estimated that in one year alone, Toronto emitted nearly 4,000 tons of plastic pollution.
"That's roughly 400 garbage trucks' worth of plastic that leaks into the environment annually from across the city," said Alice (Xia) Zhu, lead author of a study outlining the method published in Environmental Science & Technology. Zhu is a Ph.D. candidate ... Read more ...
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Scientists discover forests that may resist climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · The study, published in Ecology and Evolution, explores forests that experience "cold-air pooling," a phenomenon where cold air at higher elevations drains down into lower-lying valleys, reversing the expected temperatures—warm at the bottom, cold at the top—that typically occurs in mountainous areas. That is, the air temperature drops with descent from mountain to valley.
"With temperature inversions, we also see vegetation inversions," says lead study author and former UVM postdoctoral researcher Melissa Pastore. "Instead of finding more cold-preferring species like spruce and fir at high elevations, we found them in lower elevations—just the opposite of ... Read more ...
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Scientists discover how soil microbes survive in harsh desert environments - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Prolonged droughts followed by sudden bursts of rainfall - how do desert soil bacteria manage to survive such harsh conditions? This long-debated question has now been answered by an ERC project led by microbiologist Dagmar Woebken from the Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science (CeMESS) at the University of Vienna.
The study reveals that desert soil bacteria are highly adapted to survive the rapid environmental changes experienced with each rainfall event. These findings were recently published in the journal Nature Communications.
Drylands cover over 46% of global land area and are expanding, not only due to climate change but also unsustainable land ... Read more ...
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Scientists discover method to prevent coalescence in immiscible liquids - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how experiments they conducted led to the discovery of a way to get some fluids such as water and oil, to remain as an emulsion for long periods of time without the use of surfactants.
It is widely known that when two immiscible liquids, such as water and oil are mixed, they do not remain so for very long—they slowly separate into two layers. This is because they never really mix to begin with; instead, they coexist as droplets that coalesce when they come into contact with one another.
Because of this, chemists have developed various surfactants that force such liquids to remain "mixed" for some ... Read more ...
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Scientists map soil RNA to fungal genomes to understand forest ecosystems - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · This way, the fungi of forest soils hold keys to tree health and carbon storage—skills that matter increasingly as the climate warms. However, these are complicated interactions to untangle. Fungi work in cooperation to support a forest, and species vary across Earth's ecosystems.
Recently, in work published in New Phytologist, researchers have pioneered new understanding of which fungi take on certain functions at the forest floor. For the first time, they compared three different fungal guilds in a range of different locations. They sampled soils in four forest ecosystems, extracted RNA to understand gene expression, and developed new tools to map that soil RNA to ... Read more ...
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Scientists navigate the paradox of extreme cold events in a warming world - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · However, North America, Asia, and parts of Europe experienced record-breaking cold temperatures. In some places, such as China's Mohe and Russia's Yakutsk, temperatures dipped to the life-threatening lowest levels. Alarmingly, this juxtaposition of increasing temperatures amidst extreme coldness pushes the future of our planet's climate into uncertainty.
This paradoxical situation is captured by the Warm Arctic-Cold Continent (WACC) phenomenon, where warm Arctic temperatures lead to sea-ice decline and cold blasts across specific mid-latitude regions. The Arctic's rapid warming indicates global climate change. However, as global warming and the Arctic's temperature keep ... Read more ...
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Scientists reveal hydroclimatic changes on multiple timescales in Central Asia over the past 7,800 years - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · A recent study published in the PNAS shows that western Central Asia has experienced a long-term drying trend over the past 7,800 years. This discovery, based on the analysis of a stalagmite from the Fergana Valley in Kyrgyzstan, adds a critical piece to the understanding of westerly-influenced hydroclimatic patterns in Central Asia.
Central Asia is among one of the most important arid regions in the world. With the acceleration of global warming, the region faces severe challenges such as accelerated glacier melting, shrinking lakes, and water scarcity. The shrinking of the Aral Sea has been described as "one of the planet's worst environmental disasters."
Because of ... Read more ...
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Scientists say voluntary corporate emissions targets not enough to create real climate action - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Relying on emissions can favor more established companies and hinder innovation, say the authors, who suggest updating regulations to improve corporate climate action.
The paper, published today in Science, is by an international team led by Utrecht University, which includes Imperial College London researchers.
Lead author of the study Dr. Yann Robiou Du Pont, from the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development at Utrecht University, said, "Assessing the climate ambition of companies based only on their emissions reductions may not be meaningful for emerging companies working on green innovation."
Companies can set individual climate goals, typically ... Read more ...
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Scotland is ditching its flagship 2030 climate goal - why legally binding targets really matter - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Scotland is still subject to the 2030 carbon target for the UK as a whole. This was set in law by the UK parliament in 2016. Still, Scotland's move raises questions about the credibility of national (or in this case subnational) carbon targets and the usefulness of putting them into law.
Having credible carbon targets, and sticking to them, matters enormously. Globally, 88% of all greenhouse gas emissions are now subject to a net zero emissions target. If these were implemented to the letter, global mean temperatures would remain below 2°C, the upper target of the 2015 Paris agreement.
They won't be, of course. If we judge climate commitments based on the carbon ... Read more ...
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Shoreline model predicts long-term future of storm protection and sea-level rise - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · "Coastal management strategies intended to protect people, property and infrastructure from storm impacts can, over decades, increase vulnerability, even leading to the loss of barrier islands, especially as sea-level rise rates increase," said A. Brad Murray, professor of geomorphology and coastal processes at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment.
He and other researchers in North Carolina created a computer model that simulates dynamics of barrier island systems over the next two centuries, showing how natural processes that create and maintain these systems affect communities and infrastructure, and how human efforts to protect communities and ... Read more ...
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Slow recovery as Dubai airport, roads still plagued by floods - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Dubai's airport, one of the world's busiest, witnessed major disruption for the third day in a row on Thursday after the heaviest rains on record drenched the desert United Arab Emirates.
Emirates, Dubai's state-owned flagship airline, and sister carrier flydubai resumed check-ins after telling passengers to stay away on Wednesday, when thousands of stranded passengers clogged the airport.
Some 1,244 flights were cancelled and 41 diverted on Tuesday and Wednesday, after torrential rains flooded the Middle East financial center including its runways and highways.
Traffic congestion remained severe on Thursday, two days after the storms, with at least one major ... Read more ...
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Soil bacteria link their life strategies to soil conditions: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · By analyzing large DNA sequencing datasets from around the globe, researchers discovered a new way of categorizing the dominant life strategies of soil bacteria based on their genes. This technique allowed the researchers to link different life strategies with specific climate and soil conditions. Their paper is published in the journal Nature Microbiology.
Soil bacteria are crucial for planetary health, but they are hard to study because they are so diverse and invisible to the human eye. In their study, researchers used widely available gene sequence data to classify soil bacteria according to their life strategies. This makes it easier for researchers to predict how soils ... Read more ...
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Solar geoengineering to cool the planet: Is it worth the risks? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Most of the current attention is focused on solar geoengineering, a strategy that involves reflecting sunlight away from Earth to cool the Earth. How much do we know about it and its risks? And where should we take it from here?
Why the growing support for solar geoengineering research?
For many years, all geoengineering research was discouraged by many scientists and experts for fear it would provide an excuse not to cut emissions. Some right-wing politicians such as Newt Gingrich promoted it as a way to reduce global warming without having to cut emissions. Geoengineering research is also controversial because there were and still are many uncertainties about its ... Read more ...
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Spintronics research shows material's magnetic properties can predict how a spin current changes with temperature - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Spintronics exploits the intrinsic spin of electrons, and fundamental to the field is controlling the flows of the spin degree of freedom, i.e., spin currents. Scientists are focused on ways to create, remove, and control them for future applications.
Detecting spin currents is no easy feat. It requires the use of macroscopic voltage measurement, which looks at the overall voltage changes across a material. However, a common stumbling block has been a lack of understanding as to how this spin current actually moves or propagates within the material itself.
A team of researchers now report a method to predict how spin current changes with temperature. The study is ... Read more ...
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Spintronics: A new path to room temperature swirling spin textures - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Spintronics aims to make use of such tiny magnetic structures to store data or perform logic operations with very low power consumption compared to today's dominant microelectronic components. However, the generation and stabilization of most of these magnetic textures is restricted to a few materials and achievable under very specific conditions (temperature, magnetic field, etc.).
An international collaboration led by HZB physicist Dr. Sergio Valencia has now investigated a new approach that can be used to create and stabilize complex spin textures, such as radial vortices, in a variety of compounds. In a radial vortex, the magnetization points towards or away from the ... Read more ...
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Spring snow, sparkling in the sun, can reveal more than just good skiing conditions - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · A lot, according to Mathieu Nguyen. He has just defended his doctoral thesis on the optical properties of snow at NTNU in Gjøvik.
"Snow reflects all wavelengths of light and can have very different colors depending on the conditions and the angle at which light hits it. The age and density of the snow and air pollution also affect what it looks like. Snow's appearance is a very complicated matter," Nguyen says.
He has analyzed over a thousand images of snow. The findings are published in the journal Geosciences.
"This type of method can be used in a number of sensor technologies that include everything from giving us a better decision-making basis for when ... Read more ...
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Squids' birthday influences mating: Male spear squids shown to become 'sneakers' or 'consorts' depending on birth date - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Understanding how mating tactics are influenced by birth date, and the environmental conditions at that time, can help researchers consider how squid might be affected by climate change and the implications for marine resource management.
What does your date of birth say about you? Maybe you feel it reveals something about your personality, or perhaps even your destiny. For male spear squid, it can tell us a lot about their love life.
A team of researchers in Japan have found that the mating tactics of spear squid are heavily influenced by the day they were born. These squid can be classified into two types according to their mating techniques: consorts, which fight off ... Read more ...
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State's new law involving Puget Sound Energy aspires to set a course for the future - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Over the past couple of years, Washington lawmakers have wrestled with a daunting task.
The problem: The state's largest utility, Puget Sound Energy, sells natural gas to nearly 1 million customers and burns gas and coal to electrify cities. That contributes millions of metric tons of planet-warming gases to the atmosphere.
It makes PSE one of the largest producers of greenhouse gas pollution in the state, ranked among fuel suppliers like Marathon, BP and Philips 66. And it represents a huge threat to the state's ambitious climate goals.
Lawmakers' original proposed fix would have been unprecedented in the country and required PSE to stop offering new commercial ... Read more ...
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Study finds world economy already committed to income reduction of 19% due to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Even if CO2 emissions were to be drastically cut down starting today, the world economy is already committed to an income reduction of 19% until 2050 due to climate change, a study published in Nature finds. These damages are six times larger than the mitigation costs needed to limit global warming to two degrees.
Based on empirical data from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years, scientists at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) assessed future impacts of changing climatic conditions on economic growth and their persistence.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, ... Read more ...
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Study quantifies ecological restoration effectiveness on greenhouse gas emissions - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Land-use change and ecosystem degradation have caused massive anthropogenic emissions of GHG, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O), leading to irreversible consequences for the future of the Earth.
In a recent study published in Nature Communications, researchers from the Wuhan Botanical Garden (WBG) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) have found that restoration of forests, grasslands and wetlands can enhance carbon sink, reduce the global warming potentials, and serve as strategies to mitigate GHG emissions.
This study is a meta-analysis of a global dataset of 253 peer-reviewed articles. The results provide valuable insights for ... Read more ...
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Study reveals substantial global cost of climate inaction - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Using projections from 33 global climate models, an international research team, led by Paul Waidelich at ETH Zurich, conducted a pioneering study, published in the journal, Nature Climate Change, to quantify such impacts on gross domestic product (GDP) across the globe.
The investigative study revealed a global GDP loss of up to 10% if the planet warms by +3ºC. Importantly, accounting for variability and extremes increases the costs of climate change around the world.
"If we take into account that warmer years also come with changes in rainfall and temperature variability, it turns out that the estimated impact of spiking temperatures is worse than previously ... Read more ...
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Study says it's likely a warmer world made deadly Dubai downpours heavier - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Between 10% and 40% more rain fell in just one day last week—killing at least two dozen people in the United Arab Emirates, Oman and parts of Saudi Arabia—than it would have in a world without the 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 degrees Fahrenheit) warming that has come from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas since the mid-19th century, scientists at World Weather Attribution said Thursday in a flash study that is too new to be peer-reviewed.
In at least one spot, a record 11 inches (28.6 centimeters) of rain fell in just 24 hours, more than twice the yearly average, paralyzing the usually bustling city of skyscrapers in a desert.
One of the key tools in WWA's ... Read more ...
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Study shows it's not too late to save the West Antarctic Ice Sheet - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · More than 5 meters of potential global sea-level rise is locked within the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, so understanding whether the regions of the ice sheet that appear "stable" today might melt in the future is critical for forecasting how much and how fast our seas will rise around the world.
One such region that is currently stable is West Antarctica's Siple Coast, where rivers of ice flow over the continent and drain into the Ross Sea. This ice flow is slowed down by the Ross Ice Shelf, a floating mass of ice nearly the size of Spain, which serves as a buttress to the ice sheet glaciers. Compared to other ice shelves in West Antarctica, the Ross Ice Shelf has very little ... Read more ...
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Study shows the longer spilled oil lingers in freshwater, the more persistent compounds it produces - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · And, according to research published in Energy & Fuels, the longer that oil remains in freshwater, the more chemical changes it undergoes, creating products that can persist in the environment.
Approximately 600,000 gallons of oil were accidentally spilled into the environment in 2023, according to the International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation, a group that monitors oil spills. This figure represents ocean spills as well as freshwater spills in rivers and lakes. Over time, this oil weathers and undergoes a variety of chemical transformations, which could make compounds that are more soluble in water and stick around longer.
Weathering in salt water is reasonably ... Read more ...
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Synthesis of two new carbides provides perspective on how complex carbon structures could exist on other planets - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Carbides are compounds of carbon and another chemical element. The newly synthesized carbides resemble metal-organic-like compounds and can offer new insight into the behavior of complex carbon structures under extremely high pressures and high temperatures.
The possible existence or formation of such compounds at conditions of planets' interiors may have important implications for geosciences and astrobiology, as they could be the origin of hydrocarbons and could play a role in the origin of life.
Under the leadership of Prof. Dr. Leonid Dubrovinsky from the Bavarian Geoinstitute and Prof. Dr. Natalia Dubrovinskaia from the Laboratory of Crystallography at the ... Read more ...
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Talks on global plastic treaty begin in Canada - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Negotiators from 175 nations began talks Tuesday on a proposed global treaty to reduce plastic pollution, which is found everywhere from mountain tops to ocean depths, and in human blood and breast milk.
"The world is counting on us to deliver a new treaty that will catalyze and guide the actions and international cooperation needed to deliver a future free of plastic pollution," said Luis Valdivieso, chair of the negotiations at the UN-led talks in Ottawa, Canada.
"Let's not fail," Valdivieso added as he opened the session that will run to April 29.
Nations agreed in 2022 to finalize a world-first treaty by the end of 2024, with concrete measures to battle plastic ... Read more ...
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Targeted culling of starfish found to help Great Barrier Reef maintain or increase cover - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · In their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the group describes how they conducted culling operations on several parts of the Great Barrier Reef and then studied the results to learn about how such activity can benefit coral reefs in general.
Another factor in their reduction is the growing population of starfish, such as the crown-of-thorns. Just one of them, a meter in diameter, can eat 10 square meters of coral every year. In this new effort, the research team focused on helping coral survive in the Great Barrier Reef by reducing the number of starfish in the area.
To reduce the number of starfish, the research team engaged in a culling effort, which ... Read more ...
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The big quantum chill: Scientists modify common lab refrigerator to cool faster with less energy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · The scientists say that their prototype device, which they are now working to commercialize with an industrial partner, could annually save an estimated 27 million watts of power, $30 million in global electricity consumption, and enough cooling water to fill 5,000 Olympic swimming pools.
From stabilizing qubits (the basic unit of information in a quantum computer) to maintaining the superconducting properties of materials and keeping NASA's James Webb Space Telescope cool enough to observe the heavens, ultracold refrigeration is essential to the operation of many devices and sensors. For decades, the pulse tube refrigerator (PTR) has been the workhorse device for achieving ... Read more ...
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The Indian villagers who lost their homes to the sea - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 26) |
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Apr 26 · The gentle roar of the ocean lulled Indian mother-of-two Banita Behra to sleep each night, until one day the encroaching tide reached her doorstep.
Behra is among hundreds of people from the disappearing and largely abandoned coastal village of Satabhaya, whose displaced former residents have been officially recognized by the government as climate migrants.
She grew up watching helplessly with her neighbors as rising seas, driven by climate change and upriver dams, slowly claimed the land around them.
"We were doing well there. We used to catch fish," the 34-year-old told AFP. "But the sea came nearer and took away our homes."
Satabhaya is the hardest-hit of ... Read more ...
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The Italian central Apennines are a source of CO₂, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · In the central Italian Apennine Mountains, researchers led by Erica Erlanger and Niels Hovius from the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences and Aaron Bufe from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München have now investigated and balanced all of these processes in one region for the first time—using, among others, analyses of the CO2 content in mountain rivers and springs. They found that weathering in this region leads to an overall CO2 uptake.
However, these near-surface processes only determine the CO2 balance in areas with a thick and cold crust. On the western side of the Central Apennines, the crust is thinner and the heat flow is higher. There, CO2 ... Read more ...
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The rise of microbial cheaters in iron-limited environments: Study reveals their evolutionary history - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Among microbial communities, chemicals that are secreted into the environment provide opportunities for both cooperation and exploitation, giving rise in some cases to microbial "cheaters." These cheaters exploit the cooperative behaviors of their counterparts, benefitting from the secreted compounds without paying the metabolic costs of production.
In a new article published in Molecular Biology and Evolution, researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Vanderbilt University reveal the evolutionary history of secreted iron uptake molecules in yeasts, shedding new light on the cooperative and competitive dynamics that shape iron-limited microbial ... Read more ...
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The UK's Climate Change Act, once the envy of the world, faces a stress test - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Does that mean that targets for reducing the emissions of greenhouse gas driving climate change are worthless? Not necessarily. There are two types of climate target: the empty promise and the calculated ambition. Only one of these works.
Empty promises abound in climate policy. Such targets deflect criticism—look, they say, we take climate change seriously, we have a strong target. But a closer look reveals, at best, loopholes and at worst, no plan at all.
For example, despite numerous oil and gas companies pledging to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, an extensive analysis revealed that emissions from the sector aren't falling and most companies with targets ... Read more ...
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This ancient snake in India might have been longer than a school bus and weighed a ton - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 20) |
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Apr 20 · Fossils found near a coal mine revealed a snake that stretched an estimated 36 feet (11 meters) to 50 feet (15 meters). It's comparable to the largest known snake at about 42 feet (13 meters) that once lived in what is now Colombia.
The largest living snake today is Asia's reticulated python at 33 feet (10 meters).
The newly discovered behemoth lived 47 million years ago in western India's swampy evergreen forests. It could have weighed up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), researchers said in the journal Scientific Reports.
They gave it the name Vasuki indicus after "the mythical snake king Vasuki, who wraps around the neck of the Hindu deity Shiva," said Debajit ... Read more ...
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Thousands in heatwave-hit Bangladesh pray for rain - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Thousands of Bangladeshis gathered to pray for rain on Wednesday in the middle of an extreme heat wave that prompted authorities to shut down schools around the country.
Extensive scientific research has found climate change is causing heat waves to become longer, more frequent and more intense.
Bangladesh's weather bureau says that average maximum temperatures in the capital Dhaka over the past week have been 4-5 degrees Celsius (7.2-9 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the 30-year average for the same period.
Muslim worshippers gathered in city mosques and rural fields to pray for relief from the scorching heat, which forecasters expect to continue for at least ... Read more ...
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Three dead, tens of thousands evacuated as storms strike south China - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Three people are dead and 11 others missing following storms that battered southern China, state media said Monday, with tens of thousands evacuated away from the torrential downpours.
Heavy rain has descended upon the vast southern province of Guangdong in recent days, swelling rivers and raising fears of severe flooding that state media said could be of the sort only "seen around once a century".
"The three deaths were reported in Zhaoqing City. They were trapped due to the rainfall and were found to have died at the site," state broadcaster Xinhua reported, citing local authorities.
Eleven others remain missing as search and rescue efforts in the area continue ... Read more ...
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Turning to nature to improve vital water treatment - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Escalating industrialization, urbanization and climate change in Asia present a significant challenge to maintaining water quality.
In an effort to improve water treatment, RMIT has collaborated in an international team supporting pilot projects in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and the Philippines through an Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research project.
Led by RMIT's Professor Jega Jegatheesan, the pilots included the construction of floating wetlands in Can Tho, Vietnam and Kandy, Sri Lanka, green roofs in Ho Chi Minh City and constructed wetland in the Philippines.
This saw 40 students at Can Tho University trained to build and install the structures in two ... Read more ...
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Two-dimensional nanomaterial sets expansion record - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · Working at Interface Science Western, home of the Tandetron Accelerator Facility, Stocek, and Fanchini formulated two-dimensional nanosheets of tungsten semi-carbide (or W2C, a chemical compound containing equal parts of tungsten and carbon atoms), which, when stretched in one direction, expand perpendicular to the applied force. This structural design is known as auxetics.
The trick is that the structure of the nanosheet itself isn't flat. The atoms in the sheet are made of repeating units consisting of two tungsten atoms for every carbon atom, which are arranged metaphorically like the dimpled surface of an egg carton. As tension is applied across the elastic nanosheet in ... Read more ...
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UN launches fund to shield displaced people from climate shocks - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · The United Nations said Wednesday it was launching a new Climate Resilience Fund aimed at boosting protections for "refugees and displaced communities" threatened by climate change.
The UN refugee agency said it aimed to raise $100 million for the new fund by the end of next year to support refugees, their host communities and countries of origin hardest hit by climate emergencies.
The agency highlighted in a statement that climate risks were "strongly correlated with conflict and poverty", experienced by many refugees.
In 2022, more than 70 percent of refugees and asylum seekers fled from highly climate-vulnerable countries, it pointed out.
"The impacts of ... Read more ...
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Understanding climate warming impacts on carbon release from the tundra - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · The warming climate shifts the dynamics of tundra environments and makes them release trapped carbon, according to a new study published in Nature. These changes could transform tundras from carbon sinks into carbon sources, exacerbating the effects of climate change.
A team of more than 70 scientists from different countries used so-called open-top chambers (OTCs) to experimentally simulate the effects of warming on 28 tundra sites around the world. OTCs basically serve as mini-greenhouses, blocking wind and trapping heat to create local warming.
The warming experiments led to a 1.4 degrees Celsius increase in air temperature and a 0.4 degrees increase in soil ... Read more ...
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Unraveling the mysteries of consecutive atmospheric river events - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · A paper published in Communications Earth and Environment details their findings.
California's winter climate is largely defined by these atmospheric rivers—long, narrow regions in the atmosphere that transfer water vapor from the tropics, most commonly associated with the West Coast coming from the Pacific Ocean. When they make landfall (i.e., pass over land), they can release massive amounts of rain and snow. The catastrophic environmental and economic effects of ARs highlight the urgency of studying them, especially as Earth's climate changes.
"Atmospheric river events are likely to become worse with rising temperatures," explained Yang Zhou, Earth and ... Read more ...
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Using deep learning to image the Earth's planetary boundary layer - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · "The PBL is where the surface interacts with the atmosphere, including exchanges of moisture and heat that help lead to severe weather and a changing climate," says Adam Milstein, a technical staff member in Lincoln Laboratory's Applied Space Systems Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "The PBL is also where humans live, and the turbulent movement of aerosols throughout the PBL is important for air quality that influences human health."
Although vital for studying weather and climate, important features of the PBL, such as its height, are difficult to resolve with current technology. In the past four years, Lincoln Laboratory staff have been studying the PBL, ... Read more ...
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Victims of China floods race to salvage property - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 24) |
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Apr 24 · Victims of severe floods in southern China raced on Wednesday to salvage property from the muddy waters as authorities warned of more heavy rains to come.
Massive downpours have struck Guangdong province in recent days, triggering deluges that have claimed the lives of four people and forced the evacuation of more than 100,000.
The severe floods are virtually unheard of so early in the year even in lush, subtropical Guangdong, with one senior official linking them to worsening climate change.
AFP reporters in Shatang village on Wednesday saw staff and officials at a tourist resort taking advantage of a break in the rain to clear mud from the streets.
"The ... Read more ...
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Warming Arctic reduces dust levels in parts of the planet, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Previous studies have found that dust levels are actually decreasing across India, particularly northern India, the Persian Gulf Coast and much of the Middle East, but the reason has remained unclear. Researchers at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) are working to understand how global climate change is impacting dust levels in the region.
In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a team of researchers led by Michael B. McElroy, the Gilbert Butler Professor of Environmental Studies at SEAS, found that the decrease in dust can be attributed to the Arctic warming much faster than the rest of the ... Read more ...
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Warming climate is putting more metals into Colorado's mountain streams - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · Natural chemical weathering of bedrock is the source of the rising acidity and metals, but the ultimate driver of the trend is climate change, the report found.
"Heavy metals are a real challenge for ecosystems," said lead author Andrew Manning, a geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver. "Some are quite toxic. We are seeing regional, statistically significant trends in copper and zinc, two key metals that are commonly a problem in Colorado. It's not ambiguous, and it's not small."
The study was published in Water Resources Research.
Although the mechanism coupling warming temperatures to increased sulfide weathering is still an open research question, ... Read more ...
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Warming of Antarctic deep-sea waters contribute to sea level rise in North Atlantic, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Analysis of mooring observations and hydrographic data suggest the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation deep water limb in the North Atlantic has weakened. Two decades of continual observations provide a greater understanding of the Earth's climate regulating system.
A new study published in the journal Nature Geoscience led by scientists at University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, found that human-induced environmental changes around Antarctica are contributing to sea level rise in the North Atlantic.
"Although ... Read more ...
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Weather and climate extremes in 2023 impacting the globe with emerging features - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · A year on, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Atmospheric Physics, the Met Office in the UK, Sorbonne Université in France, the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Germany, Instituto Argentino de Nivología, Glaciología Y Ciencias Ambientales in Argentina and China Meteorological Administration's Shanghai Typhoon Institute, have had a look back at the year.
The team reviewed the facts and current physical understanding of the year's events and put them in context relative to the past and future to provide a better understanding of the roles of internal climate variability and anthropogenic climate change. The work is published ... Read more ...
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Weather prediction models can also forecast satellite displacements - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · By leveraging these models, the researchers gained insights into how LEO satellites respond to weather events below, such as tropical cyclones with tall and reflective clouds. The results were published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in April.
In the study, the researchers utilized numerical weather models. They are sophisticated computer simulators that predict future atmospheric conditions based on current observations and laws of physics.
"Numerical weather models not only simulate weather patterns but also calculate various parameters, including the Earth's energy emissions and reflections under various weather conditions.
"By analyzing these ... Read more ...
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When red-hot isn't enough: New government heat risk tool sets magenta as most dangerous level - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 23) |
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Apr 23 · The National Weather Service and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday—Earth Day—presented a new online heat risk system that combines meteorological and medical risk factors with a seven-day forecast that's simplified and color-coded for a warming world of worsening heat waves.
"For the first time we'll be able to know how hot is too hot for health and not just for today but for coming weeks," Dr. Ari Bernstein, director of the National Center for Environmental Health, said at a joint news conference by government health and weather agencies.
Magenta is the worst and deadliest of five heat threat categories, hitting everybody with what the ... Read more ...
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Why is methane seeping on Mars? NASA scientists have new ideas - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · Living creatures produce most of the methane on Earth. But scientists haven't found convincing signs of current or ancient life on Mars, and thus didn't expect to find methane there. Yet, the portable chemistry lab aboard Curiosity, known as SAM, or Sample Analysis at Mars, has continually sniffed out traces of the gas near the surface of Gale Crater, the only place on the surface of Mars where methane has been detected thus far. Its likely source, scientists assume, are geological mechanisms that involve water and rocks deep underground.
If that were the whole story, things would be easy. However, SAM has found that methane behaves in unexpected ways in Gale Crater. It ... Read more ...
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Wine growers 'on tip of Africa' race to adapt to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 17) |
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Apr 17 · At a South African wine farm, dry, uprooted grapevines are stacked at the bottom of a hilly stretch of brown fallow land.
Much of the vineyard is being replanted to better cope with climate change, which is projected to bring rarer but more violent rainfall to this wine-loving corner of the world.
From Australia to California, France, Spain and Italy, producers in wine-growing regions around the world face a race to adapt to a changing climate which affects the grapes.
"I don't like just accepting things. Let's put up a bit of a fight," said Rosa Kruger, the viticultural consultant overseeing the project in the Cape Winelands region east of Cape Town.
Like ... Read more ...
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World's oases threatened by desertification, even as humans expand them - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · "Although the scientific community has always emphasized the importance of oases, there has not been a clear map of the global distribution of oases," said Dongwei Gui, a geoscientist at the Chinese Academy of Science, who led the study. "Oasis research has both theoretical and practical significance for achieving United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and promoting sustainable development in arid regions."
The study found that oases around the world grew by more than 220,149 square kilometers (85,000 square miles) from 1995 to 2020, mostly due to intentional oasis expansion projects in Asia. But desertification drove the loss of 134,300 square kilometers (51,854 square ... Read more ...
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Yeast study offers possible answer to why some species are generalists and others specialists - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 25) |
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Apr 25 · Under the guidance of UW–Madison professor of genetics Chris Todd Hittinger and Antonis Rokas, a professor of biology at Vanderbilt, researchers mapped the genetic blueprints, appetites, and environments of more than 1,000 species of yeasts, building a family tree that illuminates how these single-celled fungi evolved over the past 400 million years.
The results, published in the journal Science, suggest that internal—not external—factors are the primary drivers of variation in the types of carbon yeasts can eat, and the researchers found no evidence that metabolic versatility, or the ability to eat different foods, comes with any trade-offs. In other words, ... Read more ...
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Yellowstone Lake ice cover unchanged despite warming climate - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · That is an unexpected finding, as most lakes around the world are experiencing shorter durations of ice cover, the scientists note in a new paper published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.
"We show that contrary to expectation, the ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake has been uniquely resistant to climate change," wrote the scientists, led by Lusha Tronstad, lead invertebrate zoologist with UW's Wyoming Natural Diversity Database and Department of Zoology and Physiology, and Isabella Oleksy, a former UW postdoctoral researcher now on the University of Colorado-Boulder faculty. "The unchanging ice phenology of Yellowstone Lake stands in stark contrast to similar ... Read more ...
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