Articles on or after 4/10/2024: |
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| Climate Crocks,Huffington Post,DeSmogBlog,Skeptical Science,VOX -Environment,PHYS.ORG - Earth,PHYS.ORG - Technology |
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Huffington Post:
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Biden Thwarts Trump And Blocks Mining Road, Oil Drilling In Alaska - Huffington Post (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday safeguarded millions of acres in Alaska from fossil fuel drilling and mining - the latest in a frenzy of environmental actions in recent weeks that have drawn praise from green groups and condemnation from industry and Republican lawmakers.
The Interior Department finalized a rule that bars oil and gas development across more than 13 million acres of the National Petroleum Reserve on Alaska’s North Slope. Established in 1923, the 23 million-acre reserve is the largest tract of federal land in the country and home to vast oil and gas deposits.
Interior also moved to block construction of the Ambler Road, a proposed 211-mile ... Read more ...
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Biologists Rescue Sawfish As Dozens Of Ancient Animals Die For Unknown Reasons - Huffington Post (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. (AP) - A large sawfish that showed signs of distress was rescued by wildlife officials in the Florida Keys, where more than three dozen of the ancient and endangered fish have died for unexplained reasons in recent months.
The 11-foot (3.3-meter) smalltooth sawfish was seen swimming in circles near Cudjoe Key and reported by a member of the public to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, officials said Friday. It was loaded onto a specially designed transport trailer and taken to Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, where it is being rehabilitated.
The unprecedented rescue of an animal like this is part of an “emergency response” led ... Read more ...
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Critics Shred Chris Sununu Over His 'Truly Sad' Trump 180: 'All The More Pitiful' - Huffington Post (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who was recently a staunch critic of Donald Trump, changed his tune on the former president as he backed his 2024 campaign in an interview with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Sunday.
“No other president in American history has contributed to an insurrection so please explain, given the fact that you believe he contributed to an insurrection, how you can say we should have him back in the Oval Office,” Stephanopoulos asked on ABC News’ “This Week.”
“Because for me it’s not about him as much as it is having a Republican administration ...,” said Sununu, who predicted that Trump wouldn’t be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee but didn’t ... Read more ...
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Iran Fires At Suspected Israeli Attack Drones Near Isfahan Air Base And Nuclear Site - Huffington Post (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) - Iran fired air defenses at a major air base and a nuclear site early Friday morning near the central city of Isfahan after spotting drones, which were suspected to be part of an Israeli attack in retaliation for Tehran’s unprecedented drone-and-missile assault on the country.
No Iranian official directly acknowledged the possibility that Israel attacked, and the Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment. However, tensions have been high since the Saturday assault on Israel amid its war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and its own strikes targeting Iran in Syria.
United States officials declined to comment as of early Friday, ... Read more ...
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Joe Biden Just Made It More Expensive To Drill On Public Lands - Huffington Post (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · President Joe Biden’s administration on Friday finalized a new rule to modernize the long-outdated federal oil and gas leasing program.
The Interior Department rule significantly increases how much energy companies must pay to lease and drill on federal lands, and it gives federal land managers greater authority to keep fossil fuel development away from sensitive wildlife habitats and cultural sites.
The reforms “will help safeguard the health of our public lands and nearby communities for generations to come,” Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said in a statement accompanying the announcement.
“These are the most significant reforms to the federal oil and gas leasing ... Read more ...
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New Documents Reveal A GOP Senate Candidate’s Blatant Lies - Huffington Post (Apr 16) |
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Apr 16 · Montana businessman Tim Sheehy built his aerial firefighting company, Bridger Aerospace, on certain scientific realities - namely that global climate change is real and driving more extreme wildfires. He even touted it as a leader in the fight against planet-warming emissions.
But when it came time to campaign for the U.S. Senate, the GOP hopeful quickly embraced partisan talking points on climate, repeatedly railing against what he calls the “climate cult” and “radical environmentalists,” while blaming the growing wildfire threat exclusively on forest mismanagement.
And while the Trump-endorsed MAGA conservative flipped his script on climate, his company continues to ... Read more ...
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New Photos Show Just How Bad Mass Coral Bleaching Is On The Great Barrier Reef - Huffington Post (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is experiencing one of the most extensive and serious coral bleaching events in recorded history after a summer of extreme temperatures and oceanic heat effectively cooked the delicate corals that make up the iconic structure.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science recently completed an intensive, large-scale survey of the reef, which is a system of about 3,000 individual reefs that stretches nearly 1,500 miles along the coastline. For the first time, extreme levels of bleaching have been seen along all regions of the Great Barrier and around 75% of the reefs surveyed showed signs of prevalent bleaching.
Aerial photos released Wednesday ... Read more ...
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New Report Details Just How Quickly Europe Is Warming - Huffington Post (Apr 22) |
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Apr 22 · NAPLES, Italy (AP) - Europe is the fastest-warming continent and its temperatures are rising at roughly twice the global average, two top climate monitoring organizations reported Monday, warning of the consequences for human health, glacier melt and economic activity.
The U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization and the European Union’s climate agency, Copernicus, said in a joint report the continent has the opportunity to develop targeted strategies to speed up the transition to renewable resources like wind, solar and hydroelectric power in response to the effects of climate change.
The continent generated 43% of its electricity from renewable resources last year, up ... Read more ...
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Owner Of New York City’s Defunct Nuclear Plant Sues The State - Huffington Post (Apr 18) |
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Apr 18 · The company that owns the shuttered nuclear plant that once provided the bulk of New York City’s zero-carbon electricity is suing the state over a law passed last year specifically to block the Indian Point power station from carrying out routine releases of treated wastewater into the Hudson River, HuffPost has learned.
Virtually every nuclear power plant all over the world releases tiny volumes of a radioactive isotope known as tritium from its cooling water into surrounding waterways. Unlike the long-lasting and dangerous radioisotopes that form during the atom-splitting process, tritium ? an isotope of hydrogen ? laces into water, making it almost impossible to extract. ... Read more ...
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RFK Jr. Denounced By Environmental Colleagues, Urged To End Campaign - Huffington Post (Apr 19) |
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Apr 19 · Environmentalists who once worked with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are calling on him to drop his presidential bid, The New York Times was first to report Friday, while a number of green organizations are also denouncing the independent candidate for his anti-science beliefs.
The push for Kennedy to exit the 2024 race comes from his ex-colleagues at the Natural Resources Defense Council, whose political arm is planning to run full-page newspaper ads in six swing states next week. Kennedy had served as a senior attorney at the climate advocacy group for around 28 years.
The ads describe his campaign as benefiting presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, “the single worst ... Read more ...
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The 10 Books That Scientists Say Can Make A Difference In The Climate Crisis - Huffington Post (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · The climate crisis can often feel terrifying and, like any effort to slow its progression, utterly futile. But before you resolve yourself to complete apathy, many environmental scientists have a more optimistic view of things - and, more importantly, comprehensive plans of action that anyone and everyone should take.
I reached out to a couple of environmental agencies to find out which books can not only educate readers on climate change but spur us into action, effectively taking one step towards a more hospitable future for all.
Scientists, conservationists and other environment experts from groups like The Nature Conservancy helped compile the following list of ... Read more ...
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Trump Cancels Rally Due To Weather, Proving The Difficulty Of Balancing Trial And Campaign - Huffington Post (Apr 20) |
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Apr 20 · WILMINGTON, N.C. (AP) - Donald Trump had to cancel his first planned rally since the start of his criminal hush money trial because of a storm Saturday evening in North Carolina, an added complication that highlights the difficulty the former president faces in juggling his legal troubles with his rematch against President Joe Biden.
Trump called into the rally site near the Wilmington airport less than an hour before he was scheduled to take the stage and apologized to a few thousand supporters who had gathered throughout the afternoon under initially sunny skies that later darkened with storm clouds.
Speaking from his private plane, Trump cited lightning and the ... Read more ...
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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 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 landslide forced me from my home - and I experienced our failure to deal with climate change at first hand - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · These cracks soon became a landslide affecting several homes overlooking the Gill, ultimately swallowing tons of land and trees and leaving chunks of our properties at the bottom of the valley. Most of our garden and outer buildings have disappeared. The local council has forced my family out of our home, which is now teetering on the edge of a cliff.
The events were not just a personal tragedy for those of us who lost our homes and sense of security, but a stark indication of a broader governance crisis. As an academic who studies the impact of climate change on infrastructure and its governance, I have now experienced first-hand something I have noted in my research: there's ... 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 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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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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Altered oceanic crust may contribute to arc magmas - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Dr. Zhang Yuxiang of Prof. Zeng Zhigang's team from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS), together with Prof. Turner Simon from Macquarie University and Prof. Huang Fang of University of Science and Technology of China, found that a combination of Ba-Sr-Nd isotopes could effectively identify the presence of recycled AOC in arc magmas.
The study was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth.
A characteristic geochemical feature of AOC is the decoupling of its Sr-Nd isotopes, i.e., compared with unaltered oceanic crustal rocks, AOC has higher 87Sr/86Sr but similar 143Nd/144Nd. Accordingly, AOC differs from the mantle array ... 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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Americans more willing to pay for climate action after extreme weather - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · Trump voters who reported experiencing an extreme weather event were more likely to vote in favor of a clean energy referendum than Trump voters who had not experienced such events.
"Despite people's beliefs about climate change being human-caused, despite people's political affiliation—both of which we know have really strong impacts on how people think about climate change—we find that when people have experienced extreme events, they are more likely to support climate mitigation policy, even if it costs more money," says study co-author Rachelle Gould of University of Vermont (UVM).
For the study, researchers from UVM and University of Colorado examined ... 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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Ant pheromones may help protect hikers and campers from ticks - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · "Ticks like a lot of the places and a lot of the times of years that we also like to be outside enjoying the weather," says lead author Claire Gooding, a member of the SFU Gries Lab. "There's quite a big risk of tick encounters in the summer, outdoor sports season. People often encounter them on the sides of trails."
A paper published in Royal Society Open Science looked at what predators (ants, spiders or beetles) black-legged ticks might avoid and what adaptations they might have to avoid them.
"We decided to look at ants because they are social insects and use a huge range of pheromones to communicate with one another," says Gooding. "They're chemically noisy. And for ... 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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Ants in Colorado are on the move due to climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · Over the past 60 years, climate change has forced certain ant species, unable to tolerate higher temperatures, out of their original habitats in Gregory Canyon near Boulder, Colorado, according to a new research published April 9 in the journal Ecology.
The resulting biodiversity change could potentially alter local ecosystems, according to first author Anna Paraskevopoulos, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Like all insects, ants are ectothermic, meaning their body temperature, metabolism and other bodily functions depend on the environment's temperature. As a result, ants are sensitive to ... Read more ...
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As climate change progresses, new rainfall patterns may affect plants worldwide - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · April showers are increasingly becoming deluges due to climate change, and May flowers will never be the same. And it's not just April; the warming of the planet is causing a year-round, worldwide trend toward more intense but less frequent rainfalls, a dynamic that will increasingly impact plants worldwide, according to a University of Maryland-led study published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment.
Already in most regions, more than half of the total yearly rainfall occurs on the 12 wettest days of the year - a number likely to shrink as rainfall becomes more concentrated in fewer days.
Longer dry periods interspersed with stronger downpours tend to benefit plants ... 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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BepiColombo detects escaping oxygen and carbon in unexplored region of Venus's magnetosphere - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · Detections in a previously unexplored region of Venus's magnetic environment show that carbon and oxygen are being accelerated to speeds where they can escape the planet's gravitational pull. The results have been published in Nature Astronomy.
Lina Hadid, CNRS researcher at the Plasma Physics Laboratory (LPP) and lead author of the study said, "This is the first time that positively charged carbon ions have been observed escaping from Venus's atmosphere. These are heavy ions that are usually slow moving, so we are still trying to understand the mechanisms that are at play. It may be that an electrostatic 'wind' is lifting them away from the planet, or they could be ... 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 plans sweeping effort to block Arctic oil drilling - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · The U.S. set aside 23 million acres of Alaska's North Slope to serve as an emergency oil supply a century ago. Now, President Joe Biden is moving to block oil and gas development across roughly half of it.
The initiative, set to be finalized within days, marks one of the most sweeping efforts yet by Biden to limit oil and gas exploration on federal lands. It comes as he seeks to boost land conservation and fight climate change - and is campaigning for a second term on promises to do more of it.
The changes wouldn't affect ConocoPhillips's controversial 600-million-barrel Willow oil project in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska. But oil industry leaders say the plan is ... Read more ...
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Biden rule hikes fees for oil projects on public lands - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · Oil companies drilling on public lands must post larger bonds and pay higher royalties under a rule finalized Friday by the Biden administration.
The bonding requirements for development increased to $150,000 from $10,000, a level set in 1960 that no longer covers potential cleanup costs, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) said in a press release.
In another shift, the Department of the Interior lifted royalty rates for leases to 16.67 percent from the previous level of 12.5 percent.
The changes were described by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland as the most significant reform to the leasing program "in decades" but were criticized by petroleum interests.
They ... Read more ...
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Canada readies for another 'explosive' wildfire season - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · Canada is bracing for another "explosive" wildfire season after last year's marked the worst that Canadians have ever known, federal officials said Wednesday.
There are multiple indications for major risk, including a warmer-than-normal winter that left little snow accumulation on the ground, compounding droughts in several regions.
"With the heat and dryness across the country, we can expect that the wildfire season will start sooner and end later and potentially be more explosive," Emergency Preparedness Minister Harjit Sajjan told a news conference.
"The temperature trends are very concerning," he added, pointing to possibly devastating impacts, notably in the ... Read more ...
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Certified timber harvesting of tropical forests proves beneficial for gorillas and elephants - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · Utrecht University researcher Joeri Zwerts and colleagues conclude this based on 1.3 million camera trap images gathered in fourteen commercially exploited forests. The researchers' analysis reveals the effectiveness of wildlife conservation measures in FSC-certified forests. The results of the study are published in the scientific journal Nature.
FSC, a non-profit organization, is dedicated to advocating responsible forestry practices to foster a healthy, resilient natural environment and to enhance the social and economic well-being of communities. In pursuit of these goals, the FSC issues certificates to timber harvesting companies that meet a set of ... 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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Clay-assisted organic carbon burial induced early Paleozoic atmospheric oxygenation, data show - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · In a study published in Science Advances, scientists have used new lithium isotope (δ7Li) data to show that continental clay export promoted organic carbon burial and thus atmospheric oxygenation during the Cambrian period.
Animals depend on oxygen for respiration. Thus, the emergence and proliferation of early animals from the late Neoproterozoic to the early Paleozoic era (~600–500 million years ago or mya) has traditionally been attributed to a significant increase in marine oxygen levels. However, geochemical tracers and numerical models suggest that both atmospheric and marine oxygen levels during the Late Neoproterozoic–Early Paleozoic were significantly lower than ... 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 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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Cloud engineering could be more effective 'painkiller' for global warming than previously thought - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · In a study published in Nature Geoscience, researchers at the University of Birmingham found that marine cloud brightening (MCB), also known as marine cloud engineering, works primarily by increasing the amount of cloud cover, accounting for 60–90% of the cooling effect.
Previous models used to estimate the cooling effects of MCB have focused on the ability of aerosol injection to produce a brightening effect on the cloud, which in turn increases the amount of sunlight reflected back into space.
The practice of MCB has attracted much attention in recent years as a way of offsetting the global warming effects caused by humans and buying some time while the global ... 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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Corporate climate pledge weakened by carbon offsets move - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · The world's main benchmark for vetting corporate climate action has been accused by its own staff of "greenwashing" after allowing businesses to use carbon credits to offset pollution from their value chains.
The ruling by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi) was slammed as a "coup" on Thursday and has sparked a revolt by staff who want the decision reversed and the non-profit's CEO and board to resign.
Experts say it could irreversibly damage the credibility of the SBTi, which is partnered with the UN Global Compact and WWF, and is the gold standard for assessing the net zero plans of big business.
An internal letter sent to SBTi leadership, and seen by ... 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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Despite what you might hear, weather prediction is getting better, not worse - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · This led to debate in the media and during senate estimates around the Bureau of Meteorology's ability to make accurate predictions as the climate changes. The value of seasonal forecasting in particular has been called into question.
Weather prediction has actually improved in recent years. And there are exciting developments on the horizon involving artificial intelligence. But the effect of future climate change on weather and seasonal prediction is not yet well understood.
As climate scientists, we know seven- to 14-day forecasts and seasonal predictions stack up pretty well when it comes to the crunch. That's because agencies such as the Bureau check the success of ... Read more ...
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Discovery of organic catalyst could lead to cheaper fuel cells - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · One obstacle that researchers face is that current fuel-cell technology relies on the use of expensive metal catalysts like platinum to convert hydrogen into energy; however, a team from the University of Virginia's College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences has identified an organic molecule that could be an effective and less costly substitute for conventional metal catalysts.
The fuel cells that make electric vehicles and industrial and residential generators possible and that are needed to store energy generated by wind or the sun use metals like platinum to trigger the chemical reaction that splits fuel sources like hydrogen gas into protons and electrons that are ... 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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Earthquakes may not be primary driver of glacial lake outburst floods - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Oftentimes, the ground shaking from earthquakes has been associated with triggering glacial lake outbursts by disrupting the integrity of the dam. The seismic activity can also trigger destabilization of surrounding slopes, resulting in avalanches of rock debris that displaces water in the dam and overtops it. However, a new study published in Geophysical Research Letters suggests that this may not be the case and triggering processes could be much more complicated.
Dr. Joanne Wood, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Exeter, and colleagues investigated glacial lakes in the tropical Peruvian and Bolivian Andes, South America, and the record of outburst events ... 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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Efficiency boost: Dual light pulses minimize energy for phase transitions - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Phase transitions physically transform substances and uniformly change their properties. A typical example is boiling water which transforms liquid into a gas phase, resulting in an abrupt change in volume. There are other phase transitions with high relevance for technologies, such as data storage in compact or Blu-ray disks.
During an optical data storage process, laser pulses change the structural phase of the surface material. The recording marks in disks are created by first melting the material with the laser and then rapidly cooling the molten material below its crystallization temperature; the process changes the reflectivity of the molten areas. This is known as ... 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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Environmental concerns raised by rocket flights over San Diego County - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Plans by SpaceX and other companies to boost the number of rocket launches sometimes seen streaking across San Diego County's skies have prompted the California Coastal Commission to question the environmental effects.
Residents near Vandenberg Space Force Base, on the state's Central Coast, say the launches shake their homes and rattle their nerves. People don't know when to expect them because the lift-off time varies and can be delayed by weather conditions.
"I find it difficult to believe that there are no impacts on (wildlife) species due to SpaceX launches," said Carpinteria resident Rebecca Stebbins in an April 5 letter to the Coastal Commission.
"I, along ... Read more ...
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Environmental groups grateful but vigilant after Key Bridge collapse - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · When Alice Volpitta watched the video of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse, and the trucks tumbling into the Patapsco River in the darkness, she thought first for the people who had fallen.
And as her mind raced, the Baltimore Harbor Waterkeeper thought of the river.
"What's on that ship?" thought Volpitta, of environmental nonprofit Blue Water Baltimore.
As it turned out, the massive container ship that struck the bridge carried more than 1 million gallons of fuel and 4,679 shipping containers, 56 of them filled with hazardous materials.
But, for the most part, two weeks after the collapse, environmental advocates are breathing a sigh of ... 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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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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Exoplanets true to size: New model calculations shows impact of star's brightness and magnetic activity - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · The data revealed evidence of large quantities of water vapor, methane, and even, for the first time, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere of WASP-39b. A minor sensation, but there is still one fly in the ointment: researchers have not yet succeeded in reproducing all the crucial details of the observations in model calculations. This stands in the way of an even more precise analysis of the data.
In the new study led by the MPS, the authors, including researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (U.S.), the Space Telescope Science Institute (U.S.), Keele University (United Kingdom), and the University of Heidelberg (Germany), show a way to overcome this ... Read more ...
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Extreme heat is a problem in Virginia: Researchers want to help - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · The summers in Hampton Roads, Va., are hot, but for some residents, swelling temperatures and their impacts can be disproportionately worse.
In Portsmouth, Va., for example, a lack of green space and increase of development over time has created urban heat islands, said Elizabeth Malcolm, professor of ocean and atmospheric sciences and director of sustainability at Virginia Wesleyan University.
Urban heat islands occur when cities replace natural land cover with dense concentrations of pavement, buildings and other surfaces that absorb and retain heat. This effect increases energy costs, air pollution levels and heat-related illness and mortality.
"Remember when ... 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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Fewer showers, less laundry, as water cuts hit Bogota - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · Residents of Bogota are facing fewer showers, minimal laundry loads and dirty cars as the Colombian capital imposes water rations due to a severe drought aggravated by the El Niño climate phenomenon.
Bogota has become the latest major city around the world to face a water crisis in recent years due to intense dry spells and President Gustavo Petro vowed Thursday to boost investment to protect the valuable resource.
Some 10 million people in the Colombian capital and surrounds are being impacted by new restrictions that impose 24-hour water cuts every ten days by sector.
"The situation is critical," said Mayor Carlos Fernando Galan.
In the mountainous suburb ... 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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Giant rogue waves: Southern Ocean expedition reveals wind as key cause - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · A rogue wave is a single swell that is much higher than nearby waves, which can damage ships or coastal infrastructure. Ocean waves are among the most powerful natural forces on Earth, and as global trends suggest ocean winds will blow harder because of climate change, ocean waves could become more powerful.
In a study published in Physical Review Letters, the research team led by Professor Alessandro Toffoli found that rogue waves emerge from strong wind forces and unpredictable waveform patterns, confirming an idea previously only demonstrated in laboratory experiments.
Professor Toffoli said, "Rogue waves are colossal—twice as high as neighboring ... 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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Global warming will 'decimate' G20 economies without unity: UN climate head - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Wednesday warned G20 nations their economies face decimation and they must overcome geopolitical divisions to tackle global warming.
Stiell said the climate crisis was slipping down a crowded global agenda at a time when consensus was needed on how to help developing nations pay for clean energy and respond to extreme weather.
The Group of 20 developed and developing economies including the United States, China and India faced many geopolitical challenges but this "cannot be an excuse for timidity amidst this worsening crisis", Stiell said in a London speech.
"I'll be candid: blame-shifting is not - is not - a strategy. Sidelining ... Read more ...
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HD 21997 is a high-frequency Delta Scuti pulsator, observations find - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · Using NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), astronomers have observed a young star designated HD 21997. Results of the new observations indicate that the studied object is a high-frequency Delta Scuti pulsator. The finding was described in a paper published March 28 on the pre-print server arXiv.
Detecting and studying variable stars could offer important hints into aspects of stellar structure and evolution. Investigation of variables could be also helpful for a better understanding of the distance scale of the universe. In general, there are two main-sequence A-F type pulsating variables: Delta Scuti and Gamma Doradus stars.
Delta Scuti stars are ... 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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Hidden threat: Global underground infrastructure vulnerable to sea-level rise - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · "While it has been recognized that shallowing groundwater will eventually result in chronic flooding as it surfaces, what's less known is that it can start causing problems decades beforehand as groundwater interacts with buried infrastructure," said Shellie Habel, lead author and coastal geologist in the School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology (SOEST) at UH Mānoa. "This knowledge gap often results in coastal groundwater changes being fully overlooked in infrastructure planning."
"The IPCC 6th Assessment Report tells us that sea level rise is an unstoppable and irreversible reality for centuries to millennia," said Chip Fletcher, study co-author, interim Dean of ... 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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High stakes: The Arctic test of sustainable development - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Above the Arctic Circle in Finland's municipality of Inari, the largest and most sparsely populated region of Finnish Lapland, leading sources of income are tourism and the cold-climate testing of cars, tires and components.
The country's north-south "European Route," the E75, brings in year-round visitors seeking the beauty and serenity of an uncrowded natural environment almost 300 kilometers north of the Arctic Circle. In 2019, an estimated half a million people visited the region, which has only twilight in winter and 24 hours of daylight in summer.
Culture clash
Inari is also Finland's capital of Sámi culture, a cornerstone of which is the herding of ... 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 full are major California reservoirs as state exits another wet winter? - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · The majority of California's reservoirs are above their historic average levels following the end of two wet winters.
The state's largest reservoirs, Shasta Lake and Lake Oroville, were measured at a respective 118% and 122% of their averages for early April, according to data from the California Department of Water Resources.
Folsom Lake in the Sierra Nevada foothills exits early April at 116%.
Only two reservoirs, San Luis in western San Joaquin Valley and Castaic in Southern California, were below average. San Luis Reservoir was at just 87% and much smaller Castaic Lake in Los Angeles County was at 92%.
An update from the U.S. Drought Monitor last week ... 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 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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Humans shape the journey of mud, study reveals - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · The new study, led by University of Florida biogeochemist Thomas S. Bianchi, holds significant implications for understanding historical climate shifts and potential future scenarios. The researchers identified direct links between human activities and the movement of mud from its source to its destination.
Mud holds profound insights into how our planet operates. It serves as a linchpin in how carbon moves around our planet. It's a key player in regulating Earth's climate by storing and cycling carbon. Mud also acts as a repository for organic carbon, playing a pivotal role in its sequestration and burial across landscapes.
"Mud has been an essential component in ... Read more ...
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Hydrogen recombination found to be most plausible explanation for high levels of energy in stellar superflares - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · The stars are so far away that they appear only as points of light to these telescopes, and the phenomena interpreted as stellar flares are abrupt increases in the brightness of these points.
There is also a lack of data in other parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, and most studies of these events focus on irradiated energy. Observations have detected "superflares," huge magnetic eruptions in the atmosphere of stars with energies 100 to 10,000 times greater than the most energetic solar flares. The question is whether any of the available models can explain such high levels of energy.
Two models are available. The more popular one treats the radiation of a superflare ... 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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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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Japan's Sapporo sees earliest 25C day since records began - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Temperatures in Japan's northern city of Sapporo - famous for skiing - on Monday passed 25 degrees Celsius at the earliest point of any year on record, a weather agency official said.
Sapporo, the main city on the island of Hokkaido, hosted the 1972 Winter Olympics and each February holds a snow festival where massive ice sculptures draw tens of thousands of visitors.
"The temperature in Sapporo hit 26 degrees... and is still rising," Shuichi Yoshida, an official at the regional headquarters of the Japan Meteorological Agency, told AFP in the early afternoon.
It is the earliest that temperatures in the city have passed 25 degrees Celsius (77 Fahrenheit), which the ... Read more ...
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Key sectors stymie emission reduction efforts in New Zealand, reveals study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · New Zealand's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is being let down by several critical sectors, according to an analysis by University of Auckland researchers from the Business School's Energy Center.
The scheme, which is designed to cut emissions and encourage economic growth, could have a much greater impact on the country's emissions reduction goals, say the researchers. Their study shows that five key sectors—agriculture, transport, energy, petroleum and diesel, and waste—are underperforming.
While the ETS effectively reduces emissions on a broad scale, the researchers: Dr. Le Wen, Associate Professor Stephen Poletti, Dr. Selena Sheng and Simon Tao, say it's ... 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 41 people across Pakistan - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · At least 41 people have died in storm-related incidents across Pakistan since Friday, including 28 killed by lightning, officials said on Monday.
Pakistan's National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has warned of landslides and flash floods because more rain is expected in coming days.
Punjab, Pakistan's largest and most populous province, witnessed the highest death toll, with 21 people killed by lightning between Friday and Sunday.
"I have asked the NDMA to coordinate with the provinces... and for the NDMA to provide relief goods to areas where damages occurred," Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Monday.
People living in open, rural areas are more ... 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 forest study shows tornado's effects linger 25 years later - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · The EF-4 tornado on April 9, 1999, carried wind speeds of more than 200 miles per hour as it barreled through suburbs north of Cincinnati, according to the National Weather Service. The storm killed four people and destroyed more than 200 homes in the suburbs Blue Ash and Montgomery.
And it devastated a good part of the Harris Benedict Nature Preserve, 64 acres of hills, creeks and deciduous forest that UC oversees. The storm flattened trees and sheared the tops off others.
Since the storm, biologists in UC's College of Arts and Sciences have documented the forest's recovery in four detailed botanical surveys. Their findings are shedding light on how major disturbances ... 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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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 unveils probe bound for Jupiter's possibly life-sustaining moon - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · US space scientists on Thursday unveiled the interplanetary probe NASA plans to send to one of Jupiter's icy moons as part of humanity's hunt for extra-terrestrial life.
The Clipper spacecraft is due to blast off in October bound for Europa, one of dozens of moons orbiting the solar system's biggest planet, and the nearest spot in our celestial neighborhood that could offer a perch for life.
"One of the fundamental questions that NASA wants to understand is, are we alone in the cosmos?" Bob Pappalardo, the mission's project scientist told AFP.
"If we were to find the conditions for life, and then someday actually find life in a place like Europa, then that would ... 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 PACE data on ocean, atmosphere, climate now available - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · The Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite was launched on Feb. 8, and has been put through several weeks of in-orbit testing of the spacecraft and instruments to ensure proper functioning and data quality. The mission is gathering data that the public now can access here.
PACE data will allow researchers to study microscopic life in the ocean and particles in the air, advancing the understanding of issues including fisheries health, harmful algal blooms, air pollution, and wildfire smoke. With PACE, scientists also can investigate how the ocean and atmosphere interact with each other and are affected by a changing climate.
"These stunning images are ... 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 approach needed to save Australia's non-perennial rivers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · More than 70% of this nation's rivers are non-perennial due to a combination of ancient landscape, dry climates, highly variable rainfall regimes, and human interventions that have altered riverine environments.
An extensive review of current research incorporating geomorphology, hydrology, biogeochemistry, ecology and Indigenous knowledges identifies prevailing factors that shape water and energy flows in Australia's non-perennial rivers—but the review also points to research deficiencies that must be addressed if these river systems are to be preserved and protected.
"Australia relies on our rivers, and has a strong history of research to understand river flows ... Read more ...
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New catalyst allows energy-friendly ammonia production for fertilizers and alternative fuel - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · The study, published in Chemical Science, describes a new catalyst that works stably at relatively low temperatures, thus reducing the amount of energy and money needed to synthesize ammonia. Because ammonia is an excellent way to store hydrogen safely, as well as an excellent alternative fuel in its own right, this discovery will make it easier to switch from fossil fuels to a carbon-neutral and green-energy economy.
Fertilizers are a way to provide extra nitrogen to plants, which helps them grow and increases crop yields. The nitrogen in fertilizers comes from ammonia, which is made by breaking apart hydrogen (H2) and nitrogen (N2) molecules and joining the individual ... 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 radar analysis method can improve winter river safety - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Many Alaskans, especially in rural parts of the state, use rivers as wintertime ice highways to travel between communities or for recreation, hunting and fishing. Open water zones in river ice can be dangerous.
The new method is detailed in a paper published March 13 in the journal Remote Sensing of Environment.
Remote sensing scientist Melanie Engram of the Water and Environmental Research Center at the UAF Institute of Northern Engineering led the research.
Co-authors include Franz Meyer of the UAF Geophysical Institute; Dana Brown, Sarah Clement and Katie Spellman of the UAF International Arctic Research Center; and Allen Bondurant, Laura Oxtoby and Christopher ... 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 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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Newly sequenced genome reveals coffee's prehistoric origin story, and its future under climate change - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Their findings, published in Nature Genetics, suggest that Coffea arabica developed more than 600,000 years ago in the forests of Ethiopia via natural mating between two other coffee species. Arabica's population waxed and waned throughout Earth's heating and cooling periods over thousands of years, the study found, before eventually being cultivated in Ethiopia and Yemen, and then spread over the globe.
"We've used genomic information in plants alive today to go back in time and paint the most accurate picture possible of Arabica's long history, as well as determine how modern cultivated varieties are related to each other," says the study's co-corresponding author, Victor ... Read more ...
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Northern permafrost region emits more greenhouse gases than it captures, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Data on how much this region will—or already has—affected the course of climate change are difficult to gather due to the complexity of the landscape. The study, published in Global Biogeochemical Cycles, synthesized greenhouse gas measurements of the northern permafrost region between 2000 and 2020 to provide a carbon balance for the region, as well as the first comprehensive assessment of the quantities of greenhouse gases the area takes up and emits.
Wetlands were some of the largest methane emitters, and lakes contributed substantially as well. Dry tundra was the biggest driver of N2O release, and permafrost bogs were a close second.
However, the ... 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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Ocean currents threaten to collapse Antarctic ice shelves, study finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · A new study published in Nature Communications has revealed that the interplay between meandering ocean currents and the ocean floor induces upwelling velocity, transporting warm water to shallower depths. This mechanism contributes substantially to the melting of ice shelves in the Amundsen Sea of West Antarctica. These ice shelves are destabilizing rapidly and contributing to sea level rise.
Led by Taewook Park and Yoshihiro Nakayama, an international team of researchers from the Korea Polar Research Institute, Hokkaido University, and Seoul National University employed advanced ocean modeling techniques to investigate the underlying forces behind the rapid melting ice shelves. Read more ...
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Oceanographers uncover the vital role of mixing down of oxygen in sustaining deep sea health - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · "There is growing concern for the health of our coastal oceans as the climate warms because warmer water holds less oxygen. Living creatures in the ocean are reliant on oxygen to survive in the same way as animals on land are. Oxygen is also used up as rotting matter decomposes in the depths of the ocean. This creates a summer oxygen deficit in the deep seas around the UK. Unfortunately, as our climate warms, this deficit is forecast to grow," lead author Professor Tom Rippeth of Bangor University explains.
The formation of stratification in the summer in the deeper water around the UK isolates the deep water from the atmosphere, which is the main source of oxygen.
These ... Read more ...
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Orbital eccentricity may have led to young underground ocean on Saturn's moon Mimas - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · "In our previous work, we found that for Mimas to be an ocean world today, it must have had a much thicker icy shell in the past. But because Mimas's eccentricity would have been even higher in the past, the pathway to get from thick ice to thinner ice was less clear," said Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist Matthew E. Walker. "In this work we showed that there is a pathway for the ice shell to be thinning currently even as the eccentricity is dropping due to tidal heating, but the ocean must be very young, geologically speaking."
Walker is co-author of "The evolution of a young ocean within Mimas", which appears in Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Alyssa Rose ... Read more ...
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Panama plans dry alternative to drought-hit canal - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Panama on Wednesday unveiled plans for a "dry canal" to move cargo between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans due to low water levels in its century-old maritime channel.
The Panama Canal usually handles about six percent of global maritime trade, but a drought caused by climate change and the El Niño phenomenon has forced authorities to limit the number of ships passing through.
The Multimodal Dry Canal project will use existing roads, railways, port facilities, airports and duty-free zones in a new "special customs jurisdiction," said Rodolfo Samuda, director of logistics at the ministry of the presidency.
It will not require any investment thanks to its use of ... 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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Plant more native trees to reduce landslide risk, control erosion, say researchers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Homeowners, councils and state governments looking to build houses and infrastructure on or near slopes should reconsider cutting down trees or using artificial slope reinforcement to buttress vertical terrain against landslides and slips.
They should plant native trees and shrubs instead, says University of Sydney Ph.D. candidate and nature lover Jiale Zhu. He is researching how native trees and shrubs, common to East Coast Australia, could help reinforce sloping terrain and reduce the risk of landslide and soil erosion under wet conditions.
He found that the Sydney red gum, narrow-leaf scribbly gum, blueberry ash, coastal banksia and crimson bottlebrush were best for ... 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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Pyrite may contain valuable lithium, a key element for green energy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · In recent years, lithium demand has skyrocketed. Primary sources for lithium like pegmatites and volcanic clays are well understood, but finding other stores that are safe and economical to exploit would be helpful. To that end, a team led by researchers from West Virginia University is exploring whether previous industrial operations (e.g., mine tailings or drill cuttings) could serve as a source of additional lithium without generating new waste materials.
Shailee Bhattacharya, a sedimentary geochemist and doctoral student working with Professor Shikha Sharma in the IsoBioGeM Lab at West Virginia University, presents the team's findings during the European Geosciences Union ... 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: El Niño drought leaves Zimbabwe's Lake Kariba only 13% full - a disaster for people and wildlife - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · Historian and social scientist Joshua Matanzima grew up at Lake Kariba and has spent the past 10 years researching socioeconomic life there. He discusses the impact of the latest drought on the people of the area.
Where is Kariba Dam and what purposes does it serve?
The 280 kilometer long, man-made Lake Kariba is part of the Kariba Dam, which was built between 1955 and 1959 in the Zambezi river basin between Zambia and Zimbabwe. The dam provides hydroelectric power to the Kariba north power station on the Zambian side and Kariba south power station on the Zimbabwean side. These provide most of the electricity for the two nations.
The remote Kariba Dam, about five ... 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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Quantum behavior at room temperature: When laser light makes materials magnetic - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · Within a few decades, the advancement of quantum technology is expected to revolutionize several of society's most important areas and pave the way for completely new technological possibilities in communication and energy. Of particular interest for researchers in the field are the peculiar and bizarre properties of quantum particles—which deviate completely from the laws of classical physics and can make materials magnetic or superconducting.
By increasing the understanding of exactly how and why this type of quantum states arise, the goal is to be able to control and manipulate materials to obtain quantum mechanical properties.
So far, researchers have only been ... 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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Record heat rots cocoa beans threatening Ivory Coast agriculture - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Surrounded by cocoa trees and intense heat, Christian Andre Yapi is forced to admit that the precious beans are no longer growing as they should, a major problem for the world's leading producer.
"The beans are turning black," and rotting, he tells AFP at his plantation near Agboville, 70 kilometers (nearly 45 miles) from the economic capital Abidjan.
"They are not growing properly because of the heat."
The leaves on the trees usually provide shade for the pods, but the sun "is drying them up and they are falling" off the trees.
It is so hot Yapi can work only in the morning, leaving plenty of spare time to dwell on his losses.
"Normally in the off ... Read more ...
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Reducing CO2 emissions by 20% with only a 2% economic loss - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · A "rapid and far-reaching change" is necessary to prevent catastrophic climate change, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). "However, the transformation of the economy towards climate neutrality always involves a certain amount of economic stress - some industries and jobs disappear while others are created," explains Johannes Stangl from the Complexity Science Hub (CSH). When it comes to climate policy measures, how can economic damage be minimized?
A CSH team has developed a new method to help solve this problem. "To understand how climate policy measures will affect a country's economy, it's not sufficient to have data on carbon dioxide ... Read more ...
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Report links H&M, Zara to environmental destruction in Brazil - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Fast fashion giants H&M and Zara have used cotton from farms linked to massive deforestation, land-grabbing, corruption and violence in Brazil, a report by the environmental group Earthsight said Thursday.
Based on satellite images, court rulings, shipment records and an undercover investigation, the report, titled "Fashion Crimes," found the companies sourced "tainted cotton" farmed in the fragile Cerrado savanna by two of Brazil's biggest agribusiness firms, SLC Agricola and the Horita Group.
Despite abuses linked to its production, the cotton had been labeled as ethical by leading certification scheme Better Cotton, exposing "deep flaws" in the oversight program, said ... 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 develop method to extract useful proteins from beer-brewing leftovers - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Brewers' spent grain (BSG) is the solid residue from malted barley after brewing beer. It is the most significant byproduct of the beer brewing industry, making up 85% of the total waste. Globally, about 36.4 million tons of spent grain are produced every year.
This spent grain is typically discarded after its primary use in brewing beer. While some efforts are made to repurpose BSG in applications such as animal feed, biofuel production, or composting, a substantial portion still ends up in landfills, generating greenhouse gases such as methane and carbon dioxide.
After exploring new use cases for the BSG proteins, the researchers from NTU's Food Science and Technology ... Read more ...
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Researchers explain how cities can implement environmentally sustainable densification - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · One of the core planning tasks is to coordinate the different demands on urban space such as housing, work, transport, leisure and recreation so that they complement each other wherever possible and create synergies.
At ETH Zurich, David Kaufmann, Professor of Spatial Development and Urban Policy, focuses on the challenges when densifying cities. His research group (SPUR) investigates aspects of planning instruments and housing production, how densification can be implemented democratically and how densification is changing the socio-economic population composition of neighborhoods and thus the urban fabric.
New construction displaces low-income individuals around ... 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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Retention ponds can deliver a substantial reduction in tire particle pollution, study suggests - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · The study analyzed samples collected alongside some of the busiest routes in South West England and the Midlands, many used by more than 100,000 vehicles each day. The research is published in the Environmental Science and Pollution Research journal, and was carried out by scientists from the University of Plymouth and Newcastle University.
Tire particles were discovered in each of the 70 samples taken, confirming the findings of previous research which has shown them to pose a considerable environmental threat.
However, the presence of wetlands and retention ponds led to an average reduction of almost 75% in the mass of tire wear particles being discharged to aquatic ... Read more ...
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Rock permeability, microquakes link may be a boon for geothermal energy - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Generating geothermal energy requires a permeable subsurface to efficiently release heat when cold fluids are forced into the rock. This research reveals the optimum times for efficient energy transfer by exposing the link to microearthquakes, which are monitored on the surface through seismometers. The team published their findings in Nature Communications.
Using two datasets from the EGS Collab and Utah FORGE demonstration projects, researchers used machine learning to extract the "noise" found in the data that obscured the link. Researchers then used machine learning to create a model from one site and successfully applied it to the other—a process called transfer ... Read more ...
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Salmon fishing off California's coast banned for second year in a row - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · Salmon fishing off the coast of California will be banned for a second consecutive year, authorities said Wednesday, citing lower fish stocks impacted by drought and wildfires.
The heavy blow for the state's salmon sector - which one industry group says supports 23,000 jobs - comes as salmon have struggled to successfully reproduce in low or warm waterways.
It is hoped the ban, announced by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), will help the state's Chinook salmon stock recover.
CDFW director Charlton Bonham said that, despite wet winters this year and last, the salmon likely to benefit from these conditions were not expected to return to ... Read more ...
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San Francisco Bay study highlights value of salt marsh restoration for flood risk reduction and climate resilience - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · The study, titled "The value of marsh restoration for flood risk reduction in an urban estuary," explores the social and economic advantages of marsh restoration amidst the growing threats of sea level rise and storm-driven flooding. Climate change will put many communities at risk.
In California, some of the study co-authors from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) have shown that 675,000 people and $250 billion in property are at risk of flooding in a scenario with 2 m of sea level rise combined with a 100-year storm. Flooding due to sea-level rise is amplified by storms, which drive higher coastal water levels via surges, waves, and increased river discharge, along with ... Read more ...
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Saturday Citations: Listening to bird dreams, securing qubits, imagining impossible billiards - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · It's Saturday, which means that in a universe where the arrow of time moves backward, people have to go to work tomorrow. In such a hypothetical universe, Garfield hates Fridays - tough to imagine. This week, we looked at several hundred breaking science developments, four of which I've highlighted here, including a new geoengineering study, a quantum infosec breakthrough, and listening in on the melodious dreams of birds.
During the solar eclipse on Monday, as the light across Brooklyn grew dimmer and the temperature dropped a noticeable eight degrees, it occurred to me: Blocking the sun is a great way to cool the atmosphere (I have an associate's degree from an accredited ... Read more ...
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Scientists at Spain meeting sound alarm over ocean warming - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · Scientists at a United Nations conference in Spain called Friday for more research into the sharp rise in ocean temperatures which they warn could have devastating consequences.
"The changes are happening so fast that we are not able to keep pace with the impact," the executive secretary of UNESCO's intergovernmental oceanographic commission, Vidar Helgesen, told AFP on the sidelines of the three-day "Ocean Decade" conference in Barcelona.
"It calls for a much stronger effort to observe and research in real time and a much closer collaboration between science and policy making," he said, adding that "tackling ocean warming is a burning issue".
The gathering, which ... 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 find vast numbers of illegal 'ghost roads' used to crack open pristine rainforest - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 14) |
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Apr 14 · In an article published in Nature, my colleagues and I show that illicit, often out-of-control road building is imperiling forests in Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea. The roads we're studying do not appear on legitimate maps. We call them "ghost roads."
What's so bad about a road? A road means access. Once roads are bulldozed into rainforests, illegal loggers, miners, poachers and landgrabbers arrive. Once they get access, they can destroy forests, harm native ecosystems and even drive out or kill indigenous peoples. This looting of the natural world robs cash-strapped nations of valuable natural resources. Indonesia, for instance, loses around A$1.5 billion each year ... 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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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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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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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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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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Stellar winds of three sun-like stars detected for the first time - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 12) |
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Apr 12 · An international research team led by a researcher from the University of Vienna has for the first time directly detected stellar winds from three sun-like stars by recording the X-ray emission from their astrospheres, and placed constraints on the mass loss rate of the stars via their stellar winds.
Astrospheres, stellar analogs of the heliosphere that surrounds our solar system, are very hot plasma bubbles blown by stellar winds into the interstellar medium, a space filled with gas and dust. The study of the stellar winds of low-mass stars similar to the sun allows us to understand stellar and planetary evolution, and ultimately the history and future of our own star and ... 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 identifies increased threat to coastlines from concurrent heat waves and sea level rises - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · Concurrent occurrences of heat waves and extreme short-term sea level rises at the same coastal locations significantly increased between 1998 and 2017 when compared to the preceding 20 years, reports a study published in Communications Earth & Environment. The study also suggests that these events may be five times more likely to occur between 2025 and 2049 under a modeled high emissions scenario.
A so-called 'concurrent heat wave and extreme sea level' (CHWESL) event is when a heat wave and an extreme short-term sea level rise occur at the same coastal location over the same time period. Although they can pose a serious threat to coastal communities, there has so far been ... Read more ...
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Study lists world's 'forever chemical' hotspots - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 13) |
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Apr 13 · Dangerous concentrations of long-lingering "forever chemicals" have been found in surface and groundwater worldwide, according to a study released Tuesday that showed Australia, the United States and Europe as hotspots.
A paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience analyzed data from 45,000 water samples globally and found a "substantial fraction" had levels of PFAS - per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances - above recommended levels.
Found in everyday products such as non-stick frying pans, food packaging and waterproof clothing, the substances have been linked to serious health conditions including cancer and birth defects.
They have been found everywhere from ... Read more ...
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Study on climate-damaging palm oil production in Indonesia shows push for industrialization - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · The climate-damaging palm oil boom immediately brought many jobs, and a new study, published in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, examines a broader motive of the government: a push for industrialization.
The study was carried out with contributions from the Berlin-based climate research institute MCC (Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change). "Climate protection in the Global South does not fall from the sky," says Nicolas Koch, head of the Policy Evaluation Lab at MCC and one of the authors of the study.
"If you want to advance it, you have to understand the mechanisms of political economy that lead ... 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 giant store of global soil carbon - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 11) |
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Apr 11 · In a study published in Science, researchers led by Prof. Huang Yuanyuan from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Prof. Zhang Ganlin from the Institute of Soil Science of CAS, together with collaborators, have quantified the global store of SIC, challenging this long-held view.
"But here's the thing: This huge carbon pool is vulnerable to changes in the environment, especially soil acidification. Acids dissolve calcium carbonate and remove it either as carbon dioxide gas or directly into the water," said Prof. Huang.
"Many regions in countries like China and India are experiencing soil ... 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 shedding new light on Earth's global carbon cycle could help assess liveability of other planets - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 10) |
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Apr 10 · The study, published today in Nature Geoscience and led by a researcher at the University of Bristol, reveals for the first time how the build-up of carbon-rich rocks has accelerated oxygen production and its release into the atmosphere. Until now, the exact nature of how the atmosphere became oxygen-rich has long eluded scientists and generated conflicting explanations.
As carbon dioxide is steadily emitted by volcanoes, it ends up entering the ocean and forming rocks like limestone. As global stocks of these rocks build up, they can then release their carbon during tectonic processes, including mountain building and metamorphism.
Using this knowledge, the scientists ... 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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Swiss climate policy in spotlight after court ruling - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Switzerland, known for pristine countryside and snow-capped peaks, is facing scrutiny of its environmental policies after becoming the first country faulted by an international court for failing to do enough against climate change.
The European Court of Human Rights's ruling last week highlighted a number of failings in Swiss policies, but experts stressed that the wealthy Alpine country was not necessarily doing much worse than its peers.
"The judgment made it really clear that there are critical gaps in the Swiss domestic regulatory framework," said Tiffanie Chan, a policy analyst at the London School of Economics and Political Science specializing in climate change laws. Read more ...
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Switch to green wastewater infrastructure could reduce emissions and provide huge savings, new research finds - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · The comprehensive findings from Colorado State University were highlighted in Nature Communications Earth & Environment in a first-of-its-kind study. The work from the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering explores the potential economic tradeoffs of switching to green infrastructure and technology solutions that go beyond existing gray-water treatment practices.
Built off data collected at over 22,000 facilities, the report provides comprehensive baseline metrics and explores the relationship among emissions, costs and treatment capabilities for utility operators and decision-makers.
Braden Limb is the first author on the paper and a Ph.D. student in the Department ... 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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Tandem heat waves, storm surges increasingly batter coasts: Study - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 14) |
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Apr 14 · Coastal communities need to prepare for simultaneous extreme weather events as heat waves increasingly overlap with surges in sea levels due to climate change, a study published on Thursday warned.
Extreme heat and sea levels are typically monitored and studied individually but researchers from Hong Kong Polytechnic University found they were occurring simultaneously - a phenomenon that could multiply fivefold by mid-century.
The study's lead author, Mo Zhao, told AFP these events pose "very dangerous" risks, from deadly heat to floods, that may "exceed the coping capacity" of communities to respond.
"We don't have sufficient resources or sufficient human resources ... Read more ...
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The big dry: Forests and shrublands are dying in parched Western Australia - PHYS.ORG - Earth (Apr 15) |
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Apr 15 · Unlike us, trees and shrubs can't escape the heat and aridity. While we turn up the air conditioning, they bear the full brunt of the changing climate. Our previous research has shown plants are more vulnerable to heat waves than we had thought.
Beginning in February 2024, large areas of vegetation started to turn brown and die off. With no real relief in sight, we unfortunately expect this mass plant death event to intensify and expand.
Just like a coral bleaching event, WA's plants are responding to the cumulative stress of the unusually long, hot and dry summer. And just like bleaching, global heating is likely to cause more regular mass plant deaths. The last time ... 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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