Most recent 40 articles: Livescience
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Wind and solar power overtakes coal for the first time ever in the US - Livescience (Jun 26, 2023) |
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Jun 26, 2023 · When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Wind and solar power produced a combined 252 terawatt-hours in the first five months of 2023, compared with coal's output of 249 TWh
Wind and solar power has generated more electricity than coal for the first time ever in the U.S, according to new federal data.
Wind and solar sources produced a combined 252 terawatt-hours in the first five months of 2023, compared with coal's output of 249 TWh, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) seen by E&E News has revealed. This marks the very first time that renewable energy has outperformed coal ... Read more ...
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Tonga's eruption injected so much water into Earth’s atmosphere that it could weaken the ozone layer - Livescience (Aug 01, 2022) |
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Aug 01, 2022 · Live Science is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us.
By Harry Baker published 1 August 22
The atmospheric water vapor could also contribute to global warming.
When an underwater volcano in Tonga erupted in January, it belched out more than ash and volcanic gases; it also spewed 58,000 Olympic-size swimming pools' worth of water vapor into Earth's atmosphere, a new study finds.
This water vapor could end up being the most destructive part of the volcano's eruption because it could potentially exacerbate global warming and deplete the ozone layer, ... Read more ...
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Physicists predict Earth will become a chaotic world, with dire consequences | Live Science - Livescience (May 25, 2022) |
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May 25, 2022 · Live Science is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s why you can trust us
By Paul Sutter published 25 May 22
"If the Earth System gets into the region of chaotic behavior, we will lose all hope of somehow fixing the problem."
Humans aren't just making Earth warmer, they are making the climate chaotic, a stark new study suggests.
The new research, which was posted April 21 to the preprint database arXiv (opens in new tab), draws a broad and general picture of the full potential impact of human activity on the climate. And the picture isn't pretty.
While the study ... Read more ...
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'Zombie' greenhouse gas lurks in permafrost beneath the Arctic Ocean - Livescience (Dec 23, 2020) |
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Dec 23, 2020 · Editor's note: This article was updated at 8:00 PM, Dec. 23 to correct the dates of the Paleolithic ice age.
Millions of tons of organic carbon and methane beneath the Arctic Ocean thaw out and ooze to the surface each year. And climate change could speed up this release of greenhouse gases, new research suggests.
The carbon tied up in organic matter and methane (a carbon atom bound to four hydrogen atoms) are currently trapped in subsea permafrost, which is frozen sediment that became covered by 390 feet (120 meters) of seawater toward the end of the Paleolithic ice age about 18,000 to 14,000 years ago, according to the U. S. Geological Survey (USGS). Most subsea ... Read more ...
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Half of Antarctic ice shelves could collapse in a flash, thanks to warming - Livescience (Aug 26, 2020) |
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Aug 26, 2020 · Antarctic ice shelves can disappear astonishingly fast - sometimes in minutes or hours - as meltwater surges through cracks in their surface. And as the atmosphere warms, this phenomenon may become more commonplace; at least half of the ice shelves on the continent are vulnerable to this process, a new study suggests.
These floating ice sheets ring Antarctica's glaciers and prevent them from sliding into the ocean. Without these icy barriers, glaciers would flow more quickly into the water, causing the continent to shrink and accelerating sea level rise.
The new study, published today (Aug. 26) in the journal Nature, suggests that about 50% to 70% of ice shelves that ... Read more ...
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Melting ice in Antarctica reveals new uncharted island | Live Science - Livescience (Mar 05, 2020) |
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Mar 05, 2020 · Pointing toward South America like an icy finger, the Antarctic Peninsula is one of the fastest-warming regions on Earth. The peninsula's two major glaciers — the Thwaites Glacier and the Pine Island Glacier — are retreating toward the mainland faster than new ice can form, chipping away at the continent's coasts a little more each year.
This week, all that melting ice left behind a surprise that could change maps of the region permanently: an uncharted island, long buried in ice but finally visible above sea level for the first time.
Related: Scientists in Antarctica are racing to figure out why this giant glacier is melting so fast
Exciting as the discovery is, ... Read more ...
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Scientists Urge 'Retreat' From Coastal Communities To Mitigate Climate Catastrophe | Live Science - Livescience (Aug 22, 2019) |
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Aug 22, 2019 · As many as 1 billion people are expected to be forced out of their homes by the droughts, floods, fires and famines associated with runaway climate change over the next 30 years - and they all have to go somewhere. This massive global exodus can go one of two ways: either it will be a chaotic mess that punishes the world's poor, or it can be a path to a fairer, more sustainable world.
In a new policy paper, published today (Aug. 22) in the journal Science, a trio of environmental scientists argue that the only way to avoid the first scenario is to start planning now for the inevitable "retreat" from coastal cities.
"Faced with global warming, rising sea levels, and the ... Read more ...
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Arctic Permafrost Is Going Through a Rapid Meltdown — 70 Years Early - Livescience (Jun 13, 2019) |
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Jun 13, 2019 · In the Canadian Arctic, layers of permafrost that scientists expected to remain frozen for at least 70 years have already begun thawing. The once-frozen surface is now sinking and dotted with melt ponds and from above looks a bit like Swiss cheese, satellite images reveal.
"We were astounded that this system responded so quickly to the higher air temperatures," said Louise Farquharson, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the Permafrost Laboratory at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.
Permafrost is ground that remains frozen for at least two years. It underlies about 15% of the unglaciated Northern Hemisphere and serves a critical role in the transfer of ... Read more ...
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Nearly 25% of West Antarctic Ice in Danger of Collapse - Livescience (May 22, 2019) |
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May 22, 2019 · Glaciers and ice sheets in Antarctica have thinned and weakened dramatically over the past quarter-century, leaving 24% of the ice in the western part of the continent seriously weakened and in danger of collapse.
In some places on Antarctica, glaciers have thinned by approximately 400 feet (122 meters). This staggering loss has little to do with weather fluctuations; rather, it unfolded over decades as Earth's climate warmed, scientists reported in a new study.
And that ice loss is accelerating. The researchers found that West Antarctica's two biggest glaciers - Thwaites and Pine Island - are melting away five times faster now than they were at the beginning of the ... Read more ...
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Greenland's Ice Sheet Was Growing in the '70s. Now It Loses Trillions of Pounds Every Year - Livescience (Apr 23, 2019) |
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Apr 23, 2019 · Greenland's ice sheet is melting six times faster than it was in the 1980s. And all that meltwater is directly raising sea levels.
That's all according to a new study, published yesterday (April 22) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, that carefully reconstructs the behavior of the ice sheet in the decades before modern measurement tools became available. Scientists already knew that there was a lot more ice on Greenland in the 1970s and 1980s. And they've had precise measurements of the increase in melting since the 1990s. Now they know just how dramatically things have changed in the last 46 years.
"When you look at several decades, it is ... Read more ...
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The Melting Arctic Is Covering Itself in a Warm Layer of Clouds - Livescience (Mar 08, 2019) |
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Mar 08, 2019 · BOSTON - The Arctic is melting. The first ice-free summer is coming. The whole melting process is speeding up the warming of the entire Earth. And every autumn, a layer of extra clouds are forming over the ice-thinning Arctic that - researchers now believe - are speeding that melting up.
In a talk here March 4 at the March meeting of the American Physical Society, Ariel Morrison, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, presented research that for the first time offered a clear answer as to how the melting Arctic is changing its clouds, and how those clouds in turn are changing the Arctic. It was originally published in the journal JGR ... Read more ...
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Antarctic currents supplying 40% of world's deep ocean with nutrients and oxygen slowing dramatically - Livescience (Sep 21, 2018) |
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Sep 21, 2018 · When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Antarctica is the coldest, windiest and driest continent. It contains 90 percent of all of the ice on Earth in an area just under 1.5 times the size of the United States. But the southernmost continent is much more than a big block of ice.
Antarctic climate
Lying in the Antarctic Circle that rings the southern part of the globe, Antarctica is the fifth largest continent. Its size varies through the seasons, as expanding sea ice along the coast nearly doubles the continent's size in the winter. Almost all of Antarctica is covered with ice; less than half a ... Read more ...
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Melting Arctic Permafrost Releases Acid that Dissolves Rocks - Livescience (Sep 18, 2018) |
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Sep 18, 2018 · As temperatures rise in the Arctic, permafrost - permanently frozen ground - is defrosting at an alarming rate. But the permafrost isn't the only thing in the Arctic that's melting.
Exposed rock that was once covered in ice is dissolving, eaten away by acid. And the effects of this acid bath could have far-reaching impacts on global climate, according to a new study.
Icy permafrost is rich in minerals, which are released when the ice melts. The minerals then become vulnerable to chemical weathering, or the breakdown of rock through chemical reactions, scientists recently reported. They investigated areas once covered by permafrost in the western Canadian ... Read more ...
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Here's a Disturbing Theory About Why Climate Change Seemed to 'Pause' for 15 Years - Livescience (Jul 23, 2018) |
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Jul 23, 2018 · In the 2004 climate-change disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow," increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have a paradoxical effect: Rather than heating up the planet, they trigger a sudden-onset global ice age. The movie was very silly and unscientific, but there was a kernel of truth at the core of it: The Earth really does have a massive, hidden air-conditioning system that messes with the climate in paradoxical, unexpected ways and is, in turn, affected by climate change. And a new paper turns to that AC unit to, possibly, answer one of the abiding mysteries of climate change: Why did warming seem to "pause" from the mid-1990s to the early ... Read more ...
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Global Warming vs. Solar Cooling: The Showdown Begins in 2020 - Livescience (Feb 09, 2018) |
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Feb 09, 2018 · The sun may be dimming, temporarily. Don't panic; Earth is not going to freeze over. But will the resulting cooling put a dent in the global warming trend?
A periodic solar event called a "grand minimum" could overtake the sun perhaps as soon as 2020 and lasting through 2070, resulting in diminished magnetism, infrequent sunspot production and less ultraviolet (UV) radiation reaching Earth - all bringing a cooler period to the planet that may span 50 years.
The last grand-minimum event - a disruption of the sun's 11-year cycle of variable sunspot activity - happened in the mid-17th century. Known as the Maunder Minimum, it occurred between 1645 and 1715, during a longer ... Read more ...
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Can games be a game-changer for climate? - Livescience (Jan 08, 2016) |
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Jan 08, 2016 · Jeremy Deaton writes about the science, policy, and politics of climate and energy for Nexus Media. You can follow him at @deaton_jeremy. Deaton contributed this article to Live Science's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.
2015 will be remembered as a watershed moment in the fight against global warming. This year delivered a papal encyclical, the first-ever limits on carbon pollution from U.S. power plants , and a landmark international agreement on climate change, which President Obama described as a "turning point for the world."
It's against this backdrop that Barnard College Arctic scientist Stephanie Pfirman introduced a new toy she developed to explain the impact of ... | By Jeremy Deaton Read more ...
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