The Chesapeake Bay Program and its partners, including the University of Michigan, released information today on the state of the 2021 Chesapeake Bay "dead zone." While last year's dead zone was the second smallest observed since 1985, this year's assessment paints a more complex picture of the bay's health.
Rainfall could start replacing snowfall in the Arctic decades sooner than previously thought, a study found Tuesday, warning the change caused by global warming could have effects beyond the region.
Richard Ragle looked at the island as the boat pulled up. He'd studied historical photographs of Great Sitkin Island for years, but it wasn't exactly what he expected—some things were bigger and others were smaller than he had imagined.
The first ice core drilling campaign of Beyond Epica-Oldest Ice is starting in Antarctica at the Little Dome C site. The aim of the project is to go back to 1.5 million years in time, by sampling and analyzing the deep ice, which will reveal invaluable information on temperature and on the concentration of greenhouse gasses in the past atmosphere. This project represents an unprecedented effort in paleoclimatology.
Offshore oil derricks dotting the California coastline continue pumping despite a history of catastrophic spills and vows from generations of politicians to send them to the scrapheap. They've even survived a modest attempt by state officials more than a decade ago to offer incentives to oil companies that chose to abandon their costly operations.
A recent study by an international research group led by Prof. Ao Hong from the Institute of Earth Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has revealed Asian climate variability and dynamics across the early-to-middle Pliocene Warm Period, thus providing clues for future climate change.
Which diet is better: to moderately reduce meat consumption and eat more fruit, vegetables and wholegrain products, as recommended by the German Nutrition Society? Follow our southern neighbors' example and eat more fish and seafood? Or even switch completely to a vegan diet? A new study by the University of Bonn shows that the answer to these questions is not as clear-cut as one might think—depending on which impacts one closely looks. The results are published in the journal Science of The Total Environment.
Inspired by biological fractals, a team of researchers affiliated with multiple institutions in China has developed a new pore structure for a membrane used to separate uranium from seawater. In their paper published in the journal Nature Sustainability, the group describes their pore structure and how well it worked when tested. Alexander Wiechert and Sotira Yiacoumi with the Georgia Institute of Technology and Costas Tsouris with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, have published a News & Views piece on the work done by the team in China and the work that is left to do before the membrane can be commercialized.
A team of researchers from China and the U.S. has found that it should be possible to dramatically reduce deaths due to air pollution over the coming decades if climate mitigation strategies are designed with short-term health improvements in mind. In their paper published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the group describes their study of the most hazardous power plants in countries around the world.
The recent COP26 was eagerly awaited. Originally planned for 2020, the event was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was also meant to be a major step toward implementing the Paris Agreement.
The polar regions play a crucial role in balancing global climate—with the poles heating up much faster than the rest of the world. Yet, climate projections for these regions still have significant uncertainties. This is hampering efforts to curb climate change and deal with the effects we already see at play not only within the Antarctica and the Arctic, but also in Europe and the rest of the world.
Water is vital for life on Earth, and some experts say we should all drink around two liters every day as part of a healthy lifestyle. But beyond the tap, where does our water come from?
Most are aware that electrons are negatively charged particles that surround the nucleus of atoms and whose behavior governs chemical interactions. However, it is less commonly known that electrons come in two distinct kinds: spin-up and spin-down. The tendency for pairing between up and down spin electrons, forming "dance partners" with one another, is one of the most important behaviors affecting the electron clouds that control the chemistry of nature. Under pressures like those deep inside the Earth, the orbits in which the electrons move are squeezed, the "dance floor" changes. Electron pairs are sometimes forced to change their dance pattern and the way that they partner with one another, giving rise to what is termed an "electron spin-pairing crossover" ("spin crossover" is often used as a shorthand expression).
If we thought we could build our way out of the climate and biodiversity crisis with more advanced human technology, the COVID-19 pandemic taught us that we are far more vulnerable to the powers of nature than we previously dared to admit, and that working with instead of against nature is the only way forward.
A new international study coordinated by IIASA shows how near-term mitigation can help to prevent an overshoot in global temperatures, thereby reducing climate risks and bringing long-term economic gains.
Temperatures in many parts of the world are expected to be above average in coming months despite the cooling effect of a La Nina weather phenomenon, the United Nations said Tuesday.
Across a quarter century of UN climate conferences tasked with saving humanity from itself, one was deemed a chaotic failure (Copenhagen/2009), another a stunning success (Paris/2015), and the rest landed somewhere in between.
In a new paper published in Frontiers in Earth Science, researchers investigated how tropical cyclones' destructive power has changed over the eastern and southeastern regions of Asia between 1979 (hereafter) and 2016. They found that, during the last four decades, there has been a notable increase of tropical cyclone inland impacts over the studied regions. Future projections showed that by the end of the 21st century, western north Pacific (WNP) tropical cyclones could have doubled in destructive power over inland regions.
Studying the complexity of mud on the ocean floor is a life's work for Timothy Lyons, so when the tall and lean biogeochemist asks you to join an expedition in search of chemical mysteries buried deep beneath the waves, be prepared to get wet and dirty.
When a fire broke out on the deck of the M/V XPress Pearl cargo ship on May 20, 2021, an estimated 70-75 billion pellets of preproduction plastic material, known as nurdles, spilled into the ocean and along the Sri Lankan coastline. That spill of about 1,500 tons of nurdles, many of which were burnt by the fire, has threatened marine life and poses a complex cleanup challenge.
A civil and environmental engineering researcher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has, for the first time, assimilated satellite information into on-site river measurements and hydrologic models to calculate the past 35 years of river discharge in the entire pan-Arctic region. The research reveals, with unprecedented accuracy, that the acceleration of water pouring into the Arctic Ocean could be three times higher than previously thought.
Weeks before the official start of the winter season, Great Lakes surface temperatures are still trending above average, following summer and fall evenings that didn't cool down—a feature of climate change in Illinois.
Nearly three decades after the world first came together to address climate change, its impact on human health was a focus of talks this month in Glasgow, Scotland.
An oil sheen spotted off Huntington Beach last weekend served as a potent reminder of how long it will take Southern California to untangle the legal, regulatory and environmental fallout of an October pipeline spill that released an estimated 25,000 gallons of crude into the ocean.
The world's eight most extreme wildfire weather years have occurred in the last decade, according to a new study that suggests extreme fire weather is being driven by a decrease in atmospheric humidity coupled with rising temperatures.
Waterfalls have a specific threshold of water flow that must be maintained to preserve their characteristic sound and appearance, according to research that used audio recordings and images to monitor waterfalls in Europe. With this new method, scientists can use a waterfall's sound and appearance to track changes in its flow as human interventions and climate change impact water levels, according to the new study.
A new study co-led by a Cornell researcher has identified serpentinite—a green rock that looks a bit like snakeskin and holds fluids in its mineral structures—as a key driver of the oxygen recycling process, which helped create and maintain the sustaining atmosphere for life on Earth.
Microplastics are everywhere, even in the most remote places. Where do these tiny pieces of plastic come from? Researchers from the University of Basel and the Alfred-Wegener Institute have shown that it takes precise analysis to answer this question.
