While the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia's war in Ukraine will be focuses of the World Economic Forum's gathering of business and government leaders, so too will climate change. It's captured the world's attention in unignorable and devastating ways.
When the pandemic forced schools into remote learning, Washington-area science teacher Rebecca Bushway set her students an ambitious task: design and build a low-cost lead filter that fixes to faucets and removes the toxic metal.
Texas A&M University researchers Dr. Sam Noynaert and Fred Dupriest recently presented results from a geothermal project that drastically reduced well-completion times and drill bit changeouts to an audience of mostly petroleum drillers. The Department of Energy (DOE) funded the project, which improves geothermal drilling practices with physics-based instruction and oil and gas techniques to lower the high cost of drilling geothermal wells. The time and equipment saved suggests the oil industry should take note.
Iraq's Lake Hamrin, a once-vast reservoir northeast of Baghdad that is the sole source of water for irrigation across Diyala province, has nearly dried out, a senior official said Friday.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is a phenomenon responsible for transporting ocean heat northward through the Atlantic Ocean. This process significantly influences the Arctic and North Atlantic oceanic climate and the Eurasian continental climate. The corresponding cross-equatorial northward heat transport also determines the location of the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), affecting global energy and rainfall distribution. Changes in ocean net surface heat flux play an important role in modulating the variability of the AMOC and hence the regional and global climate. However, the spread of simulated surface heat fluxes is still large and AMOC underestimation is common, due to poorly represented dynamical processes involving multi-scale interactions within the model simulations.
Billionaire Elon Musk arrived in Brazil Friday, announcing a project to bring internet access to schools in the Amazon and improve satellite monitoring of the rainforest.
Heatwaves are extreme climatic events that occur in the atmosphere and even the oceans. Recent research indicates that marine heatwaves (MHWs) will become more frequent and intense under global warming conditions.
A research team led by Prof. Yin Baoshu from the Institute of Oceanology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IOCAS) has revealed how typhoons trigger coastal algal blooms.
Much of the western U.S. has been in the grip of an unrelenting drought since early 2020. The dryness has coincided with record-breaking wildfires, intense and long-lasting heat waves, low stream flows and dwindling water supplies in reservoirs that millions of people across the region rely on.
Nations in the G20 group of major economies have yet to strengthen greenhouse gas reduction goals despite agreeing to revisit their plans ahead of critical UN climate talks in November, according to an analysis by leading research NGOs seen exclusively by AFP.
As the world's scientists research ways to slow the ongoing impact of climate change, blue carbon continues to surface as an effective natural climate solution.
Scientists at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) conducted a multi-year empirical study to assess the impact of trees on city temperatures. Taking the city of Wurzburg as an example, the researchers showed that vegetation cover of approximately 40 percent is needed to bring about lower summer temperatures.
Sandstorms have engulfed the Middle East in recent days, in a phenomenon experts warn could proliferate because of climate change, putting human health at grave risk.
Production of animal protein in China has increased by 800% over the past 40 years, driven by population growth, urbanization and higher worker wages. However, the amount of climate-warming nitrous oxide released from animal farming in the country has not risen as quickly, thanks to science-led policy and farm management interventions in the way animals are fed and their manure recycled.
Coats and scarves have come out prematurely in Brazil, as the south of the tropical country experiences a record-breaking cold spell, a menace for both homeless people and crops.
Leicester researchers searching for a "golden spike" to formally define humanity's current geological period—and acknowledge human impact on our planet—have announced a major step in their analysis at an international conference on Wednesday.
When President Joe Biden went to Capitol Hill in October to arm-twist for his signature environmental and economic legislation, many Democrats remained hopeful the bill's climate provisions would survive.
Mark Twain once said, "Whisky is for drinking, and water is for fighting over!" But what if cooperation yielded more benefit than just going it alone, when it comes to urban water utilities?
Microplastics usually refer to plastic fibers, films, fragments, and microbes with size less than five millimeters. They are widely distributed in water, soil, sediment, the atmosphere, and even snow and ice, which impacts Earth's climate and environment.
Land surface temperature (LST) plays a critical role in the study of physical and biological processes of the Earth's surface at global and regional scales. It is widely used in fields such as meteorology, climate, hydrology, agriculture, and ecology.
In August 1979, an oil pipeline burst near Bemidji, Minn., spraying 1.7 million liters of crude oil onto the ground. Following cleanup, 400,000 liters that had seeped into sediments still remained. Recognizing a unique opportunity, research groups began to study the site to gain new insights into the long-term dynamics of oil spills.
Based on an evaluation of over 500 academic articles, an international research team has traced the application of greening concepts in the context of Swedish planning and particularly in the Stockholm metropolitan region. The researchers, who include Professor Christian Albert's research lab Planning Metropolitan Landscapes at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum (RUB), have drawn up recommendations for urban planning. One of their recommendations is to use scientific expertise and to focus on narratives that emphasize the importance of urban green spaces for human well-being. They argue that this is a way to gain momentum for ideas and action. The researchers published their findings in the journal Urban Forestry & Urban Greening on 26 April 2022.
In recent years, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia's northeast coast has seen multiple events of mass coral bleaching as human-caused global warming has driven sustained high temperatures in the ocean.
Indonesia is home to the world's third-largest tropical forest area and since 2009 has operated a forest-based climate action project developed by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Great Lakes cover nearly 95,000 square miles (250,000 square kilometers) and hold over 20% of Earth's surface fresh water. More than 30 million people in the U.S. and Canada rely on them for drinking water. The lakes support a multibillion-dollar maritime economy, and the lands around them provided many of the raw materials—timber, coal, iron—that fueled the Midwest's emergence as an industrial heartland.
New research led by the University of Cambridge is the first to take a detailed image of an unusual pocket of rock at the boundary layer with Earth's core, some three thousand kilometers beneath the surface.
Hawaii and the Central Pacific basin should expect two to four hurricanes, tropical depressions or tropical storms this year, federal forecasters said Wednesday.
President Joe Biden warned Wednesday that the country will likely see "another tough hurricane season" this year, and he pledged that his administration was prepared to respond to the storms and help Americans recover from them.
